Watched the speech. Have to agree that the Democrats looked like disgruntled adolescents. However I also noted some things that Trump got wrong ..... or do they count as 'alt-facts'?
****Trump addresses joint session of Congress****
1.... Fact check: Trump on cutting costs from F-35 program
“We’ve saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of the fantastic new F-35 jet fighter, and will be saving billions more dollars on contracts all across our government.”
THE FACT CHECKER | Trump once again takes credit for the lowered cost of the F-35 program, but the Pentagon had announced cost reductions of roughly $600 million before Trump began meeting with Lockheed Martin’s chief executive. Sometimes Trump says he saved $600 million, other times $700 million.
2.... Fact Check: Bans on Lobbying
“We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a 5-year ban on lobbying by Executive Branch Officials – and a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.”
THE FACT CHECKER | Trump did sign an order that he said would result in a lifetime ban on administration officials lobbying for foreign governments. But his five-year ban on lobbying is less than advertised. Trump has originally promised to extend the ban to congressional officials, but he did not. Moreover, the five-year ban applies only to lobbying one’s former agency — not becoming a lobbyist. Moreover, Trump actually weakened some of the language from similar bans under Obama and George W. Bush, and reduced the level of transparency.
3.... Fact check: Trump claim on murders by unauthorized immigrants
“Jamiel’s 17-year-old son was viciously murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member, who had just been released from prison. Jamiel Shaw Jr. was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential who was getting ready to go to college where he would have excelled as a great quarterback. But he never got the chance. His father, who is in the audience tonight, has become a good friend of mine.”
THE FACT CHECKER | Trump likes to use anecdotes as evidence for associating violent crimes with illegal immigration, telling stories of victims of homicide by undocumented immigrants. He brought family members of those killed by illegal immigrants as his guest to tonight’s speech. He often talks about the death of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a 17-year-old football star who was killed in 2008 by a gang member who was in the country illegally.
Clearly, stories like this exist. But the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit Trump’s description of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder. U.S. Sentencing Commission data shows homicides are a small percentage of the crimes committed by noncitizens, whether they are in the United States illegally or not.
The Congressional Research Service found that the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit in the category of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder, drug trafficking or illegal trafficking of firearms.
4.... Fact Check: $6 trillion spent in the “Middle East’
“America has spent approximately six trillion dollars in the Middle East, all this while our infrastructure at home is crumbling. With this six trillion dollars we could have rebuilt our country –- twice.”
THE FACT CHECKER | Here’s his $6 trillion figure! The president uses it in a particular misleading way, as the $6 trillion-figure adds in estimates of
future spending, such as interest on the debt and veterans care for the next three decades. Yet Trump says that this money (not yet spent) could have rebuilt the U.S. economy.
As we noted earlier, the wars in Iraq (in the Middle East) and Afghanistan (in South Asia) together cost about $1.6 trillion from 2001 to 2014.
5.... Fact check: Trump claim on violent crime
“The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century. In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone — and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher. This is not acceptable in our society.”
THE FACT CHECKER | In 2015, there was the biggest percentage jump in a single year since 1970-1971, or 45 years ago. In 2016, there was an uptick in the homicide rate in the 30 largest cities. One outlier city — Chicago — was responsible for 43.7 percent of the total increase in homicide rates in 2016. But overall, violent crime is on a decades-long decline, since the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s.
Crime trends can randomly fluctuate year to year. Many factors affect such rates, including the weather. This is why criminologists do not make generalizations about crime trends based on short-term comparisons of rates, such as annual or monthly changes. They consider the data over much longer periods of time — at least 10 to 15 years — to make conclusions about trends.
as well as:
FBI: US Homicide Rate at 51-Year Low
6.... Fact Check: Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force
“Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.”
THE FACT CHECKER | This is an absurd Four-Pinocchio claim, based on a real number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, relying on a monthly survey known as the Current Population Survey (CPS), shows that, as of January 2016, 94.4 million Americans 16 years and older were “not in labor force.”
How is this number developed? Well, there is a civilian noninstitutional population of 254.1 million people, and 159.7 million are in the labor force. The difference yields the 94.4 million figure.
But the unemployment rate is only 4.8 percent because just 7.6 million people actively are looking for a job and cannot find one. They are considered part of the overall labor force. In other words, you have to be seeking a job to be counted in the labor force.
Who are the 94 million not in the labor force? The BLS has data for the year 2015. It turns out that 93 percent do not want a job at all. The picture that emerges from a study of the data shows that the 95 million consists mostly of people who are retired, students, stay-at-home parents or disabled.
Trump is doing a real disservice in citing this 94 million figure and suggesting it means these people are looking for work.
7.... To argue for stricter vetting of immigrants, Trump invokes attacks carried out by U.S. citizens
The male San Bernardino shooter was born in Illinois; his wife, with whom he carried out the attack, was born in Pakistan. (The FBI said the male gunman had been plotting attacks for years before he met her.) The Boston Marathon bombers were brothers born in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. Neither country was mentioned in Trump’s original ban, nor are they expected to be on the revised version. (The younger of the brothers, who was sentenced to death for the bombing, was a naturalized U.S. citizen.) None of the Sept. 11 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 were from countries on the ban list. (Most were from Saudi Arabia, while the rest were from Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.)
Trump’s comments about most people convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 — rather than people who actually carried out attacks — could be true, but the Department of Homeland Security, analyzing his travel ban, recently noted a data point that stands in contrast to it.
Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, the report said, more than half of the 82 people who died in the pursuit of or were convicted of any terrorism-related offense inspired by a foreign terrorist organization, slightly more than half were native-born U.S. citizens.
ince 2001, every deadly jihadist attack inside the United States was carried out by a U.S. citizen or legal resident, according to data collected by New America, a Washington-based nonprofit group. “Far from being foreign infiltrators, the large majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States have been American citizens or legal residents,” the group said in a report on its findings.
8.... Fact check: Trump exaggerates the impacts of illegal immigration
“By finally enforcing our immigration laws we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars and make our communities safer for everyone.”
THE FACT CHECKER | Trump exaggerates the impact of illegal immigration on crime, taxpayer money and jobs.
Extensive research shows noncitizens are not more prone to criminality than U.S.-born citizens. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are not criminal aliens or aggravated felons.
Trump appears to reference the cost of illegal immigration from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. According to the group, the annual cost of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level were about $113 billion as of 2013.
But this calculation makes assumptions that are not necessarily tied to illegal immigration, like enrollment in limited English proficiency classes. The enrollment number doesn’t tell you anything about the actual citizenship status of students (i.e., they could be native-born children of undocumented immigrants, raised in a non-English-speaking home).
9.... Fact Check: ‘Trillions’ spent overseas
“We’ve spent trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled.”
THE FACT CHECKER: Trump often incorrectly claims that the United States spent $6 trillion on the wars in the Middle East (while including Afghanistan) but here he plays it safe. The wars in Iraq (in the Middle East) and Afghanistan (in South Asia) together cost about $1.6 trillion from 2001 to 2014. His $6 trillion-figure adds in estimates of future spending, such as interest on the debt and veterans care for the next three decades.
Former president Barack Obama often pleaded with the GOP-led Congress to pass a major infrastructure bill but never received much support. We will see if Trump has any more success.
10....Trump vows “clean air and clean water” as EPA cuts loom
Trump’s vow “to promote clean air and clear water” Tuesday evening drew howls from environmental advocates, who noted that only hours earlier he had signed an executive order aimed at unraveling an Obama-era regulation known as the Clean Water Rule.
His comments came amid reports that the Trump administration wants to make significant cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, rolling back numerous regulations of recent years and shrinking the agency’s overall role. The agency’s newly confirmed administrator, Scott Pruitt, repeatedly sued the EPA in recent years, arguing that it had overreached its legal authority.
On the campaign trail last year, Trump made clear his disdain for the agency. “We are going to get rid of it in almost every form,” he said. “We’re going to have little tidbits left. But we’re going to take a tremendous amount out.”
Above from
Washington Post
More at:
Trump Check-Fact-checking and context for President Donald Trump's address to Congress
Insofar as calling on the widow of the S.E.A.L. ... I await the reaction of the dead man's father. The father who already stated he "did not want Trump to hide behind his son's body" but wanted an investigation in the how / why. As to the "valuable intell collected" .. the military has already stated that there was no intell of value gathered.
I think Trump needs his staff to do better research for him. Using figures that can be easily disproved just isn't a good idea.
