A League Of His Own

Jan. 8, 2016

The political prognosticators seem to be at odds concerning Donald Trump.

The majority group believes his poll numbers are overstated, a result of researchers using a target universe including all Republican voters instead of those most likely to vote. On the other side are those now claiming Trump’s support is understated because many of his supporters are embarrassed to admit it.

We’ll find out soon enough in Iowa. If the latter group is right, Trump is likely to have a very long and unproductive caucus night.

A word about the Iowa caucuses might be in order.

The exercise in Iowa has no relationship at all to going to a polling place and casting a secret ballot. Supporters of various candidates will gather in schools and fire stations and in meeting rooms and absolutely nothing about the process of declaring support will be secret. There will be open debates and choices may be challenged.

If Trump supporters are shy about their support, the Iowa caucuses are the last place they’ll want to be. True believers show up, while the faint of heart stay home.

Regardless, The Donald certainly had himself a spectacular 2015, and he was able to do it without paying any attention to facts at all.

We understand politicians are prone to embellish their accomplishments and diminish their mistakes. They’re all fighters who love children and veterans. None, apparently, ever supported anything that didn’t work out. Their campaign claims fall somewhere between rhetorical excess and outright fabrication. We just roll our eyes or hit the mute button and move along.

Trump is in another league altogether; he just makes up stuff. “Telling it like it is” his supporters claim. Others would call it lying.

Thanks to the good folks at FactCheck.org, we are able to catalog Trump’s tall tales. There have been so many it’s hard to know where to start.

He claimed he “predicted” Osama bin Laden. Except in all of Trump’s known public musings, bin Laden was mentioned once, in passing, in a book. It predicted nothing.

He claimed Mexico has no birthright citizenship laws. He especially likes to make the claim when ranting about illegal immigrants and the Great Wall he will make Mexico build. Except it isn’t true. Mexico actually has birthright citizenship laws fairly similar to ours.

He still likes to claim his campaign is 100 percent self-financed. Except that it isn’t. Campaign finance reports tell us more than 50 percent of the Trump campaign war chest comes from outside donations.

He claimed he “heard” from “inside sources” that President Obama will issue an Executive Order “to take away your guns.” More recently he claimed nobody will be able to “get any guns.” Except we now know Obama’s Executive Order will simply expand background checks to include gun show gun sales, something more than 70 percent of Americans and more than half of Republicans support.

He claimed he’ll be able to deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin because he got to know him “very well” when both were profiled on “60 Minutes.” Except they had no contact at all; the interviews were conducted at different times in different countries thousands of miles apart.

He claimed he “heard” the president is planning to accept 200,000 Syrian refugees and has recently increased the number to 250,000. Except the actual number being suggested is 20,000.

He claimed someone he knows had a twoyear-old who became autistic after receiving a vaccination. This is an especially dangerous lie that has been disproven in literally thousands of studies over many years. Vaccines don’t cause autism or asthma or anything else other than immunity from what used to be extremely dangerous childhood diseases. Which is likely why Trump made sure his own children were vaccinated.

He claimed there are “no jobs to be had, none” in the United States. Except there are currently 5.4 million job openings in the country, the most in 15 years.

He claimed economic growth “... has never been below zero. Who ever heard of that?” Well, several former presidents, Congressional leaders and economists have heard of it, since it has happened in 42 reporting quarters just since 1946, about 15 percent of the time.

Then there is the granddaddy of all Trump lies. He claimed he saw video of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims “cheering” in the streets of New Jersey on 9/11. Except that no such video has ever surfaced because it does not exist. Nor did any citizens or police officers or anybody else ever report any such thing because it did not happen.

On Feb. 1, we will learn if any of it makes any difference to Iowa caucus-goers. Meanwhile, FactCheck.org has already started their 2016 list.