Category: Not Factual

Trump claims his briefing on Russian cyberattacks was delayed, but US intelligence officer says otherwise

President-elect Donald Trump mocked US intelligence officials on Tuesday in a tweet claiming his briefing on Russian cyberattacks was delayed, and once again cast doubt on their claims that Russia interfered with the presidential election.

“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” Trump said on Twitter.

However, a senior US intelligence official immediately refuted Trump’s claim, saying the briefing with the heads of the NSA, CIA, DNI and the FBI was “always” scheduled for Friday, NBC News reported.

Last week, Trump said he agreed to meet with intelligence officials about Russia’s involvement in the hacks, although he added it was “time to move on.”

He also claimed he would reveal insider information about the cyberattacks on Tuesday or Wednesday, although a member of Trump’s team told CNN Trump would not be following through.

Lawmakers slammed Trump’s Tuesday night tweet.

“Really wish we saw more PEOTUS respect for our intelligence professionals,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said on Twitter. “Proves the need for Congress to give the American people a timely bipartisan probe.”

Incoming Senate Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, also weighed in — calling Trump’s comments “really dumb” during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer continued.

The FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence concluded in December that Russia interfered with the election in part to help Trump secure the presidency, with Russian president Vladimir Putin possibly being personally involved.

As punishment, President Barack Obama announced last week a new round of sanctions against Russia, including the removal of 35 intelligence Russian officials from the US. Trump has consistently questioned the allegations against Russia.

Tuesday’s tweet was another example of Trump’s dismissive attitude toward the intelligence agencies he’ll soon be working with. Last month, the president-elect brushed off concerns he wasn’t attending his traditional daily intelligence and national security briefings.

“I get it when I need it,” Trump said.

“I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” he added. “I don’t need that. But I do say, ‘If something should change, let us know.'”

(h/t Business Insider)

 

Trump’s Tweet That ObamaCare Doesn’t Work Is Full Of Shit

Trump sent out an early morning tweet blasting the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, by pointing out the increases in average prices from last year using one state as an example:

People must remember that ObamaCare just doesn’t work, and it is not affordable – 116% increases (Arizona). Bill Clinton called it “CRAZY”

However Trump used a state that decided not to fully implement ObamaCare, by neglecting to set up its own state-run insurance marketplace, which lead to higher rates. So this isn’t because of the design of ObamaCare, but how some mostly Republican states refused to fully implement it.

For comparison, states who fully implemented ObamaCare, such as California, saw only a 2% or less increase in rates, while Massachusetts and Indiana’s implementation was done so well they will actually see a drop in prices this year. States that were adversarial to a full implementation of Obamacare, like Arizona and Pennsylvania, will see the biggest price hikes, driving up the national average to a 22% increase nationally.

So don’t blame Obama for a massive price hike, but your state’s Republican governor.

But what Trump is also neglecting is that most Obamacare participants won’t feel the full price hike or anything near it, even in his cherry-picked state of Arizona.

Nationally, 85% of those enrolled receive a tax credit, which is based on the price of the second-lowest cost silver plan and an enrollee’s income. These subsidies put a limit on how much you have to pay.

Enrollees can also use their subsidies to buy lower-priced bronze or silver plans. That will allow more than three-fourths of current enrollees to pick a plan for $100 or less a month on the federal Healthcare.gov exchange.

 

On Twitter, Trump Defends Foundation, Ignores Legal Controversy Surrounding It

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday night to defend the charitable foundation he has pledged to close, saying the media had not given him enough credit for his generosity and ignoring the legal issues that ensnared the organization in controversy.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has come under intense scrutiny this year after reports in The Washington Post detailing its practices, including cases in which Trump apparently used the charity’s money to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses.

New York’s attorney general is investigating the charity, and a spokeswoman for that office said on Saturday that the foundation could not officially shut down until that probe is over. Among the issues at hand is whether Trump violated a “self-dealing” provision that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

“I gave millions of dollars to DJT Foundation, raised or recieved millions more, ALL of which is given to charity, and media won’t report!” Trump said in one Monday night tweet.

“The DJT Foundation, unlike most foundations, never paid fees, rent, salaries or any expenses. 100% of money goes to wonderful charities!” the president-elect said in another.

Trump and his companies gave about $6 million to his foundation since its launch in 1987, according to tax filings. The most recent tax filings go up to the end of 2015.

Other people have collectively given about $9.5 million. The biggest outside donors were Vince and Linda McMahon, two pro-wrestling moguls, who gave the Trump Foundation $5 million between 2007 and 2009. Trump recently nominated Linda McMahon to head the Small Business Administration.

Trump himself gave nothing to his foundation between 2009 and 2014, according to filings. His businesses contributed in 2015 for the first time in several years.

Experts on charities say it’s rare for the founder of a private, name-branded foundation to give nothing to his own foundation while relying entirely on donations from others. That anomaly allowed Trump to take advantage of the idea that the money in the foundation was his.

Trump’s donations to his foundation are also small, by the standards of billionaires’ philanthropy.

Filmmaker George Lucas, for instance, who is tied with Trump at 324th place in Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, donated $925 million to his family foundation in 2012. In 2014, Lucas’s foundation gave out $55 million in donations to museums, hospitals, artistic groups and environmental charities.

While much of the Trump foundation’s money has gone to charity, there are some high-profile exceptions.

In 2013, the Trump foundation gave a $25,000 gift to a campaign committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) even though nonprofits like the charity are not allowed to give political gifts.

That gift was made as Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. A consultant who worked on Bondi’s reelection effort has said that Bondi was not aware of the allegations when she solicited the donation from Trump. Ultimately, Bondi’s office did not pursue the fraud allegations.

Trump also reported using foundation money to buy items for himself, which runs afoul of federal tax law.

The Trump Foundation spent $30,000 to buy two large portraits of Trump himself, including one that was hung up in the sports bar at a Trump-owned resort. Trump also appears to have used $258,000 of his foundation’s money — legally earmarked for charitable purposes — to settle lawsuits involving two of his for-profit clubs.

The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced its investigation of the Trump Foundation after reports in The Post described such apparent cases of self-dealing that date back to 2007.

Trump’s foundation has admitted in IRS tax filings for 2015 that it violated a prohibition against “self-dealing” that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

In these tax filings, the charity checked “yes” in response to a question asking whether it had transferred any income or assets to “a disqualified person” — a description that could have meant Trump, a relative or a Trump-owned business.

Trump has not said what exactly he did to violate the rule, or what he has paid the IRS in penalty taxes as a result. The IRS has not commented when asked whether it was investigating the Trump Foundation.

The New York attorney general’s investigation is unlikely to lead to any kind of criminal charge. Instead, Trump may be required to repay his foundation the money it spent to help him, and he may have to personally pay penalty taxes worth 10 percent or more of the value of the self-dealing transactions.

Trump’s tweet was correct in that his foundation has low overhead. It has no paid staff, and only a five-member board. It also has spent almost nothing on legal fees, raising the question of whether the organization was aware of the legal problems it created.

Trump Takes False Credit for ‘$1 Trillion’ Holiday Shopping Boom

Twitter

President-elect Donald Trump is taking credit for a surge in US holiday spending that he says has exceeded $1 trillion.

But Americans haven’t spent close to that amount, according to the National Retail Federation.

Holiday spending is instead on track to reach a combined $656 billion in November and December, according to the NRF.

In a tweet Monday evening, Trump said the world was “gloomy” before he won the presidential election and “there was no hope.”

“Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!” he tweeted.

The Trump campaign didn’t provide a source for the $1 trillion figure, but it appears to come from a Deloitte study that was released in September, more than six weeks before Trump won the election.

The study forecast that holiday spending would exceed $1 trillion in the three months from November to the end of January, representing a 3.6% to 4% increase over last year’s.

There’s no evidence that spending has already hit that level.

Despite Trump’s tweet, the NRF says it’s sticking to its estimate of $656 billion in spending for the holiday period ending in December and said that projection would “either be met or exceeded.”

“We can’t compare our forecast with theirs since ours is only for November and December — it’s like comparing apples with oranges,” NRF spokeswoman Ana Smith said Tuesday of the Deloitte study.

Reality

One’s heart would need to be two sizes too small to take sole credit for Christmas.

Trump Claims NBC ‘Purposely’ Misquoted Nuclear Comments

President-elect Donald Trump claimed Saturday that NBC News “purposely” misquoted his call for an expansion of the U.S. nuclear program last week, despite reports to the contrary.

Trump on Thursday said the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Saturday he accused NBC of intentionally leaving out the latter, more measure portion of his statements.

“.@NBCNews purposely left out this part of my nuclear qoute: ‘until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.’ Dishonest!” the president-elect tweeted Saturday afternoon.

Trump did not specify when NBC supposedly left out a portion of his comments.

NBC News’ initial report covering Trump’s comments on nuclear expansion, however, cited his comments in full. And the Thursday broadcast of NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” displayed his comments in their entirety.

Trump’s claim of dishonesty in media coverage has been a calling card of his ascendance to the White House. Since winning the presidency, Trump has repeatedly attacked the media, broadly accusing them of inciting violence against him, singling out individual reporters and blasting the news media as “crooked.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Just by watching the NBC report shows Trump was intentionally lying.

Media

http://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/840644675837

Trump Again Asks Why Russian Hacking Wasn’t Addressed Before The Election, Even Though It Was

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday asked once again why Russia hacking the U.S. election wasn’t brought up before Nov. 8 ― even though it was.

In a tweet, Trump wondered why the White House didn’t “complain” about the hacking until after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The president-elect asked a similar question Monday morning while pushing a false claim that it’s hard to catch hackers in the act.

But the White House ― and many others, including intelligence officials, Clinton and even Trump himself ― did bring up the Russian hacking before the election.

Here’s part of a New York Times report from July 26:

American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.

But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

The emails were released by WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. It is unclear how the documents made their way to the group. But a large sampling was published before the WikiLeaks release by several news organizations and someone who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who investigators now believe was an agent of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service.

In an interview with Time magazine published Dec. 7, Trump discussed the U.S. intelligence community’s findings about Russia stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, saying he thought U.S. officials’ findings were politically motivated.

The CIA conducted a secret assessment of the U.S. election and concluded that Russia intervened in an effort to help Trump win the presidency, The Washington Post reported Dec. 9. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there’s “ample evidence” Trump was “obviously aware” Russia was involved in helping him win.

Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday that he thinks the hacking claims are “ridiculous.”

“I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Trump said.

Back in July, Trump said he hoped Russia would hack into Clinton’s emails.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said at a press conference.

(h/t Huffington Post)

 

Trump Tweets New Voter Fraud Claims, Blasts CNN, But Offers No Evidence

Donald Trump lashed out on Twitter Monday night and into early Tuesday morning over a CNN report refuting his unsubstantiated claims of mass voter fraud on Election Day.

The report by CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, airing on “Anderson Cooper 360” earlier Monday, dismissed Trump’s assertion that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” as “blatant and baseless” and accused Trump of acting as a “sore winner.” Zeleny also highlighted that the president-elect had yet to provide any “hard evidence” to back up his “staggering claims of fraud.”

In response, Trump fired off a series of tweets aimed at CNN and Zeleny, some original and some retweets of his online supporters, including one user who apparently is a teenager.

“CNN is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don’t know what to do,” the president-elect said.

Quoting a tweet directed at Zeleny that panned him as “just another generic CNN part time wannabe journalist,” Trump added: “CNN still doesn’t get it. They will never learn!”

In another quoted tweet, Trump cited a 16-year-old Twitter user who cast Zeleny as a “bad reporter.”

Zeleny replied: “Good evening! Have been looking for examples of voter fraud. Please send our way. Full-time journalist here still working.”

Trump continued his criticism into Tuesday morning, tweeting at 6:34 a.m.: “I thought that @CNN would get better after they failed so badly in their support of Hillary Clinton however, since election, they are worse!”

Trump’s Sunday claim of mass voter fraud in California, Virginia and New Hampshire was rebuffed by officials in all three states Monday.

“We have heard claims like this in the past, relative to our elections, but we have been provided no evidence that suggests that there is voter fraud on a widespread scale in New Hampshire,” David Scanlan, New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state, told POLITICO in a phone interview Monday.

(h/t Politico)

Trump: ‘I Won the Popular Vote If You Deduct’ Illegal Votes

Twitter

President-elect Donald Trump declared Sunday he would have won the popular vote if “illegal” votes were discounted.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The president-elect also tweeted that he would have won more easily if he had based his campaign strategy on winning the popular vote, instead of visiting states with a larger number of Electoral College votes.

Trump’s second series of tweets Sunday comes as Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign has said it will file for a recount in Michigan, and Pennsylvania, after making an effort in Wisconsin official. All three states are traditionally blue states that Trump won in the presidential election.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump predicted that the recount effort in three states will not change the results of the election.

“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in. Nothing will change,” he tweeted.

Clinton’s campaign is participating in the Wisconsin recount, which is already set to begin this week.

Clinton is currently leading Trump by more than 2 million in the popular vote. Politicians, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have called for an examination of using the Electoral College to decide who wins the presidency, rather than the popular vote.

Trump warned during his campaign that the election could be rigged, though election officials scoffed at the claims, noting the country’s use of a decentralized system in which ballots are counted by thousands of Democratic and Republican officials across the country.

The group of election lawyers and computer scientists pushing the recount effort says election results in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked.

However, there is no evidence of millions of people voting illegally, as Trump suggested on Twitter.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

No one candidate has done so much damage to the integrity of the democratic process as Donald Trump, constantly putting into question a fair and valid election, often calling it “rigged.”

Yet he is not above calling a recount of voting in several states a “scam.”

A Distraction From

Trump Rails Against New York Times for Reporting On His Transition ‘Disarray’

Twitter

Roughly 10 hours after tweeting that the process of picking his cabinet was “very organized,” President-elect Donald Trump railed against a New York Times report that his transition team was “in a state of disarray” and U.S. allies were “struggling” to reach him.

“The failing @nytimes story is so totally wrong on transition,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday morning. “It is going so smoothly. Also, I have spoken to many foreign leaders.”

According to the Times report, Trump’s transition has been “marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.”

But on Twitter, the president-elect asserted he’s taken “calls from many foreign leaders,” including Russia, the U.K., China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

“I am always available to them,” Trump tweeted, suggesting that the Times is “just upset that they looked like fools” in their coverage of his candidacy and are now taking it out on him.

On Sunday, Trump similarly criticized the paper’s “very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in last Tuesday’s presidential election, claiming the paper “is losing thousands of subscribers” as a result.

A spokeswoman for the Times said Trump’s tweet was simply inaccurate.

“We’ve seen a surge in new subscriptions, both print and digital,” Eileen Murphy, senior vice president of communications for the Times, wrote in an email to Yahoo News. “And the rate of growth post-Election Day has been four times better than normal.”

He then claimed that the Times “sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me.” But the letter — sent by Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Dean Baquet to subscribers thanking them for their loyalty — did not include an apology.

Trump also took issue with the Times’ assertion that he “has suggested that more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.”

In an interview with the Times in March, however, Trump suggested exactly that.

In his interview “60 Minutes” which aired on CBS Sunday night, Trump said he’s going to be “very restrained” in his use of Twitter as commander in chief. But he said he would reserve the right to use it as a “method” to combat what he perceives as negative stories about him.

“I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all,” Trump said. “I’m not saying I love it, but it does get the word out.”

Before his latest rant against the Times on Wednesday, Trump pushed back against reports that he had requested security clearances for three of his children.

“I am not trying to get ‘top level security clearance’ for my children,” he tweeted. “This was a typically false news story.”

But according to NBC News, Team Trump has asked that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, have top-secret clearance for the daily presidential briefing.

(h/t Yahoo News)

Trump Keeps Up Media Attacks With Misleading Tweets About New York Times

Twitter

President-elect Donald Trump sounded very much like presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday morning in a pair of misleading tweets about the New York Times.

According to the New York Times Co.’s latest earnings report, the number of print copies it sold in the third quarter was down from the same period in 2015, but the decline was more than offset by 116,000 new digital-only subscriptions. Overall, third-quarter circulation revenue rose 3 percent; through the first nine months of the year, circulation revenue was up 2.8 percent.

Since Trump launched his White House campaign in June 2015, digital-only news subscriptions to the Times have increased 35 percent, to more than 1.3 million.

Trump’s suggestion that the Times is bleeding readers because of “very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” does not square with the numbers.

The president-elect’s interpretation of a letter to subscribers as an apology for bad coverage is a stretch. Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. wrote Friday that one of the “inevitable questions” in the aftermath of the campaign is: “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”

“As we reflect on this week’s momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism,” Sulzberger added.

Trump’s tweet mirrored coverage of the letter in some conservative media outlets, which seized on portions of Sulzberger’s message. “NY Times admits biased coverage on Trump,” read a headline on Newsmax. A headline on Breitbart News, chaired by Trump campaign chief executive Steve Bannon, read, “New York Times publisher promises to ‘rededicate’ paper to honest reporting.”

“Had the paper actually been fair to both candidates, it wouldn’t need to rededicate itself to honest reporting,” Michael Goodwin wrote in the New York Post.

Yet Sulzberger’s full letter makes clear that he was simply renewing a promise that he believes the Times fulfilled during the campaign.

“We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign,” he wrote. “You can rely on the New York Times to bring the same level of fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.”

(h/t Washington Post)

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