President Donald J. Trump once again dominates FactCheck.org’s “whoppers of the year” list with a series of falsehoods and distortions, starting with a series of impeachment-related topics. It’s the fifth consecutive year he’s been prominently featured on the list, starting in 2015, when FactCheck.org dubbed him the “King of Whoppers.”
FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, also notes this year that “Several other Trump deceptions — and falsehoods we identified from Democratic presidential candidates — offer a preview of issues that are likely to take center stage as the 2020 election cycle heats up: immigration, gun control, trade, taxes, climate change and manufacturing jobs.”
See a short video about the whoppers of the year here:
Among the claims made by Trump, in these excerpts from FactCheck.org’s article, are these:
- DNC Server Delusion. Refusing to give up on the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 elections and hacked the Democratic National Committee, Trump repeated the baseless assertion that Ukraine, or a “Ukrainian company,” has a DNC server.
- A Bogus Biden-Ukraine Narrative. Trump’s impeachment woes were triggered when he asked Ukrainian President Zelensky in the July 25 phone call to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. But before that, Trump said this in a Fox News interview that aired on May 19: “[Joe] Biden, he calls them and says, ‘Don’t you dare prosecute, if you don’t fire this prosecutor’ — the prosecutor was after his son. Then he said, ‘If you fire the prosecutor, you’ll be OK. And if you don’t fire the prosecutor, we’re not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees,’ or whatever he was supposed to give.” That’s a gross distortion of the facts.
- Wrong on the Whistleblower. Trump repeatedly made a string of false claims about the whistleblower report that accused him of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
The FactCheck.org whoppers of 2019 also include claims by Democrats, such as:
- Biden Rewrites History on Iraq War. During the second Democratic debate, former Vice President Joe Biden engaged in revisionist history on one of the defining issues of his career. Biden claimed that despite voting to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002 — a vote he calls a mistake — he opposed the Iraq War from “the moment” it began. That’s not accurate.
- Climate Change Confusion. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, wrongly said that “we could lose half the world’s oxygen because of what’s going on in the oceans.” Approximately half of the world’s oxygen comes from the ocean, but that doesn’t mean half of the world’s oxygen is at risk.
- Trump Did Ban Bump Stocks. Three months after the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks went into effect, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand gave a town hall audience the false impression that he reneged on his promise to ban the devices that can make semiautomatic rifles fire more rapidly.
Read more of the “The Whoppers of 2019” at FactCheck.org.
