My 'top-10' stubborn Trump lies
The last debate of the presidential campaign was for Donald Trump an opportunity to repeat once again a litany of well-established lies.
This is nothing new, Donald Trump lies constantly. I will leave aside subjective hyperbole, such as his over and over again claim that he is the least racist person in the whole world. I will focus here on the claims he has been making for months or years that are clearly, objectively false.
For example, the Washington Post lie detector, as of yesterday, listed 22,247 false, exaggerated, misleading or outright false statements by the president in the 1,316 days since taking office. During the election campaign, the pace of the lie mill accelerates to nearly 50 falsehoods per day, according to the same source.
Here are my "top-10" claims that have been reported and proven false in the public domain, most of which were made, in one form or another, during last night’s debate. It is impossible that no one has told him that these claims are false, and so it can be said that they are not just falsehoods, they are outright lies.
1. Without Trump, COVID-19 would have claimed 2.2 million lives
To disguise the monumental catastrophe that is his management of the pandemic, Donald Trump cites studies which estimate that, if absolutely nothing was done to counter it, COVID-19 could kill up to 2.2 million people in United States. On its face, this claim is ridiculous. It cannot be assumed that another administration would have done absolutely nothing and, even if the federal government had done nothing, other levels of government and private actors could have done something. To judge the success of crisis management in the United States, it must be compared to that of other countries, making adjustments for population and other relevant factors. As a proportion of population, the United States' toll is the eighth among the worst in the world, and the situation is worsening more quickly than elsewhere. Objectively, the management of the crisis in the United States is a monumental failure.
2. The coronavirus is on the way to disappear in the United States
This is what Donald Trump has been saying consistently since Day 1 of this crisis. It was wrong in February and it is still wrong today. Of course, this crisis will one day come to an end, but it is dishonest to say that the crisis is already under control and that it will be resolved in a matter of weeks, as the President continues to repeat over and over again.
3. Closing the borders to flights from China saved the United States
Whenever Trump is questioned about his inaction in the face of the pandemic, he mentions this closure of flights from China. First, not all arrivals were banned. Tens of thousands of passengers were able to slip through the cracks after the announcement. In addition, the virus has most likely reached the east coast of the United States from Europe. Either way, even a total ban on flights from abroad would have been insufficient without a coordinated plan for tracing and contact tracing. Even though shutting down flights was the correct move, the constant reminder of his administration's only significant action is a crutch that Trump relies on to mask the complete lack of a concerted plan for handling the pandemic in the early weeks. fateful of its spread.
4. The wall at the southern border is nearing completion and is paid for by Mexico
These claims are totally untrue, like almost everything Trump says about this wall. The Mexicans did not pay the United States a single peso for the construction of the wall. Most of the new sections were built to replace obsolete sections and the distance covered by new structures would total less than ten kilometers. And I won't talk about the astronomical costs of the sections that have been built or renovated since taking office, over $ 20 million per thousand (1.6 km) according to some estimates, for a total cost of over $ 11 billion, which would make it, by far, the most expensive border wall in the world. It will be several years after the end of Trump's term to understand who has enriched themselves unduly at the expense of taxpayers in this gigantic undertaking.
7. Trump has a plan for health insurance
It's wrong. There is no plan. Trump keeps saying that a plan is in the "pipeline" and that it will be unveiled "within two weeks." This is even what he said just before taking power. His famous plan was never disclosed because there is no plan. Donald Trump does not have the beginning of the beginning of an idea about how the health care system works and every statement he makes on the subject only exposes the abysmal depth of his ignorance of the subject and his utter indifference. for the millions of his fellow citizens who will lose their health insurance if Republicans manage to completely dismantle the 2010 health care law.
8. Trump gave veterans the option to choose their health service providers
It's wrong. The law that allows veterans to access insured services outside the Veterans Administration's hospital network, the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014, was already in place when he took office. Trump has made marginal improvements to this law, but he consistently fails to mention that the one who gave veterans the option to seek care outside of the VA system was Barack Obama.
9. Tariffs on imports are paid by foreigners to the US Treasury
This is completely wrong. Customs tariffs are a tax paid by the importer of a product when it crosses the border. The cost of this tax is then passed on to consumers. It is true that foreign exporters lose something, because their sales volume may be reduced or because they may choose to reduce their selling price to avoid losing their share of the US market, but foreign exporters do not. not pay a penny to the US Treasury, no matter what Donald Trump may say, who constantly repeats this blatant lie. The tariffs imposed by Donald Trump have cost Americans billions.
10. Donald Trump cannot release his tax returns because they are under audit
It’s archival. There is no law or regulatory provision (see here, among others) that prevents the president from doing as all his predecessors have done since Richard Nixon and from making his tax returns public so that we can take the measure of his real or potential conflicts of interest, knowing to whom he owes hundreds of millions of dollars, to understand his business connections in China and Russia, to know the real extent of his fortune and to know how this alleged billionaire almost completely dodging the payment of income taxes for decades. He has been claiming since 2015 that he will release his tax returns at an unspecified point in the future. He never will.
