Donald Trump’s collisions with history make fact-checking critical
Aug 16, 2016, 5:58 AM | Updated: 9:29 am
Yesterday, Donald Trump gave a foreign policy speech, officially backing off his claim that Barack Obama actually founded ISIS. But then, as CBS’s Major Garrett reports, Trump also repeated another false claim.
“I was an opponent of the Iraq War from the beginning,” Trump said.
That’s been fact checked. And so Major called him out on it. He explained that the Republican candidate didn’t express skepticism about the invasion until five months after it began.
Related: Latest Clinton scandal is nothing compared to this quote
Fact-checking takes time and can be boring, which is why it usually ends up buried somewhere. But Trump’s collisions with history have become so blatant that it’s made fact-checking immediate. And it’s hurting him.
For example, in the same speech he again accused Barack Obama of tipping off terrorists that the US was pulling out of Iraq.
“They said we’re moving out, here’s our time, here’s our date. Who would do this but an incompetent president?” he asked.
But Major Garrett was able to do an immediate fact check and found that Trump’s criticism left out the fact that President George W. Bush negotiated and approved the timeline!
Of course, both candidates have truth problems. Politifact rated 28 percent of Hillary Clinton’s statements as false. But Donald Trump pins the needle 70 percent of the time.
If Trump is going have any chance he can’t keep repeating statements that have already been proven false! He’s got to do what the experienced politicians do: come up with new and more subtle misstatements. That way the fact-checking takes time and ends up buried somewhere.
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