TBR News July 15, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. June 15, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not
the place to discuss it.
Comment for June 15, 2020: “I see the main line media is now wailing about race prejudice and Corona virus is vanishing in the background. The fact that the Russians are just about finished with installing the Nord Stream pipeline is carefully ignored. The fact that the Germans threw out a nasty ambasasor Fat Donald sent to Berlin to order the Germans to do his bidding is also not talked about. I suppose the next issue could concern the project to establish luxury peg houses in Washington for the sole use of officials seeking relaxation from their onerous duties protecting America from alien dwarves.”

Trump Approval Rating

June 11-13
Abacus Data
Approve Disapprove
38%          54%

The Table of Contents
• New U.S. Sanctions Unlikely To Derail Nord Stream
• Donald Trump’s niece Mary set to publish explosive book about her family
• Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
• The Encyclopedia of American Loons

New U.S. Sanctions Unlikely To Derail Nord Stream
June 14, 2020
by Viktor Katona –
Oilprice.com

It is difficult to surprise anyone in today’s world with another set of sanction-slapping. A bipartisan group of US senators has expressed its intent to put another spoke in the wheel of Gazprom’s 55 BCm per year Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The new bill would amend the 2019 Protecting Europe’s Energy Security law by extending its force to entities that provide “underwriting services or insurance or reinsurance” relating to the construction of Nord Stream 2 as well as provide “services or facilities for technology upgrades or installation of welding equipment for, or retrofitting or tethering of vessels”. In a nutshell, wary of antagonizing European partners even further, Washington is seeking to implement a strategy of legislative precision strikes. Yet the chances of such sanctions derailing Europe’s prime pipeline-construction project remain pale, as we will see below. The new anti-Nord Stream 2 bill is sponsored among others by Ted Cruz and Jeanne Shaheen, senators who were instrumental in drafting previous legislation against the gas conduit which purportedly threatens “Ukraine, Europe’s energy independence” (Shaheen) and “poses a critical threat to America’s national security” (Cruz). As can be seen from the senators’ comments, the encompassing narrative to buttress the bill’s prospects is a thin line to be walked – were the senators to publicly present the new measures as further attempts to use non-market measures to achieve the objective of higher US LNG exports to Europe, their case could be easily taken to arbitration courts. Yet some of the phrasings involved certainly do insinuate this – why else would a Russian subsea pipeline to Germany (which as of 2020 has no LNG terminal) threaten US’ national security?
The difficulty of maintaining a healthy enough US-German tandem also transpires from the bill’s reported aim to sanction any entity that would “provide services for the testing, inspection or certification necessary for or associated with the operation” of Nord Stream 2. This is a direct jab at the German energy regulator Bnetza as it would be them who provide official approvals for the constructed pipeline. Bnetza has already been in the crosshairs of intra-European decision-making, rejecting Nord Stream’s application to have the pipeline exempt from the EU’s 3rd Energy Directive. This need not be the final decision on the matter (notwithstanding the decision Brussels can still grant a more lenient set of conditions to Nord Stream 2 if both parties manage to find common language) yet has already stirred up too much attention around the regulator.
The new set of US sanctions pit Washington against the European Union, concurrently upending its delicate balancing act vis-à-vis Russia. Ambassador Grenell’s sudden departure and President Trump’s decision to cut the size of US troops in Germany has complicated matters even further. In the meantime, Germany’s Baltic port of Mukran has seen a flurry of activity around the two Russian pipe-laying vessels assumed to complete Nord Stream 2. Akademik Cherskiy, the one which received significantly more media coverage due to its dynamic positioning capability, has moved out of the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka in February 2020 and carried out a prolonged (and oftentimes untraceable) 4-month voyage around Africa all the way to Mukran. It seems that the vessel is currently being retrofitted for the upcoming pipe-laying works and getting loaded with pipes to be laid.
The second vessel, Fortuna, lacks dynamic positioning equipment – a precondition for pipe-laying in Danish territorial waters – but might carry out all the necessary works in the shallow waters of Germany’s Baltic waters. The Danish authorities have also barred pipelaying works in July-August around the Baltic island of Bornholm due to cod spawning season, adding another prohibitive layer to this summer’s construction developments. Since every single vessel associated with Nord Stream 2 is under immediate threat of ending up sanctioned by the US government, the supply vessels required to assist the pipe-laying ones will also be Russian – according to Russian media reports 2 such vessels have already departed from Vladivostok.
Inasmuch as the constant sanctions threats keep on unnerving Gazprom’s management, the Russian gas export monopoly has found a seemingly simple yet effective way to complicate matters further for US senators. As Russian media reports have discerned, Akademik Cherskiy no longer belongs to Gazprom’s shipping subsidiary Gazprom Flot (which had owned it for 4 years, since 2016) – the vessel’s owner is a largely unknown Russia-based property investment fund STIF. What is adding another twist to the story is the fact that it seems almost impossible to understand who owns the investment fund and why it bought the pipelaying vessel. In effect, such a lack of clarity renders it quite difficult for US authorities to sanction STIF – it can hardly allow itself to initiate a lengthy and very risky legal dispute with Gazprom, stabbing in the dark in its pursuit of any Gazprom trace.
Derisking the day-to-day operations of Gazprom Flot was a good enough reason to sell Akademik Cherskiy as the company has already been subjected to sectoral sanctions, meaning that it is forbidden to provide US equipment and technology to the Arctic, offshore and shale projects that the company might be participating in. According to recent reports, the STIF investment fund was co-owned by two Gazprom subsidiaries before April 2020, however, given its private character has decided to conceal its current ownership structure. Theoretically, with its acquisition of Akademik Cherskiy, it might have concurrently switched owners yet there is no way of telling whether this has in fact happened.

Donald Trump’s niece Mary set to publish explosive book about her family
Too Much and Never Enough, due in August, is expected to detail her role as primary source for exposé of the president’s tax affairs
June 15, 2020
by Alison Flood
The Guardian
Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, will publish a “harrowing and salacious” book about the president this August, according to reports.
The Daily Beast revealed on Monday that Mary Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump’s late brother Fred Trump Jr, will release Too Much and Never Enough with Simon & Schuster on 11 August. The timing, a few weeks before this year’s Republican National Convention, means any revelations could be particularly damaging for the president. The book is expected to lay out how she was a primary source for the New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning investigation into Donald Trump’s “dubious tax schemes” during the 1990s and will share “harrowing and salacious” stories about the US president.
It will also showcase conversations between Mary Trump and Donald Trump’s sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, in which Trump Barry shares “intimate and damning thoughts” about her brother, claimed the website.
Mary’s father, Fred Jr, Donald’s brother, died in 1981 from a heart attack after a long struggle with alcoholism. Mary Trump’s book, the report says, will allege that his father, Fred Sr, and Donald “contributed to his death and neglected him at critical stages of his addiction”. The president has said in the past that he regretted having put pressure on his brother to run the family business.
Fred Jr’s children brought a court case contesting Fred Sr’s will in 2000, alleging it had been “procured by fraud and undue influence” on the part of Donald and his siblings.
Mary Trump has rarely spoken publicly, but as the Trump family fought in court over the will of Fred Sr 20 years ago, she told the New York Daily News that “given this family, it would be utterly naive to say it has nothing to do with money. But for both me and my brother, it has much more to do with that our father [Fred Jr] be recognised”.

Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
Wikipedia
Donald Trump has made many false or misleading statements, including thousands during his presidency. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the rate of his falsehoods as unprecedented[1] in politics,[2][3][4] and they have become a distinctive part of both his business and political identity.[5] He has a pattern of making controversial statements and subsequently denying having done so.[6][7] By June 2019 many news organizations had started describing some of Trump’s falsehoods as lies.[8]
Business career
Within years of expanding his father’s property development business into Manhattan in the early 1970s, Trump attracted the attention of The New York Times for his brash and controversial style, with one real estate financier observing in 1976, “His deals are dramatic, but they haven’t come into being. So far, the chief beneficiary of his creativity has been his public image.” Der Scutt, the prominent architect who designed Trump Tower, said of Trump in 1976, “He’s extremely aggressive when he sells, maybe to the point of overselling. Like, he’ll say the convention center is the biggest in the world, when it really isn’t. He’ll exaggerate for the purpose of making a sale.”[9]
The architect Philip Johnson said in 1984 that Trump often lied.[10]
In 2018, journalist Jonathan Greenberg released audio recordings from 1984 in which Trump, posing as his own spokesman John Barron, made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including claiming he owned over 90 percent of his family’s business.[11]
A 1984 GQ profile of Trump quoted him stating he owned the whole block on Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. GQ noted that the two buildings Trump owned in that area were likely less than a sixth of the block.[12]
Alair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York City during the 1980s, and a former publisher of Crain’s New York Business, said “I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized.”[13][14] Leona Helmsley later used this line as her own when she spoke about Trump in her November 1990 interview in Playboy magazine.[15]
His 1987 book Trump: The Art of the Deal stated, “I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”[16]
When the stock market crashed in October 1987, Trump told the press that he had sold all of his stock a month before and taken no losses. But SEC filings showed that he still owned large stakes in some companies. Forbes calculated that Trump had lost $19 million on his Resorts International holdings alone.[13]
Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump stated he had very little debt.[17] Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.[18]
In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering at least some of the $100 million his bank had lent Trump, said “During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction.”[19][13]
David Fahrenthold investigated the long history of Trump’s claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true.[20][21] Following Fahrenthold’s reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a “notice of violation” ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York.[22] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses.[23] Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump’s claimed charitable giving[24] and casting “doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities”.[25]
In 1996, Trump claimed he wagered $1 million on 20-to-1 odds in a Las Vegas heavyweight title boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. The Las Vegas Sun reported that “while everyone is careful not to call Trump a liar,” no one in a position to know about such a sizable wager was aware of it.[26]
A 1998 New York Observer article entitled “Tricky Donald Trump Beats Jerry Nadler in Game of Politics” reported that “Nadler flatly calls Mr. Trump a ‘liar’,” quoting Nadler stating, “Trump got $6 million [in federal money] in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it” by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.[27]
Promoting his Trump University after its formation in 2004, Trump asserted he would handpick all its instructors. Michael Sexton, former president of the venture, stated in a 2012 deposition that Trump selected none of the instructors.[28]
Trump often appeared in New York tabloid newspapers. Recalling her career with New York Post’s Page Six column, Susany Mulcahy told Vanity Fair in 2004, “I wrote about him a certain amount, but I actually would sit back and be amazed at how often people would write about him in a completely gullible way. He was a great character, but he was full of crap 90 percent of the time”. (Trump told the magazine, “I agree with her 100 percent”.)[29][30]
During a 2005 deposition in a defamation lawsuit he initiated about his worth Trump stated, “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings…and that can change rapidly from day to day.”[31]
Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive vice president who worked for Trump from 1978 until 1998, said “he would tell the staff his ridiculous lies, and after a while, no one believed a single word he would say.”[32]
In The Art of the Deal
Main article: Trump: The Art of the Deal
Tony Schwartz is a journalist who ghostwrote Trump: The Art of the Deal.[33] In July 2016, Schwartz was interviewed by Jane Mayer for two articles in The New Yorker.[34][33] In them he described Trump, who was running for president at the time, highly unfavorably, and described how he came to regret writing The Art of the Deal.[34][33][35] When Schwartz wrote The Art of the Deal, he created the phrase “truthful hyperbole” as an “artful euphemism” to describe Trump’s “loose relationship with the truth”.[33] This passage from the book provides the context, written in Trump’s voice: “I play to people’s fantasies…People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and it’s a very effective form of promotion.”[36] He said that Trump “loved the phrase”.[33][37]
Schwartz said that “deceit” is never “innocent”. He added, “‘Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?'”[33] Schwartz repeated his criticism on Good Morning America and Real Time with Bill Maher, saying he “put lipstick on a pig”.[38]
Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Fred Trump began claiming Swedish descent.[39][40][41] The falsehood was repeated by Fred’s son Donald to the press[9][10] and in The Art of the Deal,[42][43][41] where he claimed that his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, “came here from Sweden as a child”.[44] In the same book, Donald also said that his father was born in New Jersey.[33][45] Trump later said, “My father is German. Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany, and so I have a great feeling for Germany.”[46] Trump’s father was born in the Bronx, New York.
2016 presidential campaign
Within six months of Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy, FactCheck.org declared Trump the “King of Whoppers” stating, “In the 12 years of FactCheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong.”[47]
Trump has promoted a number of conspiracy theories that have lacked substance. These have included Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011. Known as “birther” theories, these allege that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.[48][49][50] In 2011, Trump took credit for pushing the White House to release Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate, while raising doubt about its legitimacy,[51] and in 2016 admitted that Obama was a natural-born citizen from Hawaii.[52] He later falsely stated that Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy theories.[52][53][54]
In 2016, Trump suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He also claimed that he lost the popular vote in the 2016 election only because of the “millions” of illegal voters in that election cycle.[55][56]
Trump claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% “isn’t reflective [of reality]…I’ve seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment.” Politifact rated this claim “Pants on Fire”, its rating for the most egregious falsehoods.[57]
Jeremy Adam Smith, writing for the Greater Good Magazine, stated that Trump’s falsehoods may be “blue lies,” which are “told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.” As a result, he posited, Trump’s dishonesty does not cause him to lose the support of his political base, even while it “infuriates and confuses most everyone else.”[58]
In November 2015, Buzzfeed News’ Andrew Kaczynski reported that Trump, despite having claiming to have the best memory in the world, actually has a history of “conveniently forgetting” people or organizations in ways that benefit him. In July 2016, PolitiFact’s Linda Qiu also pointed out that despite Trump’s boast for his memory, he “seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements”. Both Kaczynski and Qiu cited examples of Trump stating he did not know anything about former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke despite past statements showing that he clearly knew who Duke was.[59]
Presidency
Fact-checking Trump
Trump’s statements as president have engaged a host of fact-checkers. Tony Burman wrote: “The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged — resulting in a growing prominence of ‘fact-checkers’ and investigative reporting.”[61] The situation is getting worse, as described by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ashley Parker: “President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren’t true.”[62]
Glenn Kessler said in 2017 that in his job as a fact-checker for The Washington Post there was no comparison between Trump and other politicians. Kessler gave his worst rating to other politicians 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, but gave it to Trump 63 percent to 65 percent of the time.[63] Kessler wrote that Trump was the most fact-challenged politician that he had ever encountered and lamented that “the pace and volume of the president’s misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up.”[64]
The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in December 2018, the “Bottomless Pinocchio”, for falsehoods that have been repeated at least 20 times (so often “that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong”). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified for the category. According to the Washington Post, Trump has repeated some falsehoods so many times that he has effectively engaged in disinformation.[65]
Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact-checkers:
Here’s the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump’s lying is “off the charts”. No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on. Every fact checker — Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact — finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or “pants on fire” false.[66]
At the end of 2018, Kessler provided a run-down summary of Trump’s accelerating rate of false statements during the year:
Trump began 2018 on a similar pace as last year. Through May, he generally averaged about 200 to 250 false claims a month. But his rate suddenly exploded in June, when he topped 500 falsehoods, as he appeared to shift to campaign mode. He uttered almost 500 more in both July and August, almost 600 in September, more than 1,200 in October and almost 900 in November. In December, Trump drifted back to the mid-200s.[1]
Several major fact-checking sites regularly fact-check Trump, including:
PolitiFact,[67] which awarded Trump its “Lie of the Year” in 2015[68] and 2017.
FactCheck.org,[69] which dubbed Trump the “King of Whoppers” in 2015.[70]
The Washington Post, which said on April 29, 2019, that Trump had made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims as president,[71] an average of more than 12 such statements per day.
The Toronto Star, which said that, as of May 2019, Trump had made almost 5,000 false statements since his inauguration.[72]
As late as summer 2018, the news media were debating whether to describe use the word “lie” to describe Trump’s falsehoods. However, by June 2019, many news organizations, including CNN, Star Tribune, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy, had started describing some of Trump’s false statements as lies. The Toronto Sun was one of the first outlets to use the word “lie” to describe Trump’s statements, and continues to do so frequently. Still, some organizations have continued to shy away from the term. Glenn Kessler, author of The Washington Post ‘s “Fact Checker” column, has used the word “lie” only once to describe Trump’s statements, although he has sometimes used other terminology that implies lying.[8]
Credibility polling
According to a September 2018 CNN-SSRS poll, only 32% percent of Americans find Trump honest and trustworthy, the worst read in CNN polling history. The number was 33% on election day, November 8, 2016.[73]
Commentary and analysis
As president, Trump has frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks.[74][64][75][76] Trump uttered “at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days” in office according to The New York Times,[74] and 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the “Fact Checker” political analysis column of The Washington Post.[77] By the Post’s tally, it took Trump 601 days to reach 5,000 false or misleading statements and another 226 days to reach the 10,000 mark.[71] For the seven weeks leading up to the midterm elections, it rose to an average of 30 per day[78] from 4.9 during his first 100 days in office.[79] The Post found that Trump averaged 15 false statements per day during 2018.[1]
The New York Times editorial board has frequently lambasted Trump’s dishonesty. In September 2018, the board called him “a president with no clear relation to the truth”.[80] The following month, the board published an opinion piece titled, “Donald Trump Is Lyin’ Up a Storm”.[81]
In the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Dr. Donnel B. Stern commented on Trump’s falsehoods during his presidency. Stern wrote that “Donald Trump lies so often that some have wondered whether he has poisoned the well […] We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal. He lies as a policy. He lies to get whatever he wants, and he clearly feels entirely justified in doing it…He will say anything to please what gets called ‘his base’ and to inflate his own sense of importance.”[82]
Specific topics
Inaugural crowd
Trump’s presidency began with a series of falsehoods originated by Trump himself. The day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. Then he exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up his claims.[83][84][85][86] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,[87][88][89] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by stating that he merely presented “alternative facts”.[90] Todd responded by saying, “Alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods.”[91]
Election results
Further information: United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote
Trump went on to claim that his electoral college victory was a landslide;[92][93][94] that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had “serious voter fraud”;[95][96][97][98] and that Clinton received 3 million to 5 million illegal votes.[99][100] Trump made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice has twice refuted.[101][102] In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to “treason”, but The Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts “show no evidence of a conspiracy against” Trump.[103][104]
Dismissal of FBI director
On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal BureaofInvestigation, stating that he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorneygeneral Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey.In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentionedthe issue of an FBI investigation into links between Trump associates and Russian officials, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy, while Sessions cited Rosenstein’s reasons.[105][106][107] On May 11, Trump said in a videoed interview: “…regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey…in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”[108][109][110] On May 31, Trump wrote on Twitter: “I never fired James Comey because of Russia!”[103]
Personal lawyer
In 2017 and in the first half of 2018, Trump repeatedly praised his personal attorney Michael Cohen as a “a great lawyer”, “a loyal, wonderful person”, “a good man”, and someone Trump “always liked” and “respected”. In the second half of 2018, with Cohen testifying to federal investigations, Trump attacked Cohen as a “rat”, “a weak person, and not a very smart person”, and described Cohen as “a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work…He represented me very little.”[108][111][112]
Spygate
In May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false[113][114] Spygate conspiracy theory[113][56] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton in winning the 2016 US presidential election.[115][116]
Special Counsel Investigation
In March 2019, Trump asserted that the special counsel investigation is “illegal”; previously in June 2018, Trump argued that “the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!” However, in August 2018, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019.[117][118]
The Mueller Report asserted Trump’s family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of lies from Trump himself (mostly while he was president), whether unintentional, or not to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis.[119]
Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.” However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him” on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction of justice charge against the President. In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said that he “didn’t exonerate” Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department.[120][121][122]
Economy
Through his first 28 months in office, Trump repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.[123]
As of March 2019, Trump’s most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency over 100 times, were: that a U.S. trade deficit would be a “loss” for the country; that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, passed during his term, was the largest tax cut in American history; that the American economy was the strongest ever during his administration; and that the Trump wall was already being built. By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He has also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the United States or other NATO members.[124]
Trump claimed during the campaign that the U.S. real GDP could grow at rate of “5 or even 6” percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 2.9%, the same rate as 2015 under President Obama. Longer-term projections beyond 2019 by the CBO and Federal Reserve are for growth below 2%. President Obama’s advisers explained growth limits as “sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire”.[125]
Trump claimed in October 2017 that he would eliminate the federal debt over 8 years, even though it was $19 trillion at the time.[126] However, the annual deficit (debt addition) in 2018 was nearly $800 billion, about 60% higher than the CBO forecast of $500 billion when Trump took office. The CBO January 2019 forecast for the 2018–2027 debt addition is now 40% higher, at $13.0 trillion rather than $9.4 trillion when Trump was inaugurated.[127] Other forecasts place the debt addition over a decade at $16 trillion, bringing the total to around $35 trillion. Rather than a debt to GDP ratio in 2028 of 89% had Obama’s policies continued, CBO now estimates this figure at 107%, assuming Trump’s tax cuts for individuals are extended past 2025.[128]
Trump claimed in March 2019 that Chinese exporters were bearing the burden of his tariffs. However, studies indicate consumers and purchasers of imports are bearing the cost and that tariffs are essentially a regressive tax. While Trump has argued that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit, it expanded to a record dollar level in 2018.[129]
Trump has sought to present his economic policies as successful in encouraging businesses to invest in new facilities and create jobs. In this effort, he has on several occasions taken credit for business investments that began before he became president.[130][131]
Family separation policy
President Trump has repeatedly and falsely said that he inherited his administration’s family separation policy from Obama, his predecessor. In November 2018, Trump said, “President Obama separated children from families, and all I did was take the same law, and then I softened the law.” In April 2019, Trump said, “President Obama separated children. They had child separation; I was the one that changed it.” In June 2019, Trump said, “President Obama had a separation policy. I didn’t have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I’m the one that put them together…I inherited separation, and I changed the plan.” Trump’s assertion was false because the Obama administration had no policy systematically separating migrant families, while the “zero tolerance” policy was only instituted by Trump’s own administration in April 2018. Politifact quoted immigration experts saying that under the Obama administration families were detained and released together and separations rarely happened.[143][144][145]
Article II and unlimited executive power
In July 2019, during a speech addressing youth at Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, The Washington Post reported that, while criticizing the Mueller investigation, Trump falsely claimed that Article Two of the United States Constitution ensures that “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” The Post clarified that “Article II grants the president ‘executive power.’ It does not indicate the president has total power.”[146]
Hurricane Dorian
President Trump receives an update on Hurricane Dorian on August 29, 2019. This map was later altered to show Dorian impacting Alabama
President Trump displays the altered map in a video published by the White House on September 4, 2019
As Hurricane Dorian approached the Atlantic coast in late August 2019, Trump presented himself as closely monitoring the situation, tweeting extensively about it as The New York Times reported he was “assuming the role of meteorologist in chief.”[147] On September 1, Trump tweeted that Alabama, among other states, “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Dorian.[148] By that time, no weather forecaster was predicting that Dorian would impact Alabama and the eight National Hurricane Center forecast updates over the preceding 24 hours showed Dorian steering well away from Alabama and moving up the Atlantic coast.[149][150] The Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service (NWS) contradicted Trump twenty minutes later, tweeting that Alabama “will NOT see any impacts from Dorian.”[151] After ABC News White House reporter Jonathan Karl reported the correction, Trump tweeted it was “Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter @jonkarl.”[152]
On September 4 in the Oval Office, Trump displayed a modified version of an August 29 diagram by the National Hurricane Center of the projected track of Dorian. The modification was done with a black marker and extended the cone of uncertainty of the hurricane’s possible path into southern Alabama. Modifying official government weather forecasts is illegal in the United States.[153][154][155] A White House official later told The Washington Post that Trump had altered the diagram with a Sharpie marker.[156] Trump said he did not know how the map came to be modified and defended his claims, saying that he had “a better map” with models that “in all cases [showed] Alabama was hit.” Later on September 4, Trump tweeted a map by the South Florida Water Management District dated August 28 showing numerous projected paths of Dorian; Trump falsely asserted “almost all models” showed Dorian approaching Alabama.[157] A note on the map stated it was “superseded” by National Hurricane Center publications and that it was to be discarded if there were any discrepancies.[149][158]
On September 5, after Fox News correspondent John Roberts reported about the story live from the White House, Trump summoned him to the Oval Office. Roberts later characterized Trump as “just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk — even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet.”[159] Late that day, Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor Peter Brown issued a statement asserting Trump had been provided a graphic on September 1 showing tropical storm force winds touching the southeastern corner of Alabama; a White House source told CNN that Trump had personally instructed Brown to issue the statement.[159]
On September 6, at Trump’s direction, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to order acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs to fix the contradiction by Birmingham NWS, and Ross threatened to fire top NOAA officials if he did not.[160][161] NOAA then tweeted a statement by an unnamed spokesman disavowing the Birmingham NWS tweet, asserting “the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama,” adding that the Birmingham tweet “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”[162][163] The president of the NWS Employees Organization responded, “the hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight.”[164] Former senior NOAA executives were also sharply critical.[165] That evening, Trump tweeted a video of a CNN hurricane forecast from the Wednesday before his Sunday tweet in which the forecaster mentioned Alabama could be affected by Dorian — with the video altered to show “Alabama” being repeated several times; the video ended with a CNN logo careening off a road and bursting into flames.[166] Trump continued to insist he was correct through September 7,[167] asserting “The Fake News Media was fixated” on the matter and tweeting forecast maps from at least two days before his original Sunday tweet, as the media dubbed the episode “Sharpiegate.”[168][169][170] Numerous commentators expressed bafflement that Trump chose to continue insisting he was correct about what might otherwise have passed as a relatively minor gaffe.[171][172][173][174][175][176]
On September 9, NWS director Louis Uccellini said that the Birmingham NWS had not tweeted in response to Trump’s tweet, but rather in response to numerous phone calls and social media contacts their office had received in response to Trump’s tweet. “Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments started coming to their office, did they learn the sources of this information,” he said.[177]
References
1. Kessler, Glenn (December 30, 2018). “A year of unprecedented deception: Trump averaged 15 false claims a day in 2018”. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
2. McGranahan, Carole (May 2017). “An anthropology of lying: Trump and the political sociality of moral outrage”. American Ethnologist. 44 (2): 243–248. doi:10.1111/amet.12475.
3. Baker, Peter (March 17, 2018). “Trump and the Truth: A President Tests His Own Credibility”. The New York Times. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
4. Dale, Daniel (October 22, 2018). “Donald Trump’s strategy as midterms approach: lies and fear-mongering”. Toronto Star. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
5. Glasser, Susan B. (August 3, 2018). “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose”. The New Yorker.
6.Qiu, Linda. “17 times Donald Trump said one thing and then denied it”. PolitiFact. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
7. Blake, Aaron (July 4, 2017). “Plausible deniability: The thing President Trump can’t stop abusing”. Washington Post. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
8. Farhi, Paul (June 5, 2019). “Lies? The news media is starting to describe Trump’s ‘falsehoods’ that way”. The Washington Post.
9.Jump up to: a b Klemesrud, Judy (November 1, 1976). “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings”. The New York Times. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
10. Geist, William E. (April 8, 1984). “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump”. The New York Times. Retrieved October 28, 2018.
11. Greenberg, Jonathan (April 20, 2018). “Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400. Here are the tapes”. The Washington Post.
12. Carter, Graydon (May 1, 1984). “The Secret to Donald Trump’s Success”. GQ. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
13 Malanga, Steven (May 12, 2016). “My Pen Pal, Donald Trump Or, the art of the squeal”. City Journal. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
14. David, Greg (n.d.). “2018 Hall of Fame”. Crain’s New York Business. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
15.”It’s Leona’s Turn in Playboy–Donald Is a ‘Skunk'”. Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. September 21, 1990. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
16. Swanson, Ana (February 29, 2016). “The myth and the reality of Donald Trump’s business empire”. The Washington Post.
17. Plaskin, Glenn (March 12, 1989). “Trump: “The People’s Billionaire””. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved October 28, 2018.
18. Flitter, Emily (July 17, 2016). “Art of the spin: Trump bankers question his portrayal of financial comeback”. Reuters. Retrieved October 28, 2018.
19. Malanga, Steven (April 6, 2011). “Donald Trump: The Art of the Tease”. Real Clear Markets. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
20. Fahrenthold, David A. (October 4, 2016). “Trump’s co-author on ‘The Art of the Deal’ donates $55,000 royalty check to charity”. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
21.Gross, Terry; Fahrenthold, David (September 28, 2016). “Journalist Says Trump Foundation May Have Engaged In ‘Self-Dealing'”. NPR. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
22.Eder, Steve (October 3, 2016). “State Attorney General Orders Trump Foundation to Cease Raising Money in New York”. The New York Times. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
23. Fahrenthold, David A. (November 22, 2016). “Trump Foundation admits to violating ban on ‘self-dealing,’ new filing to IRS shows”. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2018.
24. Farhi, Paul (April 10, 2017). “Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold wins Pulitzer Prize for dogged reporting of Trump’s philanthropy”. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 11, 2017.
25. “2017 Pulitzer Prize: National Reporting”. Pulitzer Prize. April 10, 2017. Retrieved April 10, 2017.
26. “No trace of Trump $20 mil. win”. Las Vegas Sun. December 4, 1996. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
27.Sargent, Greg (June 8, 1998). “Tricky Donald Trump Beats Jerry Nadler in Game of Politics”. The New York Observer. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
28.Gore, D’Angelo (March 1, 2016). “Trump’s Defense of His ‘University'”. FactCheck.org. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
29.DiGiacomo, Frank (December 2004). “The Gossip Behind the Gossip”. Vanity Fair. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
30. Mulcahy, Susan (May–June 2016). “Confessions of a Trump Tabloid Scribe”. Politico Magazine. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
31. Singer, Mark (July 5, 2016). “Getting Sued by Trump Has Its Upsides”. GQ. Retrieved October 28, 2018.
32.Cook, Nancy. “The short arc of a Sharpie captures the long arc of Trump”. POLITICO.
33. Mayer, Jane (July 25, 2016). “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All”. The New Yorker. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
34. Mayer, Jane (July 20, 2016). “Donald Trump Threatens the Ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal””. The New Yorker. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
35.”‘Art Of The Deal’ Ghostwriter On Why Trump Should Not Be President”. NPR. July 21, 2016. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
36.Croucher, Shane (February 24, 2017). “Is Donald Trump stupid or a liar?”. International Business Times. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
37.Page, Clarence (January 24, 2017). “Column: ‘Alternative facts’ play to Americans’ fantasies”. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
38.Winsor, Morgan (July 18, 2016). “Tony Schwartz, Co-Author of Donald Trump’s ‘The Art of the Deal,’ Says Trump Presidency Would Be ‘Terrifying'”. ABC News. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
39.Blair, Gwenda (December 4, 2001). The Trumps : three generations of builders and a president (First Simon and Schuster paperback edition, November 2015 ed.). New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, Inc. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-7432-1079-9. (Republication of The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire (Simon and Schuster, 2000, ISBN 978-0-684-80849-9))
40.Viser, Matt (July 16, 2016). “Donald Trump’s drive to surpass his father’s success”. The Boston Globe. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
41.Horowitz, Jason (August 22, 2016). “For Donald Trump’s Family, an Immigrant’s Tale With 2 Beginnings”. The New York Times. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
42. Hansler, Jennifer (November 28, 2017). “Trump’s family denied German heritage for years”. CNN.
43.Carlström, Vilhelm (November 28, 2017). “Donald Trump claimed he was of Swedish ancestry – but it’s a lie”. Business Insider.
44.Daly, Michael (March 24, 2016). “Donald Trump Even Lies About Being Swedish (He’s Actually German)”. The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 24, 2017.
45.Barrett, Wayne (August 23, 2016). The Greatest Show on Earth (First Regan Arts. paperback edition, August 2016 ed.). New York, N.Y.: Regan Arts. p. 33. ISBN 978-1682450-79-6. (Republication of Trump: The Deals and the Downfall (Harper Collins, 1992, ISBN 0-06-016704-1))
46.Hayes, Christal (April 2, 2019). “Trump, again, falsely says his father is from Germany. Fred Trump was born in New York”. USA Today.
47.”The ‘King of Whoppers’: Donald Trump”. FactCheck.org. December 21, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
48. Gass, Nick (January 12, 2012). “Trump: I’m still a birther”. Politico. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
49.Keneally, Meghan (September 18, 2015). “Trump’s History of Raising Birther Questions About Obama”. ABC News. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
50. Epps, Garrett (February 26, 2016). “Trump’s Birther Libel”. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
51. Madison, Lucy (April 27, 2011). “Trump takes credit for Obama birth certificate release, but wonders ‘is it real?'”. CBS News. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
52. a b Haberman, Maggie; Rappeport, Alan (September 16, 2016). “Trump Drops False ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New One: Clinton Started It”. The New York Times.
53.Farley, Robert (September 16, 2016). “Trump on Birtherism: Wrong, and Wrong”. FactCheck.org. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
54.Greenberg, Jon; Qiu, Linda (September 16, 2016). “Trump’s False claim Clinton started Obama birther talk”. PolitiFact. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
55. Evans, Greg (May 29, 2018). “8 of the biggest conspiracy theories that Trump has shared”. The Independent. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
56. a b Blake, Aaron (May 23, 2018). “The No. 1 reason Trump’s ‘spygate’ conspiracy theory doesn’t make sense”. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
57.”Donald Trump says the unemployment rate may be 42 percent”. @politifact.
58. Smith, Jeremy. “Can the Science of Lying Explain Trump’s Support?”. Greater Good Magazine. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
59.Kaczynski, Andrew (November 27, 2015). “Donald Trump’s Convenient Memory Lapses”. Buzzfeed News. Retrieved July 31, 2019.
60. Qiu, Linda (July 6, 2016). “17 times Donald Trump said one thing and then denied it”. PolitiFact. Retrieved July 31, 2019.
61.Burman, Tony (February 11, 2017). “With Trump, the media faces a yuuge challenge”. Toronto Star. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
62. Parker, Ashley (June 19, 2018). “President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren’t true”. The Washington Post. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
63. Milbank, Dana (August 1, 2016). “The facts behind Donald Trump’s many falsehoods”. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
64. a b Kessler, Glenn; Lee, Michelle Ye Hee (May 1, 2017). “President Trump’s first 100 days: The fact check tally”. The Washington Post.
65. Kessler, Glenn (December 10, 2018). “Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again”. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 16, 2019.
66. Prentice, Robert (February 10, 2017). “Being a liar doesn’t mean you can’t be a good president, but this is crazy”. The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
67.”Donald Trump’s file”. PolitiFact. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
68.Holan, Angie Drobnic; Qiu, Linda (December 21, 2015). “2015 Lie of the Year: Donald Trump’s campaign misstatements”. PolitiFact. Retrieved February 23, 2017.
69.”Donald Trump archive”. FactCheck.org. n.d. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
70.Jackson, Brooks (April 29, 2017). “100 Days of Whoppers”. FactCheck.org. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
71. Kessler, Glenn; Rizzo, Salvador; Kelly, Meg (April 29, 2019). “President Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims”. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 29, 2019.
72. Dale, Daniel. “Every false claim Donald Trump has made as president”. The Toronto Star. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
73.Cillizza, Chris (September 11, 2018). “People don’t think Donald Trump is honest or trustworthy. And they never really have”. CNN. Retrieved December 26, 2018.
74. Qiu, Linda (April 29, 2017). “Fact-Checking President Trump Through His First 100 Days”. The New York Times.
75.Qiu, Linda (June 22, 2017). “In One Rally, 12 Inaccurate Claims From Trump”. The New York Times.
76.Dale, Daniel (July 14, 2018). “Trump has said 1,340,330 words as president. They’re getting more dishonest, a Star study shows”. Toronto Star. Retrieved July 14, 2018.
77.Lee, Michelle Ye Hee; Kessler, Glenn; Kelly, Meg (October 10, 2017). “President Trump has made 1,318 false or misleading claims over 263 days”. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
78.Kessler, Glenn; Rizzo, Salvador; Kelly, Meg (November 2, 2018). “President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days”. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
79. Kessler, Glenn; Rizzo, Salvador; Kelly, Meg (September 13, 2018). “President Trump has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims”. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
80. The Editorial Board (September 7, 2018). “Confirmed: Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted”. The New York Times. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
81. The Editorial Board (October 22, 2018). “Donald Trump Is Lyin’ Up a Storm”. The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
82. Stern, Donnel (May 9, 2019). “Constructivism in the Age of Trump: Truth, Lies, and Knowing the Difference”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 29 (2): 189–196. doi:10.1080/10481885.2019.1587996.
83. Qiu, Linda (January 21, 2017). “Donald Trump had biggest inaugural crowd ever? Metrics don’t show it”. PolitiFact. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
March 30, 2018.
85. Robertson, Lori; Farley, Robert (January 23, 2017). “The Facts on Crowd Size”. FactCheck.org. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
86. Rein, Lisa (March 6, 2017). “Here are the photos that show Obama’s inauguration crowd was bigger than Trump’s”. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
87. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld; Rosenberg, Matthew (January 21, 2017). “With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift”. The New York Times. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
88.Makarechi, Kia (January 2, 2014). “Trump Spokesman Sean Spicer’s Lecture on Media Accuracy Is Peppered With Lies”. Vanity Fair. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
89.Kessler, Glenn (January 22, 2017). “Spicer earns Four Pinocchios for false claims on inauguration crowd size”. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
90.Jaffe, Alexandra (January 22, 2017). “Kellyanne Conway: WH Spokesman Gave ‘Alternative Facts’ on Inauguration Crowd”. NBC News. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
91 Blake, Aaron (January 22, 2017). “Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump’s team has ‘alternative facts.’ Which pretty much says it all”. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2018.
92.Jacobson, Louis (December 11, 2016). “Trump’s electoral college victory not a ‘massive landslide'”. PolitiFact. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
93.Farley, Robert (November 29, 2016). “Trump Landslide? Nope”. FactCheck.org. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
94.Seipel, Arnie (December 11, 2016). “Trump Falsely Claims A ‘Massive Landslide Victory'”. NPR. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
95.Gorman, Sean (November 29, 2016). “Pants on Fire to Trump’s claim of Virginia voter fraud”. PolitiFact. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
96.Nilsen, Ella (November 28, 2016). “Trump claims ‘serious voter fraud’ in New Hampshire”. PolitiFact. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
97.Nichols, Chris (November 28, 2016). “Pants On Fire for Trump’s claim about California voter fraud”. PolitiFact. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
98.Smith, Allan (November 28, 2016). “States where Trump claims ‘serious voter fraud’ took place deny ‘unfounded’ allegation”. Business Insider. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
99. Jacobson, Louis (November 28, 2016). “Donald Trump’s Pants on Fire claim that millions of illegal votes cost him popular vote victory”. PolitiFact. Retrieved March 30, 2018
100. “Trump Claims Without Evidence that 3 to 5 Million Voted Illegally, Vows Investigation”. Snopes.com. January 25, 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
101. Walsh, Deirdre. “Justice Department: No evidence Trump Tower was wiretapped”. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
102. “Trump Admin Says There is No Evidence Obama Wiretapped Trump”. lawandcrime.com. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
103. Boot, Max (June 7, 2018). “Trump just keeps on lying — because it works”. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
104. Wilber, Del Quentin (February 2, 2018). “Inside the FBI Life of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as Told in Their Text Messages”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
105. “FBI Director James B. Comey’s termination: Letters from the White House, Attorney General”. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
106.Gambacorta, David. “Rod Rosenstein: The one man standing in Trump’s way is the president’s polar opposite”. philly.com. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
107. Blake, Aaron. “9 times the Trump team denied something — and then confirmed it”. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
108. Cohen, Marshall; Fossum, Sam; Steck, Em; Yellin, Tal. “How Team Trump keeps changing its story in the Russia investigation”. CNN. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
109. Graham, David. “Trump: ‘Regardless of Recommendation, I Was Going to Fire Comey'”. The Atlantic. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
110. Shabad, Rebecca. “Trump says he planned to fire James Comey regardless of DOJ recommendation”. CBS News. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
111. Blake, Aaron. “Trump’s fanciful, falsehood-filled AP interview, annotated”. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
112.Boyer, Dave. “Trump: Cohen a ‘liar’ and ‘weak person,’ asserts he could do business as a candidate”. The Washington Times. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
113.Jump up to: a b Davis, Julie Hirschfeld; Haberman, Maggie (May 28, 2018). “With ‘Spygate,’ Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Theories to Erode Trust”. The New York Times. Retrieved May 29, 2018.
114. Bump, Philip (May 23, 2018). “There is no evidence for ‘Spygate’ — but there is a reason Trump invented it”. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
115. Beauchamp, Zack (May 25, 2018). “”Spygate,” the false allegation that the FBI had a spy in the Trump campaign, explained”. Vox. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
116. Tatum, Sophie (May 23, 2018). “Carter Page: I ‘never found anything unusual’ in conversations with FBI source”. CNN. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
117. Lybrand, Holmes; Cohen, Marshall. “Fact-check: Trump claims Mueller investigation ‘illegal,’ ignoring multiple court rulings”. CNN.
118. Dukakis, Ali. “Appeals court says special counsel Robert Mueller ‘properly appointed’; orders ex-Stone aide to testify”. ABC News. Retrieved March 23, 2019.
Polantz, Katelyn; Cohen, Marshall (April 30, 2019). “The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods”. CNN.com. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
120. Hernandez, Laura. “Trump sees a ‘complete and total exoneration'”. Newsday. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
121. Smith, Allan. “Justice Department’s findings a ‘complete and total exoneration,’ Trump responds”. NBC News. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
122. Day, Chad (May 2, 2019). “Key takeaways from AG Barr’s testimony, Mueller’s letter”. Associated Press. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
123. Boak, Josh; Rugaber, Christopher (June 4, 2018). “AP fact check: Trump says economy best ‘EVER.’ It’s not”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Boak, Josh; Rugaber, Christopher (July 27, 2018). “AP fact check: Trump falsely claims historic turnaround”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Yen, Hope; Rugaber, Christopher (August 12, 2018). “AP fact check: Trump’s economic fiction: ‘record’ GDP, jobs”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Rugaber, Christopher (August 6, 2018). “AP fact check: Trump falsely claims economy, jobs best ever”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Woodward, Calvin; Yen, Hope; Rugaber, Christopher (February 9, 2019). “AP fact check: Trump swipes progress from Obama era”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Rugaber, Christopher; Yen, Hope (April 23, 2019). “AP fact check: Trump’s mythical view of presidents past”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Yen, Hope; Woodward, Calvin (May 5, 2019). “AP fact check: Trump, Putin on ‘no collusion’; economy myths”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
Yen, Hope; Woodward, Calvin (May 25, 2019). “AP fact check: Trump and a tale of 2 sheets of paper”. AP News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
124.Kessler, Glenn; Fox, Joe. “The false claims that Trump keeps repeating”. The Washington Post. Retrieved September 10, 2019. “updated 5 August 2019”
125. “Trump and GOP promised economic growth much better than Obama’s. That’s not what happened”, CNBC, February 28, 2019]
126.”Eliminate the federal debt in 8 years”, Politifact, October 20, 2017
127.”Budget and Economic Outlook 2019 to 2029″, CBO, January 28, 2019
128.Rattner, Steven (December 31, 2018). “2018 The Year in Charts”. The New York Times.
129.Lynch, David (March 6, 2019). “Trump promised to shrink the U.S. trade deficit. Instead, it exploded to a record level”. The Washington Post – via Chicago Tribune.
130.Mack, David (March 30, 2017). “Trump keeps taking credit for deals struck while Obama was president”. CNBC.
131. Dale, Daniel. “Fact check: Trump takes credit for another factory approved under Obama”. CNN.
132. “Real GDP”, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
133.”Total Nonfarm Payrolls”, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
134.”Unemployment Rate U3″, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
135.”CPI All”, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
136.”Real Median HH Income”, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
137.”Nominal and Real Wage Growth”, FRED, retrieved April 16, 2019
138.Mortgage Rate”, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
139.”SP500″, FRED, retrieved April 13, 2019
140.Historical Budget Data”, CBO, retrieved April 13, 2019
141.”The National Health Interview Survey Early Release Program”, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, September 2018
142.”Trade Deficit”, FRED, retrieved May 5, 2019
143.Flaherty, Anne (November 2, 2018). “Trump falsely blames Obama for family separations at border”. ABC News. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
144. Montoya-Galvez, Camilo. “In misleading claim, Trump accuses Obama of separating migrant children”. CBS News. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
145. Valverde, Miriam (July 1, 2019). “Donald Trump, again, falsely says Obama had family separation policy”. Politifact. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
146. Brice-Saddler, Michael (July 23, 2019). “While bemoaning Mueller probe, Trump falsely says the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever I want'”. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
147. Rogers, Katie (September 2, 2019). “President Trump, Weatherman: Dorian Updates and at Least 122 Tweets” – via NYTimes.com.
148. @realDonaldTrump (September 1, 2019). “In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5. BE CAREFUL! GOD BLESS EVERYONE!” (Tweet). Retrieved September 8, 2019 – via Twitter.
149 Embury-Dennis, Tom (September 5, 2019). “Trump forced to deny personally doctoring hurricane map after sharpie spotted on his desk”. The Independent. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
150. “DORIAN Graphics Archive: 5-day Forecast Track and Watch/Warning Graphic”. www.nhc.noaa.gov.
151.Wu, Nicholas. “National Weather Service appears to correct Trump on Hurricane Dorian hitting Alabama”. USA TODAY. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
152. Gstalter, Morgan (September 4, 2019). “Kentucky pastor says he’s ‘victim of a drive-by tweet’ after Trump mistakenly goes after him”. TheHill.
153.”Why does Trump’s hurricane map look different than others?”. NBC News. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
154. Smith, David (September 4, 2019). “Trump shows fake hurricane map in apparent bid to validate incorrect tweet”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved September 5, 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
155. Cappucci, Matthew; Freedman, Andrew (September 4, 2019). “President Trump showed a doctored hurricane chart. Was it to cover up for ‘Alabama’ Twitter flub?”. The Washington Post. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
156. CNN, Veronica Stracqualursi. “Washington Post: Trump was the one who altered Dorian trajectory map with Sharpie”. CNN.
157. Trump, Donald J. (September 4, 2019). “This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages. As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!pic.twitter.com/0uCT0Qvyo6”.
158. Naylor, Brian (September 4, 2019). “Trump Displays Altered Map Of Hurricane Dorian’s Path To Include Alabama”. NPR. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
159. a b Correspondent, Jake Tapper, Anchor and Chief Washington. “Trump called Fox News correspondent into Oval Office to argue he wasn’t wrong about Alabama”. CNN.
160.”President Trump pushed staff to deal with NOAA tweet that contradicted his inaccurate Alabama hurricane claim”. Washington Post. September 11, 2019.
161. Baker, Peter; Friedman, Lisa; Flavelle, Christopher (September 11, 2019). “White House Pressed Agency to Repudiate Weather Forecasters Who Contradicted Trump”. NYTimes.com.
162. Flavelle, Christopher; Friedman, Lisa; Baker, Peter (September 9, 2019). “Commerce Chief Threatened Firings at NOAA After Trump’s Dorian Tweets, Sources Say” – via NYTimes.com.
163.CNN, Kyle Feldscher. “NOAA slams weather service tweet that refuted Trump’s Alabama claim”. CNN.
164. “NOAA backs up Trump’s claim that Alabama could be affected by hurricane”. www.cbsnews.com.
165.”NOAA draws backlash after disavowing Weather Service tweet that refuted Trump | TheHill”.
166. Trump, Donald J. (September 6, 2019). “pic.twitter.com/J3aTzBG7ao”.
167. “Trump Attacks Peter Baker as He Drags False Hurricane Forecast Story Into Day Seven”. September 7, 2019.
168. Trump, Donald J. (September 6, 2019). “The Fake News Media was fixated on the fact that I properly said, at the beginnings of Hurricane Dorian, that in addition to Florida & other states, Alabama may also be grazed or hit. They went Crazy, hoping against hope that I made a mistake (which I didn’t). Check out maps…”
169. Trump, Donald J. (September 5, 2019). “Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it!pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p”.
170. “Fox News’ John Roberts Breaks Down Trump’s Sharpiegate”. September 5, 2019.
171. Graham, David A. (September 5, 2019). “Trump’s Most Pointless Lie”. The Atlantic.
172. “Shepard Smith Destroys Trump’s Fake Sharpie Map By Listing Off His Biggest Whoppers”. Mediaite. September 5, 2019.
173. Stieb, Matt (September 5, 2019). “Trump Insists Sharpie-Doctored Map Shows Alabama Was in Hurricane’s Path”. Intelligencer.
174.”The Sharpie is mightier: Trump mocked after that map of Dorian’s path”. NBC News.
175. “Opinion | Trump isn’t even good at lying anymore”. Washington Post.
176. “‘Mr. President, you’re going to weather jail’: Trump roasted for altered Hurricane Dorian map”. Washington Post.
177. “National Weather Service chief: Forecasters did the right thing in contradicting Trump’s Dorian claim | TheHill”.

Trump is not an honest man by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. He has a long record of bankruptcies, business failures, very dubious business practices and extraordinarily negative behavior to staff and other employees. To catalogue the full sweep of a flood of patently dishonest business allegations against Donald Trump would require thousands of words and lump together the trivial, the blatently criminal with the truly scandalous.
Certainly, the psychological personal profile of Donald Trump could hardly be better tailored to being easily turned by a hostile intelligence agency.
The concept of Trump taking bribes from the Russians (or the PRC) is completely understandable if one applies the concept of Occam’s Razor to the tumult and disruption he is deliberately causing both domestically and in foreign areas.
Russian intelligence agencies are known to have highly compromising and often bizarre sexual material on him going back more than 30 years and they have used Trump and his elaborate network of business entites as a funnel for laundering dirty money from the Russian mafia and from post-Soviet oligarchs. The Russians are well-known to have more than enough compromising material on Trump to bend him to their will.
Trump has constantly been engaged in bribings and manipulations and has done this through second parties such as Cohen his former lawyer or Manafort, his recently convicted campaign manager, during the election.
Following Mr.Trump’s bankruptcies in the 1990s he borrowed very large sums of operating capital from Russian sources. He also obtained large loans from the Deutsche Bank (over 640 million dollars)
Other big banks, domestic and foreign, have long refused to lend to him, coining the term “the Donald risk” to refer to his repeated bankruptcies and failures to repay loans. However, Deutsche Bank, whose real-estate division continued to lend him hundreds of millions of dollars to finance his projects, seemed to have a greater risk appetite. There is a solid connection and on-going business between this bank and two Russian-based banks.
The remarkably troubled recent history of Deutsche Bank, its past money-laundering woes — and the bank’s striking relationship with Trump — became the subject of investigation by the German State Attorney’s office. The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.
•Deutsche Bank’s private wealth unit loaned Trump $48 million — after he had defaulted on his $640 million loan and the bank’s commercial unit didn’t want to lend him any further funds — so that Trump could pay back another unit of Deutsche Bank.
•Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company $125 million as part of the overall $150 million purchase of the ailing Doral golf resort in Miami in 2012. The loans’ primary collateral was land and buildings that he paid only $105 million for, county land records show. The apparent favorable terms raised questions about whether the bank’s loan was unusually risky.
•To widespread alarm, and at least one protest that Trump would not be able to pay his lease obligations, Deutsche Bank’s private wealth group loaned the Trump Organization an additional $175 million to renovate the Old Post Office Building in Washington and turn it into a luxury hotel.
Like Trump, Deutsche Bank has been scrutinized for its dealings in Russia. The bank paid more than $600 million to regulators in 2017 and agreed to a consent order that cited “serious compliance deficiencies” that “spanned Deutsche Bank’s global empire.” The case focused on “mirror trades,” which Deutsche Bank facilitated between 2011 and 2015. The trades were sham transactions whose sole purpose appeared to be to illicitly convert rubles into pounds and dollars — some $10 billion worth.
The bank was “laundering money for wealthy Russians and people connected to Putin and the Kremlin in a variety of ways for almost the exact time period that they were doing business with Donald Trump,” “And all of that money through Deutsche Bank was being channeled through the same exact legal entity in the U.S. that was handling the Donald Trump relationship in the U.S. And so there are a lot of coincidences here.”
It wasn’t just Donald Trump who maintained a warm relationship with Deutsche. The German bank looked after his entire family. Jared Kushner, Ivanka, and Kushner’s mother Seryl Stadtmauer were all Deutsche clients.
The large German financial conglomerate Deutsche Bank, later to become one of Donald Trump’s favored institutions, became entangled with Russia after the bank bought boutique investment bank UFG in order to gain entry into Moscow’s financial markets. UFG’s chairman, Charles Ryan, was an American banker; his partner was Boris Fyodorov, formerly Russia’s Finance Minister in the Yeltsin administration. Deutsche’s future co-CEO, Anshu Jain, was the one who wants Deutsche to become more involved with Russia. Other investment banks soon found Deutsche’s business practices suspicious. Christopher Barter, at the time the CEO of Goldman Sachs Moscow, said later: “They were doing some very curious things. Nobody could make sense of their business. We found the nature and concentration of their business with VTB (Vneshtorgbank) quite galling. Nobody else could touch VTB.” VTB was known to be deeply connected to Russian intelligence, the FSB.
An issue was a very large sum of money that Trump borrowed from the German bank in 2005 to fund the construction of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. Trump had personally guaranteed to repay the $US640 million ($828.7 million) debt.
Since then, a global financial crash had arrived. Trump had defaulted on payment, with $US330 million still outstanding. In late November 2008, Deutsche was seeking an immediate $US40 million from the tycoon, plus interest, legal fees and costs.
In 2010 Trump settled his feud with Deutsche. This was done, extraordinarily, by borrowing more money from … Deutsche Bank.
1,300 Trump condominiums have been sold to Russian-connected buyers. Even a cheap Trump condo costs over a million dollars, so there over 1,300 condos that meet all the criteria for what is normally called money laundering. Russian intelligence is using Trump real estate to launder money
In 2008 his son, Donald Trump Jr., said that Russia was an important source of money for the Trump businesses.
Trump and his entourage have made a significant number of trips to Russia in the past (a list of these along with Russian personages he was in contact with can easily be found on Google), seeking financing and permission to build luxury hotels in that country
Russian intelligence owns Wikileaks entirely and released the damning, and authentic, ‘Podesta papers’ concurrent with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in coordinated agreement with the Trump people. This did serious damage to her campaign and was a major contributory factor to her narrow defeat and Trump’s election to the presidency.
Trump’s actions, as President, are deliberate efforts to alienate both the putative allies of the US such as Germany, France, and Canada and, to a lesser degree, Mexico. Also, the tariffs suggested by Trump against China would result in retaliation by that country and many retail outlets in the United States would be forced to close because they would be unable to purchase Chinese-made goods, the bulk of their stock.
Trump has deliberately launched pointless, and destructive, attacks against Mexican and Muslim immigrants, as well as Canadian, Chinese and German imports. All this has done is to create a highly negative image of his persona primarily and secondarily, the global image of the United States. This is only to the benefit of Putin’s Russia, not the United States.
Trump’s tariffs, and threats of tariffs, have engendered counter-tariffs that will, when implemented, create serious economic problems for American businessmen and, eventually, the American public.
Trump’s politically foolish but calculated support of the Israeli far right has done, and is doing, serious damage to the US image in the Middle East. It should be noted that Russian influence in the Shiite areas of the Middle East, is growing. Also note that Iran, and parts of Iraq, both Shiite, have extensive oil reserves and that Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state, once America’s primary source of badly-need oil, is running dry. Further, his aggressive support of Israel is resulting in increasing antisemitism in the United States.
The Middle East areas where Russia now has growing influence, have oil and if Russia sets itself up as major oil merchandising source, this will give them tremendous economic leverage vis a vis the United States which is the world’s largest consumer of oil and its by-products.
By alienating America’s allies and disrupting that country’s social structure, Trump benefits only Russia and its interests.
When he is caught at this, and it is common knowledge that the FBI was deeply interested in his Russian connections long before he ran for President, either the American public will have to deal with another Dallas or Trump will suffer a fatal heart attack. Vice-President Pence, a Christian fanatic, would then have to be told to mind his manners or suffer similar terminal problems.
Trump is very well aware of the ongoing and growing official investigation into his denied but completely genuine Russian connections and is certainly also well aware of what they can find, and probably have already uncovered, so he initially fired the head of the FBI and even now, according to a very reliable source, is determined to replace the FBI with the cooperative CIA (their former head, Pompeo, is now Secretary of State) as the sole foreign and domestic intelligence agency. He, and his Russian intelligence handlers, want to nip any FBI revelations in the bud so that Trump can continue on his course of castrating the United States as a global power to the benefit of Putin’s Russia.
There was a full page ad that he took out in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post in 1988, putting forth foreign policy points that could have been dictated by Vladimir Putin. It was an assault against NATO, and the European Union, both anathema to Russia
In 2015, Western European intelligence agencies in France and Germany began picking up solid evidence of communications between the Russian government and people in Donald Trump’s orbit. In April 2016, one of the Baltic States shared with then–CIA director John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
During the Soviet era, Russian intelligence cast a wide net to gain leverage over influential figures abroad. (The practice continues to this day.) The Russians would lure or entrap not only prominent politicians and cultural leaders, but also people whom they saw as having the potential for gaining prominence in the future. In 1986, Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin met Trump in New York, flattered him with praise for his building exploits, and invited him to discuss a building in Moscow. Trump visited Moscow in July 1987. He stayed at the National Hotel, in the Lenin Suite, which certainly was known to be bugged
Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the New York cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the Russian Mafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counter parties, and if the people he burned (or any journalists) got in his way, he bullied them with threats. He also used LLCs which he created for the purpose of swindling firm who, for example, laid new carpet in one of his hotels. The vendor billed the LLC which promptly went bankrupt. This has been a favorite gambit of Trump.
Trump continually acts like a man with a great deal to hide: declining to testify to anything under oath, dangling Presidential pardons to keep potential witnesses and former employees from incriminating him, publicly chastising his attorney general for not quashing the whole Russian investigation, and endorsing Russia’s claims that it had nothing to do with the election. (“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” he tweeted last month, contradicting the conclusion of every U.S. intelligence and counter-intelligence agency.) Trump’s behavior toward Russia looks exactly like that of an accessory after the fact.
When, and not if, it becomes public knowledge that the President of the US is an agent of a foreign power, it would be the worst scandal in American history, far surpassing Tea Pot Dome or Watergate.
In conclusion, it is clearly obvious that President Trump was jobbed into his office with the full cooperation of Russian intelligence and that he is currently engaged in efforts to carry out their political global programs which, if allowed to continue, will wreak economic and political havoc on the American government, business community and public.
And consider that the United States has been harassing Vladimir Putin’s Russia economically and causing considerable problems for that country. Mr. Putin’s reactive countermeasures aganst the United States are certainly in response to these actions and in the long view, far more effective than sanctions and hysterical threats.

The Encyclopedia of American Loons

Sam Rohrer

Sam Rohrer is the president of the Pennsylvania Pastors’ Network, a branch of Let Freedom Ring, Inc., and former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (128th District, 1993–2010). Rohrer is an alumnus of Bob Jones University, South Carolina’s attempt to out-madrassa the Taliban, and it shows. Indeed, Rohrer was awarded the 2013 “Alumnus of the Year” at the annual Bob Jones University Bible Conference, which he probably richly deserved.
Rohrer is the kind of person who tries to argue that a literal reading of the Bible reveals that gun rights come directly from God, and that Jesus’ teachings on non-violence should not be taken literally; it’s apparently the only part of the Bible that shouldn’t. Meanwhile, gun control is part of an Agenda 21 depopulation plot that the government – at least Obama’s government – tried to set in motion. Indeed, Rohrer is heavily into Agenda 21 conspiracies, and thinks that the nonbinding framework for sustainable development “is a control of our property, it’s a control of our legal system to the local level” (the hows matter less than the grand, paranoid narrative, apparently).
It is also a sin for the government to be compassionate, says Sam Rohrer.
Politically, Rohrer is a full-blown theocrat who claims that “God’s law must always reign supreme” over man’s law. “No court has the authority to overturn what God says and what God defines to be a matter of marriage in this case, so that’s the clearest example where man’s law counters what God has said is what something ought to be.” Purely for political reasons, he also claims to love the Constitution, of course. To back up his claims, Rohrer asserts that if you don’t do as Rohrer thinks God says (i.e. that Rohrer says) that you should do, then the nation will fall under God’s judgment, in which case “you go nowhere but down.” Accordingly “politicians and everyone who serves in any capacity in any level of civil government is automatically also a minister of God,” and should recognize this obligation. Apparently it’s all about liberty. People like the sound of “freedom”, “liberty” and “the Constitution”, but Rohrer’s fans don’t seem to have the faintest idea what those words could possibly mean (which is why Rohrer ends up, in all earnestness, saying things like “if you put somebody in office who is an enemy of freedom, who is a practicing Muslim, as an example, or a Communist, as an example, an atheist, they will act on what they think is right, but it’s not going to be what agrees with biblical correction.”) Rohrer is apparently a fan of David Barton, whom Rohrer explicitly thinks is a pillar of honesty, which to him then means that the extensively documented dishonesty in Barton’s works can easily be dismissed as a malicious conspiracy.
Threats to his vision I: Immigrants
There are ample threats to Rohrer’s vision for America, though. Islam, for instance. Rohrer was quite shocked by the 2018 elections, when two “devout Muslim women who hold to a view of God and law and morality that is completely opposite to our Constitution” were elected. The lack of self-awareness is pretty intense, even by fundie theocrat standards. At least his stance on immigration follows the same lines of lack of reasoning; as Rohrer sees it, America has “changed the historic biblical rules” (?) regarding immigration, and “this is a reason why God must discipline our country.” As a consequence, we have now “millions of people” who “have no respect for our God, they serve primarily the god of Allah and they embrace Sharia law,” which permits them to engage in terrorism. Until the US endorses the letter and spirit of the First Amendment and realizes that it cannot tolerate “two competing Gods … we’re going to find ourselves in increasing trouble.” As a solution to the ills, Rohrer suggested that we should require immigrants to “accept the God of the Bible,” just like the Constitution prescribes. It is probably worth mentioning, in this context, that “progressive Christians” aren’t really Christians either.
Indeed, Muslim jihadists had by 2016 infiltrated the Obama administration at the highest levels, and (then-)CIA Director John Brennan is, as Rohrer sees it, a Muslim convert who is on the side of the terrorists.
When push comes to show, however, the main problem is immigrants in general, not really their religious convictions. The recent refugee caravan, for instance, is a “fight against God himself”. Rohrer’s reasoning is … weak, but it ends with concluding that those who favor immigration are on the side of the Antichrist. Of course it does.
Threats to his vision 2: The gays (of course)
Another threat is, of course, the gays. It was obvious to Rohrer gay marriage could not be legalized since judges should rule according to “moral law” established by God, and having, in fact, been legalized, it is threatening to “destroy the very fabric of our nation” and, like everything else that is not working according to Rohrer’s convictions, will “invite God’s judgment on the nation” (mass shootings, for instance, are part of said judgment). Gay marriage will apparently lead to “tyranny” as well, for good measure, and the judges responsible for legalizing it are “activist judges” and “ideological idealists” that “may have been motivated by an intentional defiance of God.” The legalization of gay marriage also means that “the moral position leadership of our country has been forfeited,” says Rohrer; apparently the new moral leader of the world – here Rohrer agrees with many religious right leaders – is Russia.
He also lamented that gay rights activists don’t realize that they, too, have lost a “great, great freedom” with the legalization of same-sex marriage. His reasoning behind the conclusion isn’t really reasoning.
Threats to his vision 3: Women
And then there are women. Apparently having women in power is a sign of God’s judgment. When making the claim, Rohrer hastened to add that “the real condemnation is not the women in office, the condemnation is the disregard and the absolute inability for male leadership to perform as God intended it,” so that he wouldn’t come across as sexist.
Miscellaneous Trumpisms
Shocked by the “lack of respect” shown by some people toward President Trump, Rohrer promptly and predictably declared that opposition to Trump “creates the circumstances … out of which will come the Antichrist,” explaining (or whatever you prefer to call it) that the “enemies of Christ” (globalists, Islam and the cultural “establishment”) are “all working together” because “they hate God, they hate the Constitution, they despise Jesus Christ, they want to destroy Israel and the United States.” And those who don’t support Trump’s immigration policies are definitely on the side of the Antichrist.
After all, as Rohrer sees it, it was God who put Trump in office, no less. Rohrer didn’t explain how God did that (without committing voter fraud).
There is a decent Sam Rohrer resource here. Rohrer is not to fond of rightwingwatch, and has said that if civil war breaks out, it will be because of groups like Rightwingwatch and others who don’t think what he thinks they should think.
Diagnosis: As deranged, confused and fanatical as they come, and unfit for any audience. He’s got one, though, and must be considered moderately dangerous.

Wayne Rohde

Wayne Rohde is an antivaccine activist, and the founder of the antivaccine group the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, occasional blogger for the antivaccine conspiracy website Age of Autism, and a rich source of trite, endlessly repeated and falsified (and repeated again) antivaccine tropes. Rohde is an attorney, and has, as far as we can tell, no background in science or research. He is nevertheless an active figure at antivaccine conferences and was in 2019 asked to serve on the new Minnesota state council on autism together with fellow antivaccine conspiracy theorist and health freedom advocate Patti Carroll; that state council was initiated by state senator Jim Abeler, a chiropractor and fellow anti-vaccine activist, who justified the appointment of Rohde and Carroll by invoking the balance fallacy. Rohde himself is an executive for the group Health Choice, which advocates that chronic health conditions in children are caused by “unhealthy choices” including “side effects of vaccine choices.” This is not true.
To people like Rohde, vaccines are to blame for most ills. Here, for instance, is (a discussion of) Rohde trying to connect Harold Ramis’s death to vaccines through desperately bizarre speculation. Then he refers to some garbage studies by Shaw and Tomljenovic, websites that say the opposite of what he says that they say, and vaccine court cases. (Indeed, Rohde has written a book about vaccine courts: The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which seems to be mostly an instance of Badger’s Law). Of course, Rohde is mostly JAQing off. But it was the vaccines. Nothing in what he says has anything to do with facts, truth and evidence, but if you start with an idea, stick to it dogmatically, and don’t care about what is actually the case, you can connect almost anything to it with enough ingenuity.
Of course, Rohde denies being antivaccine; instead, he is – when it suits him – an advocate for health freedom. By claiming to be pro-freedom, he gets to call his opponents “fascists”, or “medical fascists”. He likes that. He also likes questioning the motivations of those who disagree with him.
Diagnosis: crackpot conspiracy theorist. He is quite vocal, however, and seems to have some influence in the antivaccine movement. Dangerous.