Given the President’s record of total disregard for the truth, one has to question the content of any of his tweets. Why then, when Trump says something that is patently untrue, do so many media publications publish it anyway? [WW]
On November 19, 2018 the Washington Post published an article under the title of the Fact Checker. It reported on some 30 rallies headlined by the President and his claims on the size of the crowd.
At the end of the article, the writer Salvador Rizzo, wrote the following, “Let’s leave out all instances in which Trump said ‘thousands and thousands’ and focus only on the rallies for which he gave hard numbers or indicated rough totals. At nine such rallies this year the president’s estimates came to 352,600 people combined. Our review of official counts and news reports shows the number was much lower: 100,972.
“This means Trump multiplied his crowd sizes by a factor of 2.5 at a minimum. Of course, this doesn’t take into account all the times he made wild assertions about his crowd sizes without giving hard numbers.”
These claims were given Four Pinocchios.
Accepting that it is a “bit” premature, here is an Axios/Survey Monkey poll taken of registered voters October 24-30 matching President Trump against a series of women, some of whom may actually be candidates in 2020.
| Point Lead | ||||
| Trump | 42% | Michelle Obama | 55% | +13 |
| Trump | 41% | Oprah Winfrey | 53% | +12 |
| Trump | 42% | Kamala Harris | 52% | +10 |
| Trump | 42% | Amy Klobuchar | 51% | +9 |
| Trump | 44% | Kirsten Gillibrand | 50% | +6 |
| Trump | 45% | Hillary Clinton | 50% | +5 |
| Trump | 47% | Elizabeth Warren | 49% | +2 |
Trump has begun raising money for his re-election campaign earlier than any president since 1970.
The president of Finland said he didn’t talk to Trump about wildfires during their brief interaction earlier this month, contradicting the U.S. president’s assertion that the Scandinavian nation spent “a lot of time on raking and cleaning” their forests. [HuffPost] (This response resulted from something the President said when he attacked management of the forests in California, a majority of which are on federal land. WW)
On March 20, during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit, Trump claimed the Saudi purchases of U.S. weapons he arranged would generate “over 40,000 jobs in the United States.”
On Oct. 13, Trump mentioned the same arms deal as the reason he was reluctant to stop the arms sales. That time, he said the deal created 450,000 jobs.
On Wednesday, Oct. 17, during a Fox Business interview, Trump inflated the statistic to 500,000 jobs.
On Friday October 19, he increased the jobs number to 600,000.
A few hours later, on Friday evening at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, Trump said the deal was worth 600,000 jobs for the military but “over a million jobs” in total.
The bottom line: From which source did Trump get these rapidly inflating statistics? I asked the White House press office. No response by deadline
[10/21/18, Axios]
Because the U.S. Senate remains in Republican hands and the filibuster is no more, the President can continue unchecked his goal of remaking the federal judiciary.
Nominated and Confirmed to Date
| Total | Supreme Ct | Appeals Ct | District Ct | |
| Trump – thru 11/13/18 | 84 | 2 | 29 | 53 |
| Obama – 8 years | 329 | 2 | 55 | 268 |
| GW Bush – 8 years | 327 | 2 | 62 | 261 |
| Clinton – 8 years | 378 | 2 | 66 | 305 |
| GHW Bush – 4 years | 193 | 2 | 42 | 148 |
| Reagan | 383 | 3 | 83 | 290 |
| Carter | 262 | 0 | 56 | 203 |
| [uscourts.gov] | ||||
There are currently 11 vacancies on the U.S. Courts of appeals, 112 vacancies on the U.S. District Courts and 2 vacancies on the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Nominations pending are 13 for the Courts of Appeals, 56 for the District Courts, 2 for the Courts of International Trade.
Much ado was made of the fact that the White House pulled the permanent press pass of Jim Acosta of CNN. Following a lawsuit brought by CNN and the issuance of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order requiring that Acosta’s pass be returned to him, the White House decided to return his pass on a permanent basis.
It is important to keep in mind that the press has no more right to access to the White House than you or me. However, once a decision is made to allow the press access, then due process and the first amendment apply.