TBR News January 8, 2019
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8
Washington, D.C. January 8, 2019:” The U.S. has been placing economic sanctions on Iran and this is damaging their economy. Their response? They have threatened to close the international waterway, the Straits of Hormuz! Since almost all Iranian oil, on which they depend for a significant part of their national income, comes from selling, and shipping, oil, this is mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. This false bravado is also designed to build public morale in Iran with national elections looming.
This threat, and the subsequent threat to attack an American Navy aircraft carrier carry with them the danger that a rigged Gulf of Tonkin incident can be arraigned to supply a legitimate motive for the U.S. Navy to take “retaliatory measures” against Iran. In the mountains on Iran’s western border on the Gulf are numerous missile bases, constructed with aid of the Russians. Recently, Russia made a deal with the United States, In return for allowing Russian naval units to berth in and protect Syrian gulf ports, they gave the Americans all the coordinates of their missile sites! In the event of a “hostile act” on the part of Iran (Perhaps a small military type MTB wearing an Iranian flag, would lunch relatively small surface-to-surface at some large American ship. There would be explosions and, out of necessity, American deaths. Shocked headlines in the CIA-controlled New York Times and Washington Post and a stunned Congress would demand revenge. Then our Naval units would attack the missile bases and turn them into large, rubble-filled holes and our next target would be far to the north in Tehran. Our military is stretched too thin to become involved in yet another political war but the Navy and Air Force have been unscathed and would do the attacking. Naturally, the Israeli units would be unable to assist this effort to save them from possible attack because they were too busy protecting the Sacred Motherland to get killed elsewhere and, even worse, to lose expensive aircraft to air defense missiles.
What is causing a deliberate escalation of this project is multifaceted in nature. China does a good deal of oil business with Iran. China has reached a trade volume of 53 billion dollars with Iran and also has a treaty to manage an aslect of the South Pars oil fields. China has been threatening our allies lately, hacking into sensitive governmental computers sites and threatening us with dire fiscal problems because they own so much of our Treasury notes and intercepted messaging indicates China is trying to forge more important ties with Tehran, just short of an open military or other alliance that would upset the balance of power. Tehran and North Korea have also had other missile-oriented dealings such as, 4000 km ranged Musudan missiles which are similar to Taepodong – 1 and Taepodong – 2 missiles. Iran now has the ability to mass produce aversive balllistic missile systems with the technical aid of both North Korea, China and Russia. The North Koreans, and their Pakistani friends, are now lower down the list of supporters but China is coming to the fore Using technical assistance as noted at this time Iran has build and can build intercontinental ballistic missiles that now have a range of more than 5500 km.”
The Table of Contents
- 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
- Democrats touring border warn Trump against diverting funds for wall
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
- 1.4 Million Floridians Get Their Voting Rights Back Today, Whether Republicans Like It or Not
815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
November 15, 2018
by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief
Toronto Star
WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.
He just made another 815 false claims in a month.
In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.
How bad have these recent weeks been?
- Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
- Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
- Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
- The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.
As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.
But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.
Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.
If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.
Oct 19, 2018
“Even Supreme Court, we picked two, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Two. Many presidents never pick any. They never get that great opportunity.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Only four presidents haven’t had a chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice. Two of them, Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison, died early in their time in office.
“We will protect Medicare and Social Security. And Democrats will destroy them both, and you know it.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: There is simply no basis for the claim that Democrats will destroy Medicare and Social Security.
“I withdrew the United States from the horrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal. A disaster. And you remember the day before I came into office, it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them. Guess what? They’re struggling right now. They’re really struggling. They’re having riots every weekend. They are struggling right now.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Iran is not having “riots every weekend.” It has had sporadic protests this year. Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “This is another falsehood by Trump. There have been strikes by syndicates and labor organizations here and there over the course of the last 2-3 years, but not riots. And certainly not every weekend.”
“I withdrew the United States from the horrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal. A disaster. And you remember the day before I came into office, it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them. Guess what? They’re struggling right now.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: It is an exaggeration to claim “it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them.” Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “The claim that Iran was on the verge of taking over the Middle East prior to Trump taking office is utterly false. In fact, quite the opposite was the case, as the Sunni-majority Arab states in the region — most vocally led by Saudi Arabia and with the expressed support of the US and Israel — had already begun to curb Iran’s influence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. There is no question that the perception of many of Iran’s rivals in the region after the nuclear deal was that the Islamic Republic had emerged with a stronger geopolitical hand. But the reality was that Iran had merely emerged from nearly 40 years of isolation from which many of these rivals had benefited. So, I would say that the major grievance at the time was that the Obama administration had allowed for the Islamic Republic to become a ‘normal’ country. The issue was never Iran’s military might — its defense expenditures and capabilities are dwarfed by those of Israel and Saudi Arabia — but the fact that it was on the verge of a major economic boom in a post-sanctions world.”
“African-American and Asian-American unemployment have reached their lowest rates ever recorded in the history of our country.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: The unemployment rate for African-Americans was indeed at a record low, at least for the period since the government began releasing data for this group in the 1970s. The Asian-American unemployment rate, however, was not close to a record. It briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — A low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for September, was 3.5 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.
“How about in California, where illegal immigrants took over the town council, and now the town council is run by illegal immigrants in the town! I mean, is this even believable? You tell this stuff. It is sick!”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Unauthorized immigrants have not taken over any town council in any town. In late September, California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have allowed unauthorized immigrants and other non-citizens to sit on state and local boards and commissions.
“The Democrats don’t care that a flood of illegal immigration is going to totally bankrupt our country. Because all the Democrats want is power. And don’t forget: everybody that comes across the border, for the most part, they’re going to vote Democrat. They’re not voting Republican. They’re going to vote Democrat. So nobody said they’re stupid. But it’s bad for our country. But they’re going to vote Democrat. No matter what we do, they will be voting Democrat. And they understand that. That’s why Democrats support programs like catch-and-release. That’s why Democrats want to give illegal aliens free welfare, free health care, and free education. Give them a driver’s license.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Illegal immigrants can’t vote. It is possible that some of them will eventually gain citizenship and voting rights years down the road as part of a hypothetical future immigration reform law, but it is not true that illegal immigrants are going to vote for Democrats “no matter what we do.”
“The Democrats don’t care about what their extremist immigration agenda will do to your communities, your hospitals. How about your hospitals? They’re being overrun. Your schools! California, they want to give you free education, free health care, open borders. I mean, we’re going to have 10 million people move to California. This is the craziest thing. So here’s what we do. Let’s get these people out of there. There’s something wrong. They’re cuckoo.” And: “And now they have a man running for governor who wants to actually let the entire world pour into a state, give them free welfare, free education, free licenses, free everything. And they have no money. And they have no money. And they owe a fortune. Other than that, it’s a great idea.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Democratic California governor candidate Gavin Newsom is not proposing “open borders” or to “actually let the entire world pour into” the state.
“And catch-and-release. How about that? That’s my favorite. Catch. You catch a damned killer, you catch a bad hombre. You catch a bad one. You take the name. And we’re supposed to bring them to court, but we have hundreds of thousands of people. And it’s all my fault. You know why? Because we, I, you, all together, we’ve made this country so strong economically so good, jobs, everything, that everybody wants to come in, so it’s my fault. But you know what? We’re not letting them in. We only are going to let people in based on merit. We need people to come in based on merit. So you have catch-and-release. They put one foot. They don’t need two. One foot! We have the greatest people, ICE, Border Patrol, law enforcement. And the law doesn’t allow us to throw them the hell out. We have to take ’em. We have to write them up, and then we say come back in three years for a court case. In the meantime, they’re released into our society. And you know what the percentage of people that come back for the case? Three percent. No, you’re wrong. He said zero. You were slightly off. Three percent. Three percent show up three years, four years, five years later. It’s a disgrace.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Trump’s percentage was not even close to accurate. The Justice Department says 72 per cent of people showed up for their immigration court hearings in 2017. For asylum seekers in particular, it was 89 per cent. There is no group for which it was even close to 3 per cent.
“Chain migration, you come over, and then they have — we had a guy on the West Side Highway. He goes down the highway, he’s going 60, 70 miles an hour, radical Islam, terrible. Makes a right turn into a park, kills nine people, badly injures — nobody ever talks about. People that are running along the beautiful Hudson River, because they want to stay in shape. They end up going home six months later with no legs, with no arms. Because of people like this, sick people. These are sick people. And these allowed — this guy had 22 people. He brought in his mother, his father, his brother, his sisters, his aunts, his uncles. Because of Democrats’ policy. That’s called chain migration. It’s a chain. Sounds so good.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: There is no evidence that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged perpetrator of the terror attack in 2017 on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, brought 22 relatives into the U.S. through “chain migration.” Even Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse this claim, and even anti-immigration advocates say it is wildly improbable that one man with a green card could have sponsored 22 people.
“Chain migration, you come over, and then they have — we had a guy on the West Side Highway. He goes down the highway, he’s going 60, 70 miles an hour, radical Islam, terrible. Makes a right turn into a park, kills nine people, badly injures — nobody ever talks about.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Eight people were killed in this 2017 terror attack, not nine.
“Think of visa lottery. They pick names out of a hat, visa lottery. Think about it. Do you think that this country, whichever country it is, are they going to put you — are they going to put their finest in there? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “put” anyone in the lottery. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.
“They will fight to the death because they don’t want us to have the wall. But we’ve started the wall anyway, and we’re going to get that done. We’re going to get it done.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent.
“The new platform of the Democrat Party is radical socialism and open borders. As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly inviting millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders, and overwhelm our nation. Other than that, the Democrats are doing a great job, right?”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Democrats do not want “open borders” and have issued no such invitation to lawbreakers.
“It is amazing how you can delete 33,000 e-mails after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress and our Justice Department doesn’t do anything about it. It is pretty amazing. Our Justice Department. Headed by many people from the Obama administration.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: The Justice Department is headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee. Below him is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, another Trump appointee. Below him are a bunch of other Trump appointees. While the department also has career civil servants who worked under Obama and previous presidents, it is certainly not “headed” by “people from the Obama administration.”
“Republicans want to protect Medicare for our great seniors, who have earned it and they’ve paid for it. And Republicans will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. They’re trying to put a false narrative out there. And if there is a Republican out there that doesn’t, let me know. I’ll — believe me, him or her, we’ll talk them into it. We’re going to protect pre-existing conditions.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Republicans in Congress, and Trump, repeatedly tried to pass Obamacare repeal bills that would have scrapped or weakened protections for people with pre-existing health conditions, with no plan to replace them. As part of a current Republican lawsuit to try to get the Affordable Care Act struck down, Trump’s administration is arguing that the pre-existing protections are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has still not said what he would like to replace these protections with.
“She’s being protected by the fake news back there. Boy, that’s a lot — look at all the people. It’s like the Academy Awards — look at this. That’s a lot of stuff. You think this happens to the average president? No way. And every single time, I hope you’re enjoying yourselves. You can turn the cameras back on them. I won’t say anything bad, I promise. Now, when they think I’m ready to say something bad, all those red lights go off.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Media outlets do not turn off their cameras when Trump is “ready to say something bad.”
“You know another thing we did for — I like a lot of people in Arizona, small businesses, farmers. You don’t have estate tax. No more estate tax. So if you love your children — which is a question — you may not like ’em, in which case don’t listen to me — if you don’t like ’em, don’t leave them the farm. But if you love ’em, you’ll love Trump, because you don’t have to pay estate tax, OK? That’s a big thing.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Trump did not eliminate the estate tax. His tax law merely raised the threshold at which it must be paid. Also, it is highly misleading to suggest that the estate tax is a major burden on family farms and small businesses: very few of them were paying the tax even before Trump’s tax law was passed. According to the Tax Policy Center, a mere 80 farms and small businesses were among the 5,460 estates likely to pay the estate tax in 2017, before Trump’s tax law. The Center wrote on its website: “The Tax Policy Center estimates that small farms and businesses will pay $30 million in estate tax in 2017, fifteen hundredths of 1 of the total estate tax revenue.”
“The wall is under construction. We’re building the wall, $1.6 billion, another $1.6 billion, another $1.6 billion. I want to build it all at one time. We can do it in one year. And you see what’s happening.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.
“It’s going to be a mess. Democrats want to raise your taxes, impose socialism on our country, turn us into a Venezuela. Turn us into another Venezuela, take away your health care, destroy your Second Amendment, and Democrats want to throw your borders wide open to deadly drugs and ruthless gangs. Come on in, everybody. Come on in. Come on in, everybody.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: Democrats do not plan to “throw your borders wide open” and invite in gangs. None of them are proposing Venezuela-style socialism. They do not propose to take away health care.
“You know, we can no longer say Pocahontas, because she has no Indian blood. We can no longer call her Pocahontas. I don’t know what I’m going to do. We’ll have to come up with another name for her. Elizabeth Warren, a very boring name, we’re going to have to come up with another name. I can’t use the word Pocahontas anymore. There’s no Indian blood! I always said, I have more Indian blood than she has and I have none. I have none. That is more than true. I don’t know. We’ll have to come up with another name.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: A Stanford University professor who conducted a DNA test on Warren concluded that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor” six to 10 generations in the past. The analysis found that almost all of Warren’s ancestors were European, and many Native Americans reject the suggestion that a distant Native ancestor can qualify a person as any part Native. But it is not true that “there’s no Indian blood.”
“Remember you weren’t going to have any manufacturing jobs anymore, right? I said, you mean we’re not going to make things anymore? Six hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: This was a reference, though less explicit than usual, to Trump’s usual claim that Obama said there would be no more manufacturing jobs anymore. Obama did not say that. Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.
“Remember you weren’t going to have any manufacturing jobs anymore, right? I said, you mean we’re not going to make things anymore? Six hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs.”
Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona
in fact: The economy added 378,000 manufacturing jobs between January 2017, the month Trump took office, and September 2018, the most recent month for which there was data at the time Trump spoke.
“And they broke right through, and they broke through the fences. And Mexico is now really fighting. A very tough situation. Mexican soldiers have been hurt — badly hurt, in a couple of cases.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: Mexico did not deploy its military to deal with the caravan of migrants making its way to the United States. Some of the migrants clashed with Mexican police.
“And we also gave something very important, and that was a pay increase — the first in 10 years. A nice, substantial pay increase to the people that deserve it so badly.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: Military Times reported when Trump first started making such claims: “In fact, troops have seen a pay raise of at least 1 per cent every year for more than 30 years.” Trump’s increase for 2019, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years – since the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010.
“So I could sit down with Democrats and work this thing out in one hour. And we need a wall. We have to have a wall. We’re building a wall now, but we should build it very fast. We should build it — frankly, we should build it even higher, because these people — incredible. They can scale them; they can do things you wouldn’t believe. But we have a wall, it’s going up.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent.
“We have the visa lottery, where we take people by lottery from countries. Now, just — you know, from a business standpoint, do you think they’re giving us their finest? We get some real beauties out of the lottery. These countries — I mean, they’re not stupid. They give us people that they don’t want. And we have to take them.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery; there is no conspiracy in which foreign governments dump unsavoury citizens into the lottery to get rid of them. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.
“The last thing I want to do is say we’re not going to supply you with that, and therefore we’re going to cut — I guess, if you add the whole thing up, because just for the military was 600,000 jobs. So now if you’re talking about — that was $110 billion — you know, you’re talking about over a million jobs. You know, I’d rather keep the million jobs, and I’d rather find another solution.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: There is no basis for the claim that Saudi Arabia’s business deals with the U.S. will produce “600,000 jobs” or “over a million jobs.” (The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation from U.S. website Axios.) As we explained in the previous fact check, there is no basis for the claim that there are “$450 billion” in total orders or “$110 billion” in military orders. Trump has increased his jobs estimates from “over 40,000” jobs in March to “450,000 jobs” on Oct. 13 to 500,000 jobs on Oct. 17 to 600,000 jobs on Oct. 19, the day he also introduced the “over a million jobs” claim. Reuters reported: “An internal document seen by Reuters from Lockheed Martin forecasts fewer than 1,000 positions would be created by the defense contractor, which could potentially deliver around $28 billion of goods in the deal. Lockheed instead predicts the deal could create nearly 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia, while keeping up to 18,000 existing U.S. workers busy if the whole package comes together — an outcome experts say is unlikely.”
“And, you know, we’re talking about something right now, where a particular country ordered — you’ll never guess who this is — about $110 billion worth of equipment. And I assume you’d like to keep those orders probably.” And: “We have a tremendous order. Probably the people around this table have the vast percentage of the $110 billion order from Saudi. We have $450 billion. But on defense, we have $110 billion. And I would say, almost 100 percent of it would be sitting right around this table with the great companies. Raytheon is here, too. Just great companies.” And: “But I would prefer that we don’t use, as retribution, cancelling $110 billion worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs. I know it sounds easy and it sounds good, and a lot people have said, ‘Oh, let’s just not sell them a $110 billion order.’ I guess you take it a step further, ‘Let’s not sell them $450 billion,’ which is the largest order in the history of our country. I went there to get that order. Saudi Arabia was my first stop. And everyone thought that was unusual. But I said, I want to order – ‘I want you to order a tremendous amount of stuff.’ Right? Everything. Your stuff and everybody’s stuff. And Wilbur was there. They ordered $450 billion. There’s never been anything like it, or close. The last thing I want to do is say we’re not going to supply you with that, and therefore we’re going to cut — I guess, if you add the whole thing up, because just for the military was 600,000 jobs. So now if you’re talking about — that was $110 billion — you know, you’re talking about over a million jobs. You know, I’d rather keep the million jobs, and I’d rather find another solution.”
Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base
in fact: There is no basis for either the claim that the U.S. has $450 billion in business orders from Saudi Arabia or that it has $110 billion in military-related orders from Saudi Arabia. The White House has not explained what Trump has talking about; PolitiFact reported: “Hossein Askari, a business professor at George Washington University, analyzes international trade in the Middle East. He knows of no tally of contracts to back up Trump’s assertion. ‘There is absolutely no such number that could support the $450 billion,’ Askari said.” As for the $110 billion figure, the Associated Press wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”
“And, you know, the Democrats in 2006, they voted for a border wall. They all believed in a border wall, and they voted for it.”
Source: Interview with One America News
in fact: Some Democrats, not all, voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006. As the name suggests, it was a law for border fencing, not the kind of giant concrete wall Trump is proposing.
“So, we’ve already started the wall. We have a billion-six, another billion-six, and a third billion-six coming, but we want to do it all at one time. We want to get it built immediately, so we don’t have the problems that we have for many, many years.” And: “But the border wall’s already started, and in fact, now we say, finish the wall, finish the wall, because we’ve got big sections in San Diego and lots of other areas.”
Source: Interview with One America News
in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.
“Catch and release. Visa lottery, where we take people through a lottery system, and you know who’s going into the lottery. They’re not giving us their finest.”
Source: Interview with One America News
in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery; there is no conspiracy in which foreign governments dump unsavoury citizens into the lottery to get rid of them. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.
“But, we’re — we’re having — we’re having tremendous outpouring of love and energy and everything else that you want. So I think we’re going to do very well. I think we’re going to do extremely well with the Senate. We have races that we weren’t even going to contest, numerous of them, as you know, and now we’re actually leading in many of those races. These were spots, I won’t use names. but these were spots that we weren’t really looking to fight, because we thought they wouldn’t, you know, be won. I think that Justice Kavanaugh had a big impact.”
Source: Interview with One America News
in fact: This is an exaggeration. Republicans had improved in the polls in some Senate races, but they did not take the lead in any races the party wasn’t even going to contest.
“We’re right now the largest supplier of energy in the world — we are, the United States. And it happened, I hate to tell you, over the last 18 months.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in 2017 that 2016 was the fifth straight year the U.S. had been the “world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons.”
Question: “Mr. President, today, the Justice Department unleashed — unsealed an indictment against a Russian national who was accused of trying to influence the election in 2018.” Trump: “It had nothing to do with my campaign. You know, all of the hackers and all of the — everybody that you see, it had nothing to do with my campaign. If they’re hackers, a lot of them probably like Hillary Clinton better than me. Now they do. Now they do.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: U.S. prosecutors have presented evidence that the Russian government directed an extensive hacking operation designed to benefit Trump. There is no evidence that “a lot” of the hackers preferred Clinton.
“But a lot of people have gathered (in the migrant caravan). And a lot of people are looking at Democrats — ‘Why did they gather?’ You know, there’s a lot of information that is being — hopefully you people are looking — but how come this happened. Because people are saying there’s a lot of money being passed around so that this would normally hit just before election. “
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: There is no basis for Trump’s suggestion that Democrats had anything to do with the formation of the migrant caravan from Latin America or that people in the caravan were being paid to try to get to the U.S. before the election. There is no chance they will indeed arrive by Election Day; contrary to Trump’s repeated suggestions, they would not be able to vote even if they did.
“President Obama was contacted by the FBI in September, long before the election in November. And they told him there may be meddling by the Russians. And he did nothing about it because he thought Hillary Clinton would win. He did nothing. He didn’t do — he didn’t lift a finger; he didn’t spend a dime.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: While Obama has been widely faulted, including by many Democrats, for not responding more aggressively when he was informed of the reported Russian interference in the 2016 election, it is not true that he “didn’t lift a finger” in response. In October 2016, a month before the election, the administration issued an extraordinary statement attributing the election interference to “Russia’s senior-most officials.” According to a comprehensive Washington Post story, Obama and his officials also delivered a series of warnings to Russia: CIA director John Brennan warned his Russian counterpart in August 2016; “a month later, Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China”; national security adviser Susan Rice summoned the Russian ambassador to the White House in October “and handed him a message to relay to Putin”; “then, on Oct. 31, the administration delivered a final pre-election message via a secure channel to Moscow originally created to avert a nuclear exchange.” Obama reportedly also sought to get Republicans and Democrats to sign on to a joint statement denouncing the Russian interference; former Obama officials have alleged that Republican leaders refused to agree to participate.
“And I think I’ll have a very similar attitude on this. I think — you know, we have — Congress is very much involved. I will, in this case, make certain recommendations. We have $450 billion worth of things ordered from a very rich country — Saudi Arabia. Six-hundred thousand jobs; maybe more than that.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: There is no basis for the claim that Saudi Arabia’s business deals with the U.S. will produce “600,000 jobs.” (The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation from U.S. website Axios.) As we explained in the previous fact check, there is no basis for the claim that there are “$450 billion” in total orders or “$110 billion” in military orders. Trump has increased his jobs estimates from “over 40,000” jobs in March to “450,000 jobs” on Oct. 13 to 500,000 jobs on Oct. 17 to 600,000 jobs on Oct. 19, the day he also introduced the “over a million jobs” claim. Reuters reported: “An internal document seen by Reuters from Lockheed Martin forecasts fewer than 1,000 positions would be created by the defense contractor, which could potentially deliver around $28 billion of goods in the deal. Lockheed instead predicts the deal could create nearly 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia, while keeping up to 18,000 existing U.S. workers busy if the whole package comes together — an outcome experts say is unlikely.”
“And I think I’ll have a very similar attitude on this. I think — you know, we have — Congress is very much involved. I will, in this case, make certain recommendations. We have $450 billion worth of things ordered from a very rich country — Saudi Arabia. Six-hundred thousand jobs; maybe more than that.” And: “I did this; I went to Saudi Arabia first. And a large part of the reason was they agreed to do this; they agreed to spend $450 billion on buying and investing in the United States.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: There is no basis for the claim that the U.S. has $450 billion in business orders from Saudi Arabia. The White House has not explained what Trump has talking about; PolitiFact reported: “Hossein Askari, a business professor at George Washington University, analyzes international trade in the Middle East. He knows of no tally of contracts to back up Trump’s assertion. ‘There is absolutely no such number that could support the $450 billion,’ Askari said.”
“So this is a big day for the Central Valley, California. And I want to thank everybody for being here. This is a vital action. In my opinion, it’s vital to improve access to water in the American West. What’s happened there is disgraceful. They’ve taken it away. There’s so much water, they don’t know what to do with it, and they send it out to sea.” And: “And I said, ‘I’ve never seen anything — what do they do?’ ‘They route it into the Pacific Ocean.’ And I say, ‘Why do they do that?’ And the reason — I don’t even want to discuss it, it’s so ridiculous.” And: “So you have tremendous land. And, literally, I have heard, in terms of the land itself, it’s as good as it gets anywhere in the world for farming. But they cut off, artificially — I mean, the water used to come down. They cut it off artificially.”
Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights
in fact: California’s water is not being “sent” out to sea or artificially diverted away from agricultural users; the water naturally flows to the sea, and some of it is diverted to agricultural users. In other words, Trump was suggesting that California was artificially diverting water — “they’ve taken it away” — by allowing it to flow where it naturally flows. “Water in California naturally flows to the sea, the Pacific Ocean. Water diverted from these flows is used extensively for agriculture and cities,” said professor Jay R. Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California – Davis.
Democrats touring border warn Trump against diverting funds for wall
January 7, 2019
by Julio-Cesar Chavez
Reuters
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (Reuters) – A Congressional delegation of Democrats touring a Border Patrol facility in New Mexico on Monday warned President Donald Trump against circumventing Congress and diverting already appropriated money toward building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“He can expect a strong and swift challenge from all of us and other members of Congress, and from the American people,” said U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, when asked about Trump’s planned address to the nation and his visit to the border on Thursday.
Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, is leading a Congressional delegation visiting the Border Patrol facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico to investigate the death of 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo, the second child to die in December after being apprehended crossing the border illegally.
Democrats, who now control the U.S. House of Representatives, have rejected the Republican president’s demand for $5.7 billion to help build a wall. Without a deal on that sticking point, talks to fund the government – now in the 17th day of a shutdown – have stalled.
Trump has vowed not to back off his 2016 campaign promise to build a wall that he believes will stem illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He promised during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused to do so.
Democrats in Congress say a wall would be expensive, inefficient and immoral
In New Mexico, Border Patrol agents walked the Congressional delegation through the holding areas of the Alamogordo station, which Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, said were “miraculously” empty.
Castro said the Border Patrol did not provide a report about Gomez’s death nor did they tour the hospital where he was treated for a cold and then released with a prescription for antibiotics and ibuprofen. The boy died shortly after his release.
“We know that CBP is woefully under equipped in terms of its standards of medical care, but we also need to find out whether the doctors in the hospital – how responsible they were in terms of that case,” Castro said.
The Border Patrol itself has said their facilities are not properly equipped to hold families, Castro said. “I think all of us who look at what they have here believe that that is true.”
U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, said the area where Gomez and his father turned themselves over to Border Patrol is on American soil and already fenced.
“The wall only pushes people out to more dangerous, treacherous crossings, creating even more death,” she said.
Illegal crossings at the southern border have dropped dramatically since the late 1970s, but in recent years more Central American families and unaccompanied children are migrating to the United States. Many are released after turning themselves into border agents and requesting asylum, a legal process that can take years to resolve in U.S. immigration courts.
Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
January 8, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.
Conversation No. 37
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 1996
Commenced: 11:35 AM CST
Concluded: 11:55 AM CST
GD: Good afternoon to you, Robert.
RTC: The same, Gregory. How is your son?
GD: Hiding out from his last girlfriend. Apparently, he was careless and now she’s in a family way, as they used to say. This is a constantly recurring theme here.
RTC: Children are either a great pleasure or a great trial.
GD: Yes, I know. My oldest son is the former and my younger one is the latter. Knocked-up brainless females whimpering on the front porch while he hides in the loo or bill collectors sending death threats. I pay his for his car payment, he spends it and then wants more.
RTC: It’s none of my business, Gregory, but do you give it to him?
GD: Usually.
RTC: And the women?
GD: Well, I don’t give it to them. He’s already beaten me to it. He prefers them to be single mothers, desperate, rather ugly and always very stupid. One was deaf, one had an idiot child and another one used drugs. He wouldn’t dare bring them home so I know nothing about the latest one until she turns up on the porch, whining. I do feel sorry for them but I refuse to pay for abortions because I am opposed to abortions. They weep and he whines. I told him that we needed to fix him to stop this but nothing will stop the lies, stories, and spending of my money. He makes plenty of money of his own but always seems to run out of it. The oldest one runs a huge computer service in Germany and always wants to send me money instead of the other way around. Three lovely grandchildren. I would hate to see what the youngest one would produce. Swift would have been in transports of delight and the Yahoos would have been replaced.
RTC: How ever do you deal with pregnant and abandoned girl friends?
GD: With patience, Robert, with patience. I convince them that they would not have been happy with him. I imply he is gay or that he really liked to boff sheep. Things like that. I convince them that they could do better trolling a homeless shelter. I do not let them in the house, ever. Fortunately, all of them are well over twenty-one so I don’t have to worry about a visit from the police and DNA tests. He seems to like single mothers pushing thirty and very desperate. Oh, yes, and he loves to take them to look at houses and visit furniture stores. Builds up the hopes and then into the sack, unprotected and eager. He hates children and they tell me how much little this or that just loves him. Cruel to both of them. When my father died, we found a thick stack of high-quality credit cards hidden in his shaving kit. My God, nearly a hundred thousands of dollars on them. His wife was in a nursing home and before that, was very rich. He died before he could get to them but I wasn’t so unfortunate. My God, he went crazy. Of course I had to sign them but off we went to Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and everywhere but Canada. They would arrest me over that counterfeiting business if they caught me in Canada. And clothes. Jesus, he has enough in his closets to clothe the homeless of three states.
RTC: And yourself? Not that I mean to pry….
GD: No, I am aware. I have a huge library, a great collection of classical music and some nice china, silver and other things. He goes for what he can eat, drink or screw but I have other goals.
RTC: Ah, when we get old…
GD: No, it isn’t that. I never was one for whoring around. Long after the memories of that messy night in the phone booth or the drunken dinner at some Mexican bistro, I have some Lully to come back to or perhaps return to Gibbons. Well, some day, he’ll find someone more vicious and desperate than he is and legions of the gulled will have their revenge.
RTC: Any grandchildren by him?
GD: No, thank God. He always manages to find money for an abortion. You know, I do get rather tired of the tear jerkers on the porch but I really do feel sorry for them. Frankly, he was the last chance before gravity takes hold of their chubby bodies and the best they can do is to chase after the plumbers or the gardeners. I feel sorry for the children, Robert, I really do, but I dare not get too involved with his messes. I told him once that God would punish him but he only laughed, A good vasectomy can cure a lot of evils but maybe they should start at one ear and run around to the other. Ah well, his mother doesn’t want him back but the dog likes him.
RTC: Why don’t you marry him off to some vicious little Filipino bitch and she’ll make his life hell. A friend of mine was in the Navy and made that error.
GD: The Pubic Bay Beauties? Oh yes. I used to live in San Francisco and saw some of them, purple eye shadow and green nail polish and all, right up close. As angry as I get with him, I don’t think I would wish that fate on him. You know, one of those sluts winds up and you can hear her ten blocks away with the window closed. Wants to move all the family in with you and starts looking like a reject from Mustang Ranch. Well, if I’m lucky, he’ll meet up with one with a well-muscled brother.
RTC: Is he gay?
GD: No, I meant a brother that would beat the crap out of him. Of course, he might like that but then I’d have to pay to have his back stitched up. You can’t win, Robert. We all have our crosses to bear but why is mine made of concrete? By the way, do you know what Jesus’ companion at the crucifixion said to him?
RTC: No but perhaps you’ll enlighten me.
GD: ‘Hey, Jesus, I can see your house from up here!’
RTC: Not nice, Gregory, But entertaining. How’s your girl friend?
GD: I sent you pictures, didn’t I? Very well. My son hates her. She’s makes his punchboards look like the south end of north bound horses and she’s much smarter than he is. I intend to put her through college and then I suppose she’ll find something better to do but hanging around me won’t do her any good. Of course I told her about some of my little games and she howled with laughter. Someone in town saw us walking along and later told me that my daughter was a real looker. I said it was my granddaughter. Of course that’s closer to the truth. If youth knew, Robert but if age could.
RTC: Very cruel.
GD: Yes, today I am cruel. I’ll put some cayenne pepper is someone’s eye drops and tell them its acid.
RTC: My God.
GD: Well, I had some jerk stealing my really good brandy so I emptied out a bottle of the best, filled it with Old Mr. Boston swill and a good dose of croton oil.
RTC: Pardon?
GD: Croton oil. The strongest laxative known to man. One drop will move a man for a week.
RTC: How much did you spike it with?
GD: A tablespoon.
RTC: You could have killed them.
GD: No, but they had to carry around one of those little round life rings for months. They had a prolapsed rectum and other problems but they never touched any of my brandy again. I told the police that I never drank and the mark used to hang around the playground down the street, eyeing the tender tinies. Enough of that. It was a lot better than rat poison.
RTC: Probably. I take it he did not pass on?
GD: No, he didn’t. He walked with care for a long time, however Looked like Hopalong Cassidy after a very long ride.
(Concluded at 11:55 CST)
1.4 Million Floridians Get Their Voting Rights Back Today, Whether Republicans Like It or Not
January 8, 2019
by Alice Speri
The Intercept
More than 1 million Florida residents will become eligible to vote on Tuesday as the newly amended state constitution restores voting rights to most of its previously disenfranchised felons. That’s the largest number of people to gain access to the ballot all at once since American women won the right to vote in 1920.
Last November, Florida residents voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution, known as Amendment 4, that restores voting rights to roughly 1.4 million felons in the state who have completed their sentences. (Individuals convicted of murder or sex offenses were excluded from the amendment.) But while the measure was approved by nearly 65 percent of the state’s voters, some Republicans — including Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis — have sought to sow confusion about its immediate validity.
DeSantis, who opposed the amendment during the campaign, indicated that its implementation would be delayed until lawmakers can write it into law during the next legislative session. “They’re going to be able to do that in March,” he told the Palm Beach Post. Some local elections in Florida are scheduled for as early as February, before the next legislature meets.
DeSantis’s comments followed slow-walking on the amendment by other state officials, like Ken Detzner, the Republican secretary of state, who indicated in December that he believed the ballot language was unclear and would require state legislators’ review. “We need to get some direction from them as far as implementation and definitions — all the kind of things that the supervisors were asking,” Detzner said then. “It would be inappropriate for us to charge off without direction from them.”
Lack of direction from the state department — and from exiting Gov. Rick Scott — also led to confusion among election officials across the state, with the Division of Elections director saying that “the state is putting a pause button on our felon identification files . … We need this time to research it, to be sure we are providing the appropriate guidance.”
Asked for clarification, the Florida Department of State sent a somewhat equivocal statement to The Intercept, noting both that the amendment is now officially law and that the department would follow the legislature’s directive — a seeming contradiction. “Unless otherwise specifically provided for elsewhere in this constitution, if the proposed amendment or revision is approved by vote of at least sixty percent of the electors voting on the measure, it shall be effective as an amendment to or revision of the constitution of the state on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January following the election,” a spokesperson for the department wrote, citing the state constitution. But then she added, “The Florida Department of State will abide by any future direction from the Executive Clemency Board or the Florida Legislature regarding necessary action or implementing legislation to ensure full compliance with the law.”
That ambiguity, critics say, is deliberate and unnecessary. The amendment’s language makes clear that the change is self-executing, meaning that it became part of the state constitution the moment it won voters’ support and that it must be implemented without delay or legislators’ input. The amendment’s language was cleared by the state Supreme Court before the vote, and supporters collected more than a million signatures to get it on the ballot.
“It was designed so that there would be no requirement for involvement by any legislators, politicians, the governor, or anyone,” said Melba Pearson, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, one of the groups that drafted the amendment. “There is no role for the governor or any legislator in this amendment. Their only role is to make sure that the constitution is upheld and that the will of the voters is respected.”
A Deliberate Mess
Republicans’ belated questions about the amendment’s clarity and immediate validity were met with a barrage of criticism and stinging rebukes from many of the state’s editorial boards. “About the only thing worse than making a mess is making a mess unnecessarily,” a columnist for the Palm Beach Post wrote. “But here we are anyway, because Secretary of State Ken Detzner — who reports to Scott and whose department oversees statewide elections — won’t do his job.”
Andrew Gillum, who lost to DeSantis in November by a narrow 33,000 votes, also slammed officials who are creating unnecessary obstacles to the amendment’s implementation. “The people spoke & voted for #Amendment4 with an overwhelming majority,” he tweeted in December. “Those who fight the will of the voters are fighting democracy itself.”
The backlash only intensified after DeSantis’s comments added fuel to the confusion — an unsubtle effort at intimidating newly eligible voters, critics said.
“The reality is even though he does not agree with the amendment, it is his duty as the governor, the incoming governor of the state, to uphold the will of the people. Period, end of story,” said Melba. “Amendment 4 is now law in the state of Florida, so he needs to uphold it as is. Politicians or elected officials don’t get to pick and choose in that manner.”
Melba called on all new eligible voters to register on Tuesday and invited anyone experiencing issues to report them on the ACLU’s website. She said she hoped that no obstruction would arise to warrant litigation, but that the group was “prepared for the worst. … No options are off the table.”
Groups of formerly incarcerated “returning citizens” who drove the effort to pass the measure will be out on the streets once again this week, this time to register new voters, and several groups would run voter education campaigns, Melba added. “All people need to do on January 8 is register to vote, either online or at their local Supervisor of Elections office in their county,” she said. “There’s nothing confusing about it.”
A spokesperson for DeSantis, who is also to be sworn in on Tuesday, did not respond to a request for comment, but his office told other publications that “the Governor-elect intends for the will of the voters to be implemented but will look to the Legislature to clarify the various questions that have been raised.”
Before the amendment passed, Florida was the largest of three states that disenfranchised felons for life. As The Intercept reported in November, 1.68 million residents of the state were ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction: 10 percent of the state’s adult population and 1 in 5 African-Americans. Across the country, more than 6 million people can’t vote because of felony convictions, though most states restore voting rights at some point between release and the end of probation.
In Florida, a regular swing state where it’s not unusual for elections like DeSantis’s to be decided by extremely narrow margins, many believe that re-enfranchising felons has the potential to significantly tip the state’s political scales. But those who led the yearslong effort to pass Amendment 4, and particularly a diverse coalition of individuals with felony convictions, rejected the politicization of their effort and noted that the issue impacted people across the state and the political spectrum.
“We are not pawns for any partisan gamesmanship, we’re not pawns for any partisan bickering,” Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told The Intercept. “We are human beings, we are people over politics. And we are citizens of the state and of this country that want to be able to participate in the democratic process without being set up like we’re just a token for a political party.”
Meade, one of the earliest leaders of the voter re-enfranchisement movement in the state, said he would finally register to vote on Tuesday.
“And when I go to register, I’ll be doing so under the authority of the highest law in the state of Florida, and this law is over any legislature, it’s over any political or public servant,” he added. “We’re going forward fully expecting that every public servant that serves the systems of Florida is going to number one, respect the rule of the law, and number two, respect the wishes of its citizens.”