Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Woke up, rubbed my eyes, heard another pack of lies…

Another day, another pack of lies from the Prevaricator-in-Chief.

Apparently, everything Donald Trump said yesterday was a lie. Well, probably not everything. If he said he wanted toast for breakfast that was possibly true. If he said he wanted to wear a long red tie, or a blue one with white stripes, that could have been true. And he did say that everything bad that has happened to his administration was someone else’s fault.

That last statement, in and of itself, is also a lie, but then he added, “We're not getting the job done. And I'm not going to blame myself, I'll be honest." So Trump announced that he is not getting the job done and he is not blaming himself for his own failures. Now that, my friends, is the truth.

But back to the lies. Keep in mind, this was all in one, uh, day in the life.

(1) In a cabinet meeting, he said the Affordable Care Act is dead. It is not.

It's true that Trump has done everything he could through Executive Order to kill Obamacare, including withholding funds to advertise the enrollment period, frightening insurance companies out of the marketplace and now cutting off funds to pay government subsidies for enrollees, but the ACA lives on. Premium rates are already established for 2018, open enrollment starts in two weeks and millions of Americans are lining up for health insurance that they couldn’t otherwise obtain.

Lawsuits have been filed against the Trump order, members of Congress are weighing options to reinstate the subsidies and other suggestions are being kicked around, so the ACA is alive and…well, it’s not alive and ‘well,’ but it’s alive all the same.

(2) He claimed that former presidents never called the families of slain American soldiers, making Trump the first one to ever do that. This is so blatantly not true that after he said it at a press conference, he had to walk it back before the same event had even concluded.

Presidents all through history have communicated with the families of our slain warriors as part of their solemn duty to America. Note the use of the words “through history,” which explains why Trump didn’t know that. Within minutes after Trump said this, the sister of a soldier killed in action talked about President Bush hugging her as she cried, and reports came out that President Obama not only communicated with families but also visited the graves of lost soldiers in secret and alone because he didn’t want to call attention to himself.

(3) Trump told reporters that Puerto Rico’s electrical grid had been a shambles before Hurricane Maria, and the storm further destroyed all of the power plants on the island. Again, not true.

Maria brought down power lines and damaged poles and transmission towers – and much of the island is still without electricity – but all of the power plants survived with little or no damage. It’s probably true that Puerto Rico’s electrical grid was not the finest in the world before the storm, but everything Trump said after that is a lie.

(4) Next, Trump announced that his relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “is outstanding” and “has been outstanding” for many years since before Trump was a candidate. This is the same Mitch McConnell that Trump spent all summer criticizing for dropping this ball and that ball and who is now being targeted for overthrow by Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

And finally:

(5) Trump proclaimed, “With the exception of a few – and that is a very small few – I have a fantastic relationship with the people in the Senate, and with the people in Congress… Just so you understand, the Republican Party is very, very unified.”

I’m just going to leave that right there, but if you want to read a bunch of other lies, google "Trump press conference." There's some more doozies in there.

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