On Monday, Trump made clear that his habit of getting the
facts wrong wasn’t limited to the rough-and-tumble nature of a primary
campaign: He made repeated, clearly false assertions throughout a high-profile
speech about the
Orlando
shooting, a major domestic crisis. The speech was read from a
teleprompter and presumably written over several hours and, one would imagine,
with the help of Trump’s staff.
"The mouth moves and the lies pour forth,"
wrote the
New Yorker’s David Remnick in a story published Monday morning about Trump’s
response to the shooting. And that was before Trump’s speech in the afternoon.
Here are 9 of the most egregious things Trump got wrong in
the speech.
1) Trump: There’s no screening for refugees coming to the
US
We're not screening people. So why don't we have an
effective screening system? We don't. We're being laughed at all over the
world. The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why we should admit anyone
into our country who supports violence of any kind against gay and lesbian
Americans.
The truth: Trump is wrong: There is an
extensive, onerous screening process for refugees who come to America. You can
see so yourself
here.
2) Trump criticizes Libya intervention, supported it
himself
For instance, the last major NATO mission was Hillary
Clinton's war in Libya. That mission helped unleash ISIS on a new continent.
The truth: Trump has repeatedly characterized
Libya as a unique failure of President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s foreign
policy. But he actively
supported that
intervention, even though he's spent much of his candidacy pretending he
didn't.
3) Trump: Clinton wants to admit "hundreds of
thousands" of refugees to the US
Altogether under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting
hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to
prevent radicalization of the children and their children.
The truth: Trump is wrong here as well: Clinton
has only
called for increasing the number of Syrian refugees by 65,000,
according to CNN.
4) Trump: The Orlando shooter was "born this
Afghan"
The killer, whose name I will not use or ever say was born
this Afghan, of Afghan parents, who emigrated to the United States.
The truth: Trump is wrong: Omar Saddiqui Mateen,
the killer,
was
born in New York and raised in Florida.
5) Trump: "Large numbers" of Somali refugees
joining ISIS
Large numbers of Somali refugees have tried to join ISIS.
The male shooter in San Bernardino, again whose name I will not mention, was
the child of immigrants from Pakistan and he brought his wife.
The truth: This dramatically misrepresents the
number of Somali refugees from the US who have joined ISIS, which a New York
Times
story pegs
at no more than 15. Perhaps Trump is speaking about Somali refugees globally,
but given when he made this point — during a part of his speech about domestic
terrorism — that’s almost certainly giving him too much credit.
6) Trump: Obama’s "famous apology tour" created
ISIS
We've tried it President Obama's way. Doesn't work. He gave
the world his apology tour. We got ISIS. And many other problems in return.
That's what we got. Remember the famous apology tour
The truth: There is a coherent conservative
critique of President Obama's speeches abroad, in which he has at times acknowledged
America's faults in foreign wars. And there is a coherent conservative critique
of President Obama's approach to defeating ISIS.
But Trump isn't engaging with either narrative. He's instead
just drawing a direct link from Obama "apology tour" to the birth of
ISIS, and I'm not aware of any serious attempt to connect the two. Trump
certainly doesn't give any reason to believe they're related.
Even if you look at the supposed apologies that have to do
with Islamic terrorism or the Muslim world, it’s not clear how they could have
possibly created ISIS.
7) Trump: Hillary Clinton wants to ban guns
[Hillary Clinton] says the solution is to ban guns. ... She
wants to take away Americans' guns and then admit the very people who want to
slaughter us. Let them come into the country. We don't have guns. ...
She wants to take away Americans' guns and then admit the
very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country. We don't
have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want.
The truth: Clinton has not called for anything
remotely resembling a ban on guns — she wants to
ban
assault weapons but has otherwise not called for a gun ban.
Someone listening to Trump's speech would have come away with an entirely
wrong
idea of her policy.
8) Trump’s criticism on pushing for regime change in
Syria
The decision to overthrow the regime in Libya, then pushing
for the overthrow of the regime in Syria, among other things, without plans for
the day after, have created space for ISIS to expand and grow.
The truth: As with his initial approval of the
Libya invasion, Trump has grossly distorted his record on Syria. (As Vox’s Matt
Yglesias
points
out, he once called for a "big, beautiful safe zone" in
the country.)
The weirder, specific problem here is the knock on Clinton
and Obama for creating ISIS by "pushing for the overthrow of the regime in
Syria" — when Trump has
himself calledfor ground troops in Syria.
9) Trump suggests Muslims need to do more to help fight
terrorism
They have to work with us. They know what is going on. They
know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you
know, what they didn't turn them in and we had death.
The truth: This line revives a long-running
Trump suggestion that Muslims are largely to blame for not really joining us in
the fight against terrorism. (Credit-Vox)
