By Andy May
The New York Times published a list of Trump’s “lies,” told during the period January 21 through November 2017, on December 14, 2017 here. It contains 106 unique Trump statements. I’ve classified these statements, in as objective a way as possible, but obviously many of these judgements are subjective and others might classify them differently. To help others review my work, I prepared a spreadsheet database that can be downloaded here. The database contains the date, the “lie,” an explanation, one or two sources for more information and context, the category for the “lie,” an explanation for the category, the New York Times (NYT) category, and an explanation for the NYT category. Table 1 is an example table entry and Table 2 describes the categories.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Explanation | NYT Cat | NYT Explanation | |
| 2/6 | “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” | Trump’s opinion is shared by many, including Jeb Bush and Ben Carson. | Npr.org | 0 | An opinion shared by many | 5 | Data and reporting from 2015 show this is a very valid opinion, a clear NYT lie. |
Table 1. The first column is the date, the second is the supposed lie from the New York Times list, the third is the discussion and context, the fourth is a reference, the fifth can be a second reference (blank in this entry), the sixth is the Trump category (zero means Trump is telling the truth), the seventh is the explanation for the Trump category, the eighth is the category for the New York Times claim the statement is a lie (5 means the NYT claim is a lie) and the last column is the explanation for the NYT category.
Figure 1. Source: John Pritchett and Vlad Tarko, the University of Chicago.
The example in Table 1 is a case where the New York Times claimed Trump lied, when he didn’t in my opinion and in the opinion of many others including Jeb Bush and Ben Carson. Legitimate differences of opinion are not lies, especially when supported by data. I show this example because 35 of the 106 NYT accusations of Trump “lies” fall in this category, it is the largest of the six groups listed in Table 2. This is also a perfect example of something very common in the New York Times list, what I call a “manufactured lie.” The New York Times will search for some aspect or view point of a statement that is contradicted by a fact, usually unrelated to the meaning of the statement and often a stretch of logic, then based on that unrelated fact call the statement a lie. In this case, the New York Times says ISIS was formed, from a group with another name, that was created in 2004. Therefore, they say Obama’s pull-out was unrelated to the creation of ISIS. This is obvious nonsense, the ISIS that we were fighting, until Trump squashed it, rose to power only after Obama’s pull-out, regardless of its origins. I refer the interested reader to the database where there are 35 excellent examples of this type of New York Times lie.
The sources provided in the database are the sources I found the most informative, they are not the only sources I checked. I do not necessarily agree with their conclusions but thought they contained the necessary documentation to show that Trump did or did not lie and to classify the statement. Often the source the New York Times references is one of the sources listed, do not expect all the listed sources to be sympathetic to Trump.
| Categories used for the New York Times list of Trump’s lies and misleading statements | ||
| Categories | Name | Definition |
| 0 | True, perhaps with minor mistake or inaccuracy | True or getting minor numbers or dates wrong, but the gist is right. |
| 1 | Misleading | Slanting a news story by leaving out available pertinent data. Or oversimplifying a statement too much, hiding the complexity. |
| 2 | Advocacy | Advocating for one point of view in a news story and ignoring or hiding available evidence for the opposing point of view |
| 3 | Misquoting | Quoting a portion of a statement that clearly meant something else when the full statement is heard or a major mix up of the facts. |
| 4 | Misrepresentation | Stating an opinion as if it were a fact, deceptive hair-splitting, manufacturing a lie from a true statement based on tricky semantics. |
| 5 | Lying | Making a statement that simply is not true when clear evidence it is not true is easily available, implying intent to deceive. |
Table 2
Table 3 summarizes the results of our investigation of the New York Times list. The columns are the categories I assigned to the New York Times explanation of why they think the Trump statements are lies. The rows are my evaluation of the Trump statement after researching it. I paid close attention to the full statement, so I knew the context and his meaning. The categories overlap to a certain extent and often a statement would fit into more than one category, generally I picked the higher category in that case. This is subjective, and many will probably not agree with my categorization of all the statements, but I did try to be as objective as possible. Categories 4 and 5 are dependent upon intent to deceive. Intent is impossible to discern. I would only categorize a statement or NYT opinion as a 4 or 5 if clear evidence existed at the time that the statement or opinion was false, and I had reason to believe either Trump or the New York Times knew it. A statement (or NYT judgement) can be a 4 if an opinion, even an “expert” opinion is presented as a fact and all experts do not share that opinion. Presenting a controversial opinion, regardless of the source, as a fact is a very common error in “professional” journalism today.
| New York Times lies | |||||||
| Trump lies | 0, True | 1, Misleading | 2, Advocacy | 3, Misquoting | 4, Misrep. | 5, Lying | Grand Total |
| 0, True | 5 | 2 | 2 | 21 | 35 | 65 | |
| 1, Misleading | 6 | 1 | 5 | 12 | |||
| 2, Advocacy | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||
| 3, Misquoting | 5 | 5 | |||||
| 4, Misrepresentation | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 11 | ||
| 5, Lying | 9 | 1 | 1 | 11 | |||
| Grand Total | 16 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 34 | 35 | 106 |
Table 3.
Table 3 clearly shows that, at least in my view, the New York Times lied about Trump’s lies more than he lied (NYT: 69; Trump: 22). In several cases, I found earlier articles in the New York Times that supported Trump’s statement. Some examples are given in Table 4. Regarding the example statement on March 4, the New York Times simply says there is “no evidence” of a wiretap. This is silly, especially since on January 20, 2017 they ran a front-page story suggesting that Trump headquarters had been wiretapped. The flimsy excuse that the wiretap may have been targeted at a foreign person makes no difference. Further, now we have the actual FISA warrants (redacted to be sure) that authorized the spying (OK, OK “paid informant”) on the Trump campaign. The NYT does some incredible verbal gymnastics to attempt to make some of Trump’s statements look like lies, but they fail miserably. The NYT says the Chinese stopped manipulating their currency “years ago” on April 29, but on April 14 they blast Trump because he “reversed his position” and won’t condemn China for currency manipulation. One wonders if there is any communication on the NYT newsroom floor.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Expl. | NYT Cat | NYT Expl | |
| 3/4 | “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” | As we all know now, this is true, and evidence existed in 2017 as well. The New York Times presented evidence in their paper in January 2017. | National Review | 0 | TRUE | 5 | Not only a lie from the NYT, but hypocritical, since they reported on the spying. Egregious hair-splitting. | |
| 4/29 | “As you know, I’ve been a big critic of China, and I’ve been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” | NYT says they stopped years ago, not likely. They also argued the opposite, hypocritically, on 4/14/2017. The Chinese did stop during the campaign and for the first part of 2017, they started again late in 2017 and Trump jumped all over them then and now. The Times got this wrong and they clearly knew that, it was in their paper. | Forbes | 0 | They stopped during the election. | 5 | They got this completely wrong and should have known. | |
| 4/29 | “I think our side’s been proven very strongly. And everybody’s talking about it.” | The NYT claims there is no evidence the Trump campaign phones were tapped. Everyone knows about the spying on the Trump campaign and the phone taps. We have the FISA warrants and sworn congressional testimony. The NYT reported the phones were tapped in a front-page story Jan. 20, 2017 on their front page. | W.Times | 0 | TRUE | 5 | A knowing lie, the NYT reported about the wiretapping as early as Jan. 20, 2017 |
Table 4. Examples where the New York Times contradicts itself, apparently to “get” Trump.
Category 1 is meant to capture sloppy journalism, that is the reporter (or Trump) asserted something unsubstantiated and doesn’t discuss or mention readily available data or information that shows the opposite. We found 12 Trump statements in this category and 15 New York Times claims. There are many examples of “Misleading” in the database, Table 5 is one example.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Trump Cat | Trump Explanation | NYT Cat | NYT Expl |
| 1/25 | “You had millions of people that now aren’t insured anymore.” | The Obamacare fiasco is a very complex subject and there are data out there to support almost any view, both Trump and the NYT are guilty of over-simplifying and offering opinions as fact. Roughly 7 to 8 million people had their health insurance canceled when Obamacare went into effect in 2014. | 1 | More accurate: millions lost their policies. | 1 | “1” is generous, 3 or 4 possible here. |
Table 5. Example category 1 from the database.
Category 2 is advocating for or against a cause. Politicians, lawyers and businessmen can advocate for a cause, they are expected to, it is part of their job. They can legitimately present the facts that support their point of view and ignore or downplay contrary facts, but Trump has gone over-the-top doing this a couple of times. The New York Times was guilty of doing this four times. This is called bias, advocates are biased, but a newspaper of the stature of the New York Times is expected to be unbiased. It is expected to dig out both sides of an argument and present them fairly in news stories. Thus, we feel justified in using a higher standard when judging the NYT, versus Trump, when it comes to bias. Editorials are obviously biased and generally present only one side of an argument, so we have not included any statements from editorials in our list unless they are out-and-out lies (category 5). Table 6 presents an example of a category 2 statement by the NYT.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Explanation | NYT Cat | NYT Explanation | |
| 6/1 | “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” | The NYT says the deal doesn’t allow or disallow coal plants. This is a stupid technicality, when we know India and China are building or planning to build hundreds of coal-powered electric plants and submitted their plans including the plants. What Trump says is clearly true, our plan had no plants in it. | IER | 0 | TRUE | 2 | Pure advocacy, no truth. A “manufactured” lie, Trump’s point sailed right over their heads. |
Table 6. Example category 2 from the database.
Category 3 is not common in this list, which is a bit surprising. This is carefully selecting a portion of a person’s statement and presenting it in a news story with an artificially constructed meaning that is different from what the person said. Trump did this five times and the New York Times twice. See an example in Table 7.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Explanation | NYT Cat | NYT Explanation | |
| 6/21 | “You have a gang called MS-13. … We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands.” | 5,400 gang members were deported in 2017. They were not all MS-13 gang members, but they were from gangs. Trump’s full quote is not clear that he is saying MS-13 members are deported by the thousands, it sounds more like he is saying gang members. | Independent | 0 | MS-13 does not connect with thousands deported | 3 | Politifact and NYT put words in Trump’s mouth by selectively quoting him. |
Table 7. Example category 3 from the database.
Category 4 is very common. It is when the news article (or Trump) present an opinion, often by someone they have characterized as an “expert” and treat it as a fact. This is only acceptable when all other experts agree with the person quoted. If there are equally qualified people that disagree with the selected “expert” their opinions need to be stated in the news article or speech and both statements treated as what they are, opinions. Both the New York Times and Trump are guilty of “opinion shopping,” that is searching for someone they can call an expert and has the opinion they want. However, the New York Times is far worse than Trump and, in this list, did it 34 times, versus 11 for Trump. This type of misleading statement is very close to lie in our opinion. Table 8 is an example.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Explanation | NYT Cat | NYT Explanation | |
| 3/22 | “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” | Trump is correct, NATO did not join the war on ISIS until they announced they would join in a non-combat role 25 May 2017. Trump has encouraged NATO to make a more active role in combating terrorism and is making some progress. NYT claims NATO has fought terrorism since 1980s, is true, but this was not the terrorism Trump was talking about. | Independent | 0 | TRUE | 4 | This is generous, a 5 might be justified here. |
Table 8. Example category 4 from the database.
Category 5, an out-and-out lie, is more common than you might think. The list has the New York Times telling 35 lies about Trump statements, but only contains 11 out-and-out lies by Trump. This is a statement, in a news article or in an editorial, that is clearly false and clear evidence existed at the time the article was published, or the speech was given, that it was false. Table 1 is an example of a New York Times lie. Table 9 is an example of a Trump lie.
| Date | Trump “lie” | Discussion | Source 1 | Trump Cat | Trump Expl | NYT Cat | NYT Expl | |
| 7/17 | “We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever.” | Trump is wrong here. The highest recent number is 228 signed by Eisenhower. | politifact | 5 | False and he should have known | 0 | Trump’s 42 bills don’t come close to Eisenhower’s 228 or Kennedy’s 200 |
Table 9. Example Trump lie (5) from the database.
With roughly 22 exceptions, Trump’s 106 statements are plausible interpretations of the facts known at the time. But, of the 106 statements the New York Times calls lies, we only found eleven that were clear lies where clear evidence that they were wrong was obviously easily available. The New York Times does not categorize the statements in their Trump list, every misstatement is jumbled together and called an “outright lie.” Some of Trump’s statements are hyperbole, some are exaggerations, some are clearly his opinion and stated as such, some are obvious minor mistakes. Generally, the mistake is some hyperbolic statement, like he has the all-time record for being on the cover of Time magazine, an innocent mistake for sure since he was on the cover 11 times, but it can hardly be called a lie. The New York Times is not allowed such mistakes, they are a news organization, researching and reporting and explaining the truth is their job. So, we are holding the New York Times to a higher standard than President Trump and that is fair. They must get it right. Trump is a businessman, politician and candidate. He is a professional advocate, first for his business, then for himself as a candidate and finally for the country. The New York Times has become an advocate for the left, which is antithetical to their standards and ethics statement:
“The core purpose of The New York Times is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news and information. Producing content of the highest quality and integrity is the basis for our reputation and the means by which we fulfill the public trust and our customers’ expectations.”
After investigating the list of supposed Trump “lies,” I concluded that the New York Times violated the “highest quality and integrity” portion of their standards. It would be interesting to hear their arguments that they met this standard in light of the spreadsheet database I created. I checked each “Trump Lie” claim, both the Trump statement and the New York Times characterization of the statement. My results are similar to previous attempts by the Conservative Daily News and The Maven, but more complete. Sometimes the New York Times is correct and sometimes Trump is correct, usually they are both a little wrong and the statement is a matter of opinion. The New York Times clearly lied 35 times and Trump lied 11 times, but the facts needed to tell which is correct in the remaining 60 statements do not exist.
Trump is prone to hyperbole and careless wording when speaking but calling every mistake and inaccuracy a lie is over-the-top and just not true. We have used the category zero when a statement contains a minor numerical or date inaccuracy, but the gist of the statement is clearly correct. Figure 1 is a plot of the count of NYT reported lies by month from January 2017 through November 2017. These are the latest figures the NYT has published as of this writing. The count of categories 1 through 5 are plotted in blue and the count of the well-defined lies (4 and 5) are shown in orange. The zero category is ignored since these are either true or obvious minor mistakes.
Figure 2. A plot of the number of Trump “lies” per month for the period.
Trump had a bad month in February and July wasn’t great, but generally he has improved a lot since he took office. He had never been a politician before and was greeted with a firestorm upon his inauguration, so it isn’t surprising that he had a couple of bad months. The improvement is nice to see.
Conclusions and discussion
In the past, presidents and most elected officials only rarely challenged the press, even when the press was clearly wrong. An example is the claim that Gore said he “invented the internet.” He never said that, he just said correctly and accurately that he pushed its development from the Senate. Claiming he said that is a lie of type “3” in our list. That is misquoting or selective quoting to change a clearly intended meaning. Gore has not fought back very hard on this and the lie that Gore said he invented the internet cannot be dislodged now.
Thus, the press has held great power. They have a symbiotic relationship with elected officials and the government bureaucrats (the “Deep State”) they use as sources and as a result they do no research anymore and are captives and advocates for their sources. Their stories rarely come from hard scrabble research, generally they simply take something from a source they consider reliable, do a quick check of some obvious small things and publish it. They use their position, inherited from better times, to set the narrative. They attempt to establish the “truth” and there is no effective check or balance to that power. Now we have Trump’s twitter feed fighting back, ugly as his tweets can be they are a good thing. The terrified press acts like the school yard bully who finally got what has been coming to him.
We know that Trump’s twitter feed is not perfect, but at least regarding the statements in this list, it is more reliable than the New York Times. At one time the New York Times was very reliable and tried to be as objective a news source as possible. This is long gone now, and why I no longer subscribe to the paper. They have descended into blatant advocacy for the Democratic Party and the government bureaucracy, aka the “Deep State.”
The rest of the news media has chosen sides, one side advocates for President Trump and the Republicans and the other joins the New York Times and advocates for the deep state and the Democrats. This means we must pay attention to both camps and figure it out for ourselves, thus internet search engines and social media become important. I doubt professional, unbiased coverage will ever return to the heights seen in the period from 1960 to 1980, from now on it is up to us to sort it out.
When the list is studied in detail, the overt and obvious anti-Trump bias is shocking. The once-great New York Times now seems captive to the goal of destroying our elected President. Trump is the enemy, they attack him to the exclusion of truth, objectivity and common sense. Everything, gang violence, crime, terrorism, obvious corruption is secondary to “getting” Trump. They seem to have no pride, professionalism or self-esteem left, which is a shame.
The database of Trump statements the New York Times calls lies and the source for the tables and figures can be downloaded here.
Edited to make the tables fit on the page better. I took the second source out of some of them.
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To the extent that Trump was a Democrat for most of his life before he ran on the Republican ticket for potus, he naturally has the instinct and tactics for political brawling. (Ever since Nixon, many Republicans have become wussy victims of the Stockholm Syndrome.) Now that the democrats have met a republican with democrat political fighting skills, they don’t know how to combat him. (The previous time they became similarly deranged was under Bush-43 when he set forth a democrat-sounding policy for a “kinder, gentler nation.”) There’s nothing like meeting the ‘enemy’ and finding out that it is yourself.
I still wonder if he’s surreptitiously (or maybe blatantly) trying to sabotage the Republican party for future elections. Just wondering, probably wrong.
The Republicans should be able to sabotage themselves. They never needed any help.
Very good point. Republicans are their own worst enemies many times. One thing that gets them in the most trouble is they want the Leftwing News Media to love them and this keeps them from taking some of the actions needed to keep this country safe and strong.
Here’s a hint Republicans: The Leftwing News Media will never love you because they are leftists. Get over it and get your job done and don’t worry about what the MSM will say about you. Like Trump does. 🙂
Yeah, you’re wrong about that one.
Let’s face it, it’s really just ‘click-bait’, similar to so many other “10 best things that something or other”
Even if interested in the title, I don’t trust the NYT enough to even bother reading such a list. Most of the MSM is no better and many are worse.
Their time has passed. The NYT will probably still exist in 10 or 20 years time, but nobody knows what it will look like or what it will actually do.
It isn’t just the NYT who has noticed Trump’s habit. Here is Neil Cavuto on Fox:
I don’t have a very high opinion of Trump personally either. But, he’s better than Clinton and the New York Times. And he does get results. Life is about choices.
Clinton and the NYT don’t lie like Trump. Sorry that is just nonsense. The Russian meeting is exposing what a liar he is.
First ….There were no meetings
Second … ok there was a meeting, but it was about adoptions.
Third…. There was a meeting about dirt on Clinton, but we didn’t get any.
Coming…. Ok there was a meeting and yes I knew about it, and we did get dirt, but collusion is not a crime.
The guy couldn’t lie straight in bed.
“Clinton and the NYT don’t lie like Trump.”
Did you not read the article? Spoiler Alert: It documents the NYT lying more than Trump, using the NYT’s own list.
Or did you hear that statement on your foil hat, and didn’t bother reading the article?
“The guy couldn’t lie straight in bed.”
Maybe; what’s your truth score? What’s HRC’s truth score?
Both are way better than the liar in Chief.
What about her emails? How many lies?
They are better liars? Of course, even the media noted what a good liar Bill Clinton was.
The difference was they approved of Clinton’s lies.
Bill Clinton is an unusually good liar. Hillary is no slouch, herself.
http://nymag.com/news/imperialcity/45783/index1.html
“Bill Clinton is our great living exemplar of Sam Goldwyn’s great epigram: If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. . .”
“[Bill] Clinton’s an unusually good liar,” his fellow Democrat (and Hillary endorser) Bob Kerrey said of the president back around the time the First Lady was visiting postwar Bosnia.”
end excerpts
Does anyone care about that meeting? Why?
To a leftist, a lie is anything they disagree with.
Simon, you are illustrating the latest lie told by the New York Times and the other echo-chamber leftwing news media outlets.
You and they are claiming that Trump never said the meeting between Don Jr. and the Russian lawyer was about getting dirt on Hillary and they are claiming Trump lied about this because he said in his latest tweet that it was about getting dirt on Hillary.
And then on Fox News Channel this morning they show a video clip of Trump saying just that: That Don Jr. had been promised dirt on Hillary to get the meeting. Trump said this in a news conferance with the leader of France, Macron, about a year ago.
So Trump tweets this same statement over the weekend and the New York Times and their slavish followers in the leftwing media immediately declare that Trump lied about this and that this puts Trump in legal jeopardy. This is, of course, Leftwing Wishful Thinking.
As Trump said over a year ago and in his recent tweet: It is not illegal to be given dirt on a political opponent. People do it all the time including Hillary, who not only seeks out dirt on political opponents but makes it up (Dirty Dossier) if she can’t find any.
And Trump reinterated that he was not aware of Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer before it took place.
Curiously enough, that female Russian lawyer met with people at Fusion GPS (the Dirty Dossier Creators) both before and after she met with Don Jr. It looks kind of like a Clinton Mafia setup to me.
Bottom line: The New York Times lies all the time and they are doing it again today with this issue.
“And he does get results. Life is about choices.”
So you choose a man who:
(constantly) lies to his people,
cheats on his wife,
supports his son working with a foreign enemy to alter the outcome of a democratic election
… because he gave you a tax cut and pulls out of an international climate agreement. Wow thats a high bar you got for your morals.
1) Since when is a Russian lawyer a “foreign enemy”?
2) What the hell is an election?
– Is that a measurement or data set or database that could be altered?
– Is it a computer system that can be hacked?
– Is a wallet that can be stolen?
Is an election a measurement-database-computer system-wallet?
“1) Since when is a Russian lawyer a “foreign enemy”?”
When they are a Russian agent.
“2) What the hell is an election?”
It’s what democratic countries have. They are meant to be fair.
When has an election been fair?
Do you count the lies? Or do you rate the lies?
Who cares about lies about a porn star?
“Who cares about lies about a porn star?”
Clearly not the evangelicals.
Nick I thought you of all people could stay out of this.
He’s like the UnderMiner. There’s nothing beneath him.
Spalding: Why would you think that? Did your “handlers” tell you that only you were on this string?
The NYT isn’t a newspaper; it’s a print shop for the DNC. To wit:
1) Back when the NYT was a newspaper they had an editor named Abe Rosenthal. One day he learned that a new hire had, in her previous job, reported on someone who she was romantically involved in. Since this is a violation of journalism 101 ethics, he called her into his office and asked her if this was true. When she said yes, he terminated her. The NYT currently employs a reporter named Ali Watkins who has made the exact same violation of journalism ethics. Abe would have terminated her, but that was when the NYT was a newspaper.
2) Some time ago, Maureen Down, a syndicated columnist for the NYT, got herself immortalized in the dictionary by misquoting George W Bush. He said, “Over two-thirds of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership has been killed or captured. In either case, they’re not a problem any more.” Dowd left out the words, “in either case” in her quote, changing the meaning. Changing the meaning of a quote by removing some words is now known as Dowdification. The newspapers who carry Dowd’s column printed a correction, something like, “Dowd’s column yesterday elided a quote from George W Bush. The full quote is …” That’s standard for a newspaper, yet the NYT didn’t do it.
3) In 1998, Gloria Steinem wrote a column defending Bill Clinton’s abuse of women. That column is now embarrassing as it defended behavior that’s no longer politically correct. The column is easy to find on the internet, but you won’t find it on the NYT website. They disappeared it.
4) During the 2016 primary campaign, the NYT printed a story that Marco Rubio had gotten numerous speeding tickets. It’s true, but the pushback was that this had been discovered by a democratic opposition researcher, and that the NYT had just operated as a print shop for the DNC. They denied it, claiming that they had followed up. Unfortunately for the NYT, the police record every access to the database of the speeding tickets, and it had only been accessed once – by the oppo researcher.
QED
” you won’t find it on the NYT website. They disappeared it.”
I can. It’s here.
“The preceding was excerpted and adapted from a previously published Op-Ed article”. Adjustments.
OK, the original is in their archive here. They didn’t disappear it; they featured it in their 40th anniversary collection.
The original used to be gone. There are copies in other forms all over the internet (e.g., scans of the print version) for a reason. I’d guess they were goaded into restoring it. Anyway, kudos to them for at least bowing to the pressure.
I’m guessing you checked out the other three and confirmed them.
Andy,
I’m curious about your methodology here. take your first apparent charge of NYT Lying. The Trump claim was:
“Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory”
Which you assert is TRUE, and hencde the NYT lied. But you give no evidence that it is true. You cite a rant from Andrew McCarthy in Nation Review, but that is actually about the earlier FBI surveillance of Carter Page, not tapping wires, not in Trump Tower, not “just before the victory”, and no connection made with Obama. Then you cite Snopes, which examines your question
“Did the New York Times Contradict Their 20 January 2017 Report About Wiretapping?”
But it labels it FALSE, pointing out that the NYT report was actually about the wiretapping of Russian communications.
So what is your evidence that
“Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” ?
The DoJ was forced to admit that the Obama Administration wiretapped Manafort and Page, at a minimum. Last I read, it wasn’t clear whether Manafort’s office in Trump Tower was included in the FISA warrant.
Conversations picked up coincidentally from such wiretaps are fair game.
He said, specifically, just before the victory. Manafort was long gone from Trump Tower by then.
No, he wasn’t.
“No, he wasn’t.”
False. Manafort resigned in mid August 2016. Regarding the Trump Tower wiretaps, Trump tweeted: “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
““I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!””
I would say the jury is still out on this one being a lie. The Deep State is fighting the release of pertinent documents, but if Republicans retain control of Congress, then I think that eventually we will find out whether Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped”.
Trump is supposely considering declassifying about 20 pages of the FISA warrant used to get a warrent to spy on the Trump campaign.
Maybe we will see who was doing what to whom in a few weeks.
Bottom line: Trump’s claim of being “wiretapped” has not been disproven. We don’t have enough information yet. We do know some of Trumps supporters were wiretapped.
This Obama administration assault on Democracy is going to turn out to be the biggest political scandal in American history. The Obama administration and Hillary have a lot to answer for.
Trump should declassify every pertinent document connected with the Obama administration who used (and are using) the power of the federal government to attack their political opponents, like a dictator would do.
Trump will be free to act as soon as the Mueller investigation is over. Up until now he has hesitated to do anything that would look like he is obstructing the investigation. But the investigation won’t last forever.
I guess capturing all political phone discussions of a political opponent is fair game, as long as he can order a pizza without the intel community knowing it.
“… wiretapped Manafort and Page…”
Why wouldn’t they – they’re both crooks who were in bed with the Russians and Ukrainians.
And so much for Andy Mays claim that Trump’s statement was not a lie.
Dems are crooks are in bed with anyone who wants. They should be tapped?
Then there’s the voter fraud. Well what do you know seems the investigating team says there was none.
And the doctor says I’m in perfect health…except Trump wrote the report.
I mean we are all gong to laugh about this in 10 years…….
Trump’s hand picked team to investigate voter fraud disbanded recently. No report written, no conclusions drawn, they met a couple times total. They didn’t find anything, so shut down.
Dems obstructed, as usual
False. Rs refused to release many of the documents they studied. Why? Because the documents showed that there was no voter fraud. Kris Kobach, the “voter fraud” champion, was schooled by a judge for his out and out lies.
By a “so called judge”?
10 years? It’s laughable now.
Funny how leftists are only concerned about voter fraud when they aren’t benefiting from it.
Andy,
Another one alluded to by another commenter, Trump said:
“A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.”
You noted that this was false – he had been on 11 times, and Nixon had been on 55 times (and of course others more than 11). NYT gave this a 4 rating
“Stating an opinion as if it were a fact…”
You excused Trump, saying
“Mistake, he was clearly guessing”
and gave NYT a 4. But how does Trump’s statement not fit NYT’s rating exactly?
Nick, His only mistake was saying 14-15 times versus 11. His “I think” at the beginning of the statement means he is guessing, so I didn’t count it as a lie. If he clearly indicates it is a guess, I didn’t think it should count.
And compare that to every statement made by Obama about climate change, that’s a lot of Obama lies, even if he thought they might be true. But by completely discounting skeptic arguments, you could call them lies.
Andy,
“I didn’t count it as a lie”
Neither did NYT. It is clearly a wildly wrong statement; they gave it a 4, “opinion stated as fact”. But for that, you’ve characterised NYT’s as a 4, which you count as a lie.
In fact, Trump clearly takes a lot of interest in appearances on the Time cover, since he had a fake one made to hang in his golf club. So it’s unlikely that he hadn’t been doing some counting.
Nick, the categories are mine for both the NYT and Trump. As I say in the post the NYT lumped everything in as a lie, they made no attempt to grade the statements.
Nick, as you say he had fake ones made, so perhaps he was inadvertantly including them in this his count? 😉
Nick, when someone says “I think” they are clearly pointing out that it is their opinion and not “Stating an opinion as if it were a fact”. As Andy points out “I think” means he is guessing and he’s signposting that, otherwise he’d leave off the “I think”.
I do not consider Snopes reliable when it comes to political questions.
Andy cited Snopes as support for his claim.
Nick, I included many references I disagreed with, usually because they contained information I used in my assessment of the statement. Often the opinions in the sources are contradicted by evidence they present, this is especially true of snopes and Politifact.
Nick, The FISA warrants issued based mostly on the discredited Steele Dossier, were for wiretaps and other surveilance. We can assume that if they got a warrant they followed through. This is in the Nunes report.
The dossier has not been discredited. The FISA warrant application states clearly that some information come from opposition research. Nunes out and out lied when he said that information was not included in the warrant application.
There is a vague footnote alluding to what you say, it is not clear. And, yes the dossier is discredited. The only informtion in it that is true is stuff you can get from google, the rest is fiction planted by the GRU, through Steele. Nunes did not lie to my knowledge.
Nick, here is a link to the Nunes memo, which discussed the FISA application that authorized the electronic surveilance of Carter Page:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/read-the-full-text-of-the-nunes-memo/552191/
Andy,
“which authorized the electronic surveilance of Carter Page”
The Nunes memo did not authorise surveillance. It talks about a FISA warrant on Carter Page. This has nothing to do with a claim that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory”. And your Snopes cite did not support your claim in any way. So where is the evidence that Trump’s claim is TRUE?
Sorry, Nick, left out a key phrase. I fixed it. The Trump campaign was spied on, Sec. Rice admitted unmasking wiretaps of them, the FISA warrant allowed electronic survielance of Page and was renewed 3 times. What more proof do you need? Seems obvious to me.
“What more proof do you need?”
You just don’t make the connection. Trump made a very specific claim. Again:
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Saying that there was a FISA application to surveil Carter Page does not match this claim at all. After all, remember what the campaign said of him back in September 2016:
“Mr. Page is not an advisor and has made no contribution to the campaign,” the campaign’s communications director Jason Miller said in an email to The Hill. “I’ve never spoken to him, and wouldn’t recognize him if he were sitting next to me.”
Presented with a statement from a campaign spokesperson in August that characterized Page as an “informal adviser,” albeit one who “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign,” Miller doubled down.
“He’s never been a part of our campaign. Period,” he said.
Another spokesman, Steven Cheung, said Page “has no role” in the campaign.“”
Another lie?
Mr. Stokes: “Another lie” Don’t be so hard on yourself, most here only describe you as disingenuous.
As you’re good at finding stuff, I’m sure you are aware that Carter Page was one of several names Trump dropped (Papadapolous one other) as his “foreign affairs” team in April ’16. If the FBI was investigating “Trump campaign for colluding with Russians” and C. Page was the subject of a FISA warrant obtained for that investigation, the FBI was telling the FISA Court that Page was connected with the campaign. This is true regardless of what Trump said or his people later said. You don’t need to believe Nunes or anyone else- that was how the BI moved on it.
I will grant you this- either Trump lied when he dropped Page’s name (unlikely), or his people lied as you quote above (likely). Since I consider Trump a non-credible source, I don’t worry about that, I worry about the FBI’s blatant impropriety in abusing the FISA Court (supposed to be used for foreign actors, only surveil American citizen when they have evidence of the collusion, not fishing like here). I say Trump lies, but he lies less (and on less important stuff) than NYT.
But here’s the big pill for Dems to swallow (as I understand it, Mr. Stokes is not a Dem): IF a Dem president can do this, i.e. get FISA warrant where the opposing party candidate’s “advisor” has “contacts” with “Russian (or Chinese, or Iranian) agents”, then E. Warren and K. Harris should be ready for their campaigns to be “surveilled”. There’s clear precedent. That’s why I believe this must be stopped by exposing the Obama Admin and FBI abuse of FISA Court- it’s the only way of cutting off the “precedent”.
Mr. Stokes: What you call a rant was solid reporting by McCarthy, prosecutor-style delivery of facts in a series of articles on the secret-court abuse by Obama’s FBI. I encourage all here to read his work at NRO and decide for yourself. McCarthy and a WSJ writer named Kim Strassel did great work, proved to my satisfaction: FISA warrant authorized FBI to “surveil” Page by wiretap and read campaign emails, and they did. It was obtained ahead of the election and renewed 3 times, right on through the election and swearing in. Some conversations in Trump Tower. McCarthy included an allusion to the earlier contact of Page by the FBI, but that was not “earlier surveillance of Carter Page”- it was 2013 FBI investigation of Russians IN WHICH CARTER PAGE CO-OPERATED! McCarthy was giving another problem (among many) with warrant- if Page co-operated before, why secretly tap an American citizen in FOREIGN Surveillance Court? Anyway, read for yourself, and see what our host and a few others mean by “disingenuous”.
Andy, it would be great if you actually quoted the statements from the NYT. They’re very short. Why should people only get to see your interpretation of what they said when you could easily include their own words.
Take the first example:
Trump said: (at least he actually gets quoted!)
“And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn’t have been in Iraq, but we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.”
“the last column is the explanation for the NYT category.”
Your explanation of the NYT statement, which doesn’t actually let the reader know what their specific objection is:
“Data and reporting from 2015 show this is a very valid opinion, a clear NYT lie.”
–
What the NYT actually said:
“(The group’s origins date to 2004.)”
–
US and other foreign troop numbers didn’t really go down until mid 2009.
Graph of troop numbers over time in Iraq:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007
–
The establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq was declared in 2006.
ISIS didn’t just spring into existence out of a vacuum when the troops started to leave, or when they declared their worldwide caliphate in 2014. They really got going when they joined al-Qaeda in 2004 and merged with other groups, leading up to the declaration of the Islamic State of Iraq.
Have a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant
The name has changed, and they have merged with other groups, but they didn’t just appear out of nowhere when the troops left. They may have taken advantage of the vacuum, but it isn’t what led to their creation. They already existed.
Exactly what is in dispute here?
Also, a depressingly large number of your determinations say things like “we all know”, “it is widely known” or “(insert source here) says”.
And how about this one:
“We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.”
Your response:
“Totally opinion, no one knows how it would have gone without the media uproar.”
Eh? Whether or not he had a smooth rollout of his travel ban doesn’t change because we don’t know how things might have gone if other factors were different.
And he blamed the courts, not the media.
Overall, there is a lot of bald assertion and appeal to authority in your analysis of the different claims.
Trump’s style is to throw out a barrage of statements. Something will resonate with sympathetic listeners and something will antagonize the unsympathetic. It’s a tactic he uses to gain the advantage in negotiations. He knows where he’s going, but listeners are mesmerized as they try to follow. It works because listeners don’t process the actual words. Instead they turn them into what they want to hear. Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and Nobel Prize winner, explains it in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow. The tactic is brilliant. The words are vehicles for Trump, not lies per se. The NY Times thinks they’re on to something while they’re really being duped. Kind of funny when you can see what’s going on.
LOL
Trump the Destructor.
But destruction is good for News, and NYT should really be paying a large commission to Trump.
He is saving their butts.
So, trump is right again and the NYT continue to be ungrateful twits.
“It works because listeners don’t process the actual words. Instead they turn them into what they want to hear.”
It is likely all successful politicians do this. Barack Obama spoke of taking away the car keys from Republicans and HRC spoke of “basket of deplorables”. Their fans loved it.
Don’t waste too much time trying to convince Trump is not a habitual liar.
Just take the first three:
“JAN. 21 “I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.) JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.) JAN. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There’s no evidence of illegal voting.) ” Lies, big and small
and the list goes on. Being a Swede, I know one occasion when he was just swinging wildly, saying whatever to achieve some effect. The man is an habitual liar, and it has worked for him, so far.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change or the fear thereof.
You should get over the notion that republicans are right about the science and democrats wrong.
Science, if it is real, doesn’t have any political bias and neither should you, when it comes to science.
I would never vote for someone like T, even if the idea was to bring about some major change in politics.
And I think his knowledge about science is, shall we say – shallow. Although he might think of himself as a nuclear phycisist.
I have friends across the political spectrum (well maybe not on the extremes) and they have all sorts of opinions regarding climate and science. Like it should be.
Let’s get back to the science, shall we.
Relevance troll is irrelevant.
Illegals voted in 2016, and have done so for decades. There is not just evidence. It’s a fact.
“Illegals voted in 2016, and have done so for decades. There is not just evidence. It’s a fact.”
Sure, that explains why Trump’s commission charged with investigating voter fraud disbanded without proving anything.
There is as much opposition to the idea illegals could vote than to the idea vaccines could be mostly harmful.
Huh? What does that have to do with the commission disbanding. Trump is President. There is nothing that could force a commission he formed to disband.
What could the commission accomplish without data?
“Let’s get back to the science, shall we.”
You have many choices. Use one.
“Science, if it is real, doesn’t have any political bias and neither should you, when it comes to science.”
Real science doesn’t. the so-called science of
imminent ice ageglobal warmingclimate change on the other hands has been nothing but politically biased since Hansen and his leftwing friends shut off the AC and opened the windows the night before the congressional hearings in order to make a show of how hot it was.In Table 3, where did the figures in “…the New York Times lied about Trump’s lies more than he lied (NYT: 69; Trump: 22)” come from…?
The table. These values are the sums of categories 4 and 5 for each.
Fake news is fake news. Why are you lending them any degree of legitimacy?
“Fake news is fake news.”
Right up there on the obvious scale with water is wet and green is green. I feel so enlightened!
Actually green is blue and yellow, so fail on that one.
Green is not blue and yellow – it’s a frequency range (~495–570 nm) between blue and yellow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green
Your Blue/Yellow model only works for pigments…
“A subtractive color model explains the mixing of a limited set of dyes, inks, paint pigments or natural colorants to create a wider range of colors, each the result of partially or completely subtracting (that is, absorbing) some wavelengths of light and not others.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtractive_color
“Your Blue/Yellow model only works for pigments…”
So I wasn’t wrong. Thanks.
Or, in the immortal words of Trump “you are fake news”. 😉
As my Grandfather said to be after visiting a small town where politicians were campaign and patting me on my head: “Son, never ever trust what any politicians says, watch what their [backsides] are doing.” So I never listened very much to any politician’s rhetoric. Then I got involved in and around government and learned to read between the lines and what was going on sort of deep background. Why things were really happening.
For me Trump’s problem is that for a lot of people he is just too in your face and if anything as been too honest when he could have quietly gone about his business. Therein lies a major problem. The Deep State and the allies in the news media would have been telling us even more lies about what is supposedly going on. I sat in government meetings where I knew everyone at the table. The next day the media reported what happened in the meeting in some detail, none of which was true. They had talked to some source in our agency that claimed to have been in the meeting who wasn’t invited deliberately for just such behavior.
Even though I have had several friends in the news media I have never trusted the news media for good reason from my experience dealing with them for years. My trust go less and less throughout the years. My friends in the media also taught me to be skeptical and how news stories were actually decided. I was misquoted, malquoted, and taken totally out of context more than I was ever quoted correctly. I had one reporter at a major newspaper who quoted me anytime he had a marine science article to write. Problem was we had not spoken in over a year. He would make up a quote and put my name to it and print it. His editor never questioned him even after people wrote into complain.
While the news media has always been a bit loose with the facts, it has gotten progressively worse in the past several decades. It got dramatically worse after Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate.
My first run in with the press was actually in high school. I was involved in an incident involving the student council. When I read about the incident later in the school paper, I couldn’t even recognize it.
Beyond that, the fact that the so called reporter was the leader of one of the sides was never even mentioned in the report.
When I talked to the paper’s advisor, he wasn’t at all concerned.
The so called reporter later went on to a career in journalism.
A friend of mine was once interviewed by the local TV station about a recently enacted tax bill. And while she was well knowledgeable about the bill and quite clear on what she thought about it, they only aired one very small sound bite from the rather lengthy discussion she had about it that made it sounds like the exact opposite of what she actually had to say about the bill.
sadly that’s not unusual for the news media be it national or local news.
The establishment and left would like to overrule BREXIT and Trump election as well as expand the European Union to control the world.
Progressives today make the Clintons of the 90s look like right with whack jobs.
There is no conversation possible with progressive because they avoid acknowledging anything that disturbs their trot further left.
Today’s email blast from the New York Times is tragically comical:
I’m Lara Takenaga, a journalist here, and I feel honored to be in touch daily with Times readers as a member of the Reader Center. Independent, original journalism is at the heart of everything The Times does.
Here’s a selection of some of our best recent journalism:
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
What arrogance. Not independent, not original, and certainly did not stop the climate from changing (but don’t feel bad about it; no one has ever stopped the climate from changing).
Wapo Fact check on Sarah Huckabee Sanders shows more proof of a lack of integrity by the fact checkers…
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/04/wapo-fact-check-excuses-vicious-harassment-sarah-huckabee-sanders/
Trump did not squash ISIS. Russia did after 3 years of Obama allowing ISIS a free hand in Syria.
Though the claim Trump squashed ISIS was an error, not a lie 😉
Russia fought ISIS only in Syria…
And did not defeat it. They fought it only when it threatened the Assad regime.
Assad and Putin created ISIS by releasing radicalized Syrian political prisoners and letting Russian Islamic militants travel in their thousands to Syria and Iraq, in a cynical effort to give the Syrian opposition a bad name and to encourage infighting.
==============
BAGHDAD, July 18 — For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi issued incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official in May that Mr. Baghdadi had been killed, he appeared to have persevered unscathed.
On Wednesday, the chief United States military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, provided a new explanation for Mr. Baghdadi’s ability to escape attack: he never existed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/world/middleeast/19baghdadi.html?emc=eta1
==============
declassified U.S. military confession – we created ISIS:
Never let the truth get in the way of your militaristic disinformation campaign, “Theo” – or whatever you’re calling yourself today.
PLEASE FIX THE FORMATTING SO ALL THE TABLES ARE NOT OVERWRITTEN BY THE RIGHT SIDE BAR
Almost impossible to follow the arguments.
Leo, sorry about that. I don’t know how to fix it or what caused it. Download the spreadsheet.
If the tables are HTML. You need to set the table width to a percentage instead of an absolute value. But they might be CSS instead, which is a little more complicated.
I just checked the page source and that looks to be the case. Here is one of the relevant lines:
<table style=”border-collapse: collapse; width: 505px;” border=”0″>
Where it says “width:505px” should probably change that to 100% or maybe 95% so there is a bit of a gap against the sidebar.
All of the width values are absolute instead of percentage.
I worked on it, they look better now. Had to take out the 2nd source and abbreviate.
Andy: A total mess. Take this statement: ““Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Did Obama order the tapping of Trump’s phone? No.
Did the Obama administration order the tapping of Trump’s phone? FISA warrants are approved by Comey and then a FISA judge. Neither is a part of the “Obama Administration”. Unlike typical political appointees, the head of the FBI is appointed to a 10-year term, and Comey certainly demonstrated his independence. If one insists that Comey was a member of the Obama administration, he was also a member of the Trump administration when Trump made this claim. Trump spent far more time talking privately with Comey than Obama did.
Whose wires were tapped? Carter Page had resigned before his FISA warrant was issued. Six months later we learned that a FISA warrant was issued for Manafort AFTER the election. Perhaps Manafort’s place in Trump Tower was tapped, but we still don’t know where Manafort’s surveillance was conducted. The FBI has publicly stated that Trump was not tapped. Comey told Trump that he wasn’t a target of the investigation, so he shouldn’t have been a target for tapping.
Just before Trump made these remarks, there were a variety of reports about a possible wiretap on a server in Trump Tower that was connected to two Russian banks. I don’t know how this story has evolved since early 2017, but it likely promoted Trump’s comments. We also know that the Trump transition suddenly moved out of Trump Tower in November, possibly because they had been warned about surveillance.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/01/obama-fisa-trump-wiretap/
There may be some elements of truth in this statement, but it is easy to judge this a lie because it stated that Obama did it. Neither you nor the NYT should be trying to summarize such complicated subjects with a single word (truth or lie) or number rating.
We know the Trump tower was bugged because conversations were found by the Congressional committee in classified reports. The Obama AG “unmask” them.
Here is one link where Rice admitted it, from CNN no less:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/susan-rice-house-investigators-unmasked-trump-officials/index.html
Andy,
“We know the Trump tower was bugged”
There is nothing there that supports “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory”. In fact, your link says:
” The ethics inquiry came in the aftermath of his bombshell comments that Obama administration officials had improperly unmasked the names of Trump associates, a revelation that Trump used as cover for his unsubstantiated claim that Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the election to spy on him. The Justice Department said in a court filing Friday that the DOJ and the FBI have no evidence to support Trump’s claims.”
That’s still Obama’s DOJ and FBI
Nick, You are making a distinction without a difference. Based on Russian lies about Trump, bought by Steele from the GRU with funds from the Clinton campaign, warrants for bugging and surveiling Trump campaign officials were requested, obtained and executed. Then Rice unmask the Trump campaign end of conversations recorded from foreign intercepts.
You are doing the NYT type of parsing to “manufacture” a lie. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, ….
Distinction without a difference?
Andy, if I told you that the government was tapping MY wires, and when you asked if they had got a FISA warrant to listen in on MY phone line I told you that it was actually someone I called who’s phone line was tapped, would you say I told the truth in the first part or not? Is there really no distinction between who’s lines were actually tapped.
Imagine this.
Prosecutor: “Your honor, we have been tapping the phone line of a drug dealer named X. The defendant, Y, called him up and placed an order”
Y: “You can’t use that evidence! The government was tapping my wires, and doing so without a warrant!”
Andy: Thanks for the kind reply to an intemperate comment. Susan Rice’s testimony occurred well after the Trump’s remarks. There is no reason to believe Trump knew about this incident at the time, otherwise he would have replied to his critics with this EVIDENCE.
Furthermore, foreign officials, such as the Crown Prince from the UAE, were the ones being subjected to routine surveillance, not the Americans they met. When such surveillance picks up words spoken by Americans, their names are removed before the intelligence is distributed to users like Rice. That is why she had to request unmasking to find out who Zayed was meeting. Michael Flynn was overhead talking to the Russian ambassador because the Russian ambassador was being surveilled, not Flynn. Electronic surveillance of Americans requires a warrant, and I am not aware of one being issued for Flynn.
As I pointed out above and showed again, these are not simple black-and-white issues. It is also worth pointing out that the term “lie’ implies an intent to deceive. Trump made similar statements several times, so his comments weren’t accidentally wrong. Who informed or misinformed Trump about this issue? Breitbart? Or AltRightFantasyland.com? Citing a source as evidence (which you did, thank you) puts the blame for misinformation on your source.
IMO, FWIW, the “truth” for Mr. Trump often appears to be whatever Trump needs it to be at the moment. When he sued a reporter for libel for under-reporting his wealth, Trump testified that his net worth varied from day to day depending on how he felt (about the intangible value of the Trump brand). Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t trust the Deep State to tell him the truth about rumors of surveillance that reach him, he doesn’t ask his staff to research the credibility of these rumors (that might reduce their utility), and he wants to discredit those investigating his campaign. There are some hints in Comey’s book about the (un)willingness of Trump’s staff to step forward and correct Trump’s mis-statements.
Frank, you make no sense. Trump is not an individual, he was a candidate and now he is President. He has access to classified material, why would he get material from Breitbart? You admit Flynn was spied on without a warrant, probably true, certainly wrong. He probably knew about Susan Rice and her unmasking long before we did, that was wrong also. The FBI using campaign dirt to get a warrant and that was wrong. Your strong bias affects your judgement and sense of right and wrong. If you dislike Trump fine, but the illegitimate spying on his campaign by the FBI, NSA, and CIA was still wrong.
Andy May says: “Trump is not an individual”
…
WRONG Andy, he is an individual .
David: President Trump is a fairly undisciplined leader, who in his 70’s hasn’t changed his free-wheeling style simply because he is now president. You may remember that one of Kelly’s first tasks as Chief of Staff was to try to imposed some order on the information flow to the President. Many of Trump’s early morning tweets reflect what he just heard on Fox News or Breitbart. Trump has been disdainful of the Presidential Daily Brief, which he has read aloud to him, when he bothers to listen. I doubt he trusts anything from the IC, which is out to get him. Kelly wanted all documents being given to the President vetted for accuracy, and he has attempted to stop favored officials from dropping in with one-sided or inaccurate information. Worst of all were old cronies from New York who would call and get Trump reved up about some right-wing issue. Kelley managed to cut off those calls, but now they call his wife and Trump returns their calls.
Anyway, here are some links, which you may or may not find believable.
https://www.axios.com/scoop-trumps-secret-shrinking-schedule-1515364904-ab76374a-6252-4570-a804-942b3f851840.html
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2018-02-09/why-it-matters-that-trump-doesnt-read-his-daily-intelligence-briefings
Andy: No, I don’t admit that Flynn or anyone else was “spied” upon illegally or improperly. Before the election, there was a robust bipartisan consensus that Russia was our enemy. Crimea was the first forcible annexation of territory in Europe since 1945. Putin’s desire to reunite all Russian speakers in a new Russian empire is in direct conflict with our NATO obligation. Our Syrian allies and their American advisors killed more than one hundred Russian mercenaries when they recently tried to move in on territory captured from ISIS. They hacked into election computers into something like 23 states. Congress has passed four rounds of sanctions against Russia by overwhelming majorities. Russia is our enemy, but we are not at war.
Under these conditions, the IC’s job is to monitor through legal means the activities of influential Americans with close ties to Russia. Call it “spying” if you insist, but I won’t – there was nothing wrong with it. Paul Manafort and Carter Page were under surveillance approved by warrants long before Trump even announce he was a candidate. The IC collected information about Micheal Flynn’s (a former head of the DIA) and Carter’s speeches in Russia and activities at international forums. They used intelligence offices operating out of every US embassy and an informal network of trusted contacts like Halper and Steele to assist them.
Then candidate Trump comes along and picks many of these “Russian sympathizers” to be advisors for his campaign! There was no conspiracy to entrap Trump into an investigation; Trump walked into the middle of an ongoing process. Some people think the monitoring of these potential Russian sympathizers proves there were a grand conspiracy against Trump from early in his campaign. Absurd, such conspirators would certainly have made sure Americans knew – before they voted – about Steele Dossier and the criminal investigation it (and DNC hacking and Papadopoulos) had spawned. The deliberate mischaracterization of what happened is destroying the credibility of critical government institutions.
“They hacked into election computers into something like 23 states”
How do we know that? Who can we trust about hacking?
What about those texts from anti-Trump FBI agents?
Which text showed the FBI had tapped Trump’s wires? Which one said Obama was responsible?
The anti-Trump FBI wanted to stop Trump.
Notice Frank’s technique: Compare “Obama had” to “Obama ordered”. Could he have “had it done” without barking it as an order? He may not have directly ordered it (then again, maybe he did, how do you know he didn’t?), but that’s different than having it done. By altering the wording, Frank has determined the outcome. Frank, do you work for NYT? ‘Cause you’re qualified.
Paul: Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy. Words can be interpreted in many ways, which is why I objected to both the NYT and Andy trying to reduce these statements down to truth, lie, or a number.
Some people would interpret Trump’s remarks to mean Obama ordered tapping. So I dealt with that interpretation first.
Then I moved on to the possibility that the policies of the Obama administration caused Trump to be tapped, which would make Obama responsible even if he didn’t personally order it. That interpretation fails because the Obama administration doesn’t make policy for the FBI (an independent agency) or the FISA court (part of the judicial system.
I tried to deal with ALL of the possible interpretations of Trump’s comment that could be true. To do so required replacing ambiguous words (like “had) with all possible explicit words (like “ordered” or “caused”).
IMO, the NYT’s constant stream of one-sided anti-Trump stories (like this one) is more likely to get Trump re-elected than educate readers about the major changes Trump is making. However, the constant stream of negative stories is probably necessary for the paper’s financial survival.
I certainly agree with this! Trump is very fast and loose with the truth, but being fast and loose with the truth about him is not the way to win the debate before the people or help the country. Well said.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
You’re suggesting that this is actually true? That is a very strange interpretation. You seem to suggest that because the FBI “tapped” some calls this makes it true. Peculiar.
Trump’s lie is not whether or not the FBI monitored Trump tower (they may have very good reason for doing so). The lie is that Obama ordered it.
The subject of the sentence is Obama and the object is “my wires in Trump Tower”. The verb is “had tapped” in wierd Trump speak. So the meaning is roughly “Obama did this to me”.
You can’t just take a bit of a sentence and say it is true. Duh.
“(they may have very good reason for doing so)”
=================
“The idea that the FBI would use political propaganda paid for by one presidential campaign to launch a high-level investigation against the other in the middle of an election is horrifying.”
It looks like that is just what has happened.
‘potus wants to know everything we’re doing’
Lisa Page, September 2, 2016
It will all come out in the wash. 🙂
It wasn’t Obama’s admin?
Bingo.
Tony, here’s a clue for you. People often say “Obama” or “Trump” or “Bush” when what they are really talking about is their *administrations*. (particularly in character limited forms of communications such as tweets). Same as when people use the phase “The White House says”. The White House is a building, it is incapable of speech, therefore it doesn’t say anything, but the administration in the white house is and does so when people say “The White House says” by your logic that’s a lie, but by most peoples understanding it’s short hand for the current administration and doesn’t literally mean the building is talking. Same here, “Obama had” is short hand for “The Obama Administration had”.
I do understand that. However, the Trump lie is still a lie. The use of “Obama had” implies direction from the top of the administration. It implies political direction. Whilst all organisations of the state might technically be in the “Obama administration” whilst he was in office, it is meaningless as there is supposed to be a separation of powers.
So saying “Obama had” has a completely different meaning to “FBI had”. One says inaapropriate political interference in law enforcement matters (just like Trumps tries to do) whilst the other is just the normal wheels of law enforcement turning.
Do you understand?
I understand that you clearly didn’t understand a word that was said despite your starting your post with the words “I do understand that”.
Saying “Obama had” was short hand. You claim to understand that but then go on and on undercutting that claim. In short you lied about understanding.
Clearly, words no longer mean anything. Dangerous times…
Tony, Language is complex and words mean many things based on the context of their use (there’s a reason why dictionaries list multiple meanings for words, you know) , clearly you don’t comprehend that very well. sad.
Well it is interesting and should be widely published, although naturally it won’t be. However, this is not something unusual or limited to the NYT nor even Donald Trump or politics specifically. This to me is clearly the SOP for the MSM, and not just in the USA. It is rampant throughout global news and blog media in general and includes such ‘august’ publishers as the BBC in the UK and the ABC in Australia.
Perhaps there is someone or some organisation with the necessary resources to do this research across a wide spectrum of both ‘news’ and outlets and publish the results. Any reputable school of journalism should be straining at the bit to do so, but then again, these folk who misrepresent, misconstrue, obfuscate and blatantly lie will have learned to do it somewhere. So perhaps a first step would be to send this analysis to such schools as a test.
While it is possible to quibble about details, President Trump lies habitually if not compulsively about big things and small. Where other politicians spin facts, Trump disregards them.
“…President Trump lies habitually if not compulsively…”
=======
Trump questions who is really behind anti-Semitic threats and vandalism
–“sometimes it’s the reverse”
WP, March1, 2017
Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen charged with making threatening calls to Jewish Community Centers
WP, April 21, 2017
“President Trump lies habitually if not compulsively…” but sometimes it’s the reverse.
Richard, He does lie, I documented many lies. But, the point is, so do NYT, Politifact and snopes. Just trying to point out we all need to be skeptical and do our own research.
Whataboutery.
What about it? “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”
When the NYT lies in order to point out the speck in Trump’s eye, they are revealing the huge plank in their own (as this article pointed out they lied *more* than Trump did when you actually look into the context and details behind their list of “Trump lies”) That you would rather focus on the speck and ignore the plank makes you just as much a hypocrite as the NYT.
Richard, Right back at you. The article is about the New York Times lying about Trump’s lies. You are saying “What about” Trump’s lies.
No classified email on my unsecured email server => spin?
I thought “(C)” was for alphabetization => spin?
Once again, I hear people try to change the subject by talking about Hillary. We’re talking about Trump here. Do you think he’s a liar or what? No whataboutery please.
Trump doesn’t lie, he uses speech as a weapon.
Actually, we’re talking about the NYT talking (and lying) about Trump. Do you think the NYT is a liar or what? no whataboutery please.
As an outsider who didn’t want to see HC elected but who didn’t take much interest in Trump’s statements and policies before his election, I have to admit that I’ve been quite astonished at the character of the man the US electorate picked as their president.
After 18 months of listening and watching it’s my view that he’s all of the following to a greater than average degree: amoral, narcissistic, egotistic, mentally undisciplined, ignorant of both national and international affairs, ignorant of history, a bully, probably racist, a habitual liar, unconcerned with accuracy in matters of detail, devious, easily gulled, desperate to be re-elected (the one factor that drives him to meet his electoral commitments), needs to be liked and especially to be praised, given to self praise and general boasting about his accomplishments, a chapter 11 abuser, deliberately divisive, devoid of humility, lacking in sound judgement, self serving, disloyal, lacks focus, has a child’s attention span, and it seems likely that Putin has some kind of hold over him or a member of his family. If he has a political vision it is devoid of a moral dimension. He doesn’t inspire; he stirs up outrage and division. It’s been suggested that he’s a fan of Ayn Rand (though I”d be astonished if he’s ever read anything by her) but he probably doesn’t appreciate that he represents just about everything she despised.
An avid CNN/MSNBC viewer I see.
In what way is spin not lying?
Spin is about presenting facts in a favourable light. “I was late for my meeting with the Queen because our flight was delayed and traffic was bad.” (It sounds credible, but neither argument applies to POTUS, and you should build delays into your itinerary.)
Lying disregards facts. “I was not late for my meeting with the Queen. She was.” (You were, she wasn’t.)
Sounds like lying to me.
Spin is a form of lying. It’s misconstruing the facts in order to create a false impression of the truth.
David Crowder Louder with Crowder just did a show on the fact checking Washington Post and President Trump. There were blatant false statements by the fact checkers. To call it bias would be an understatement.
Thanks for due diligence research. I wish a mouthpiece as loud as the NYT would feature such as this, perhaps a newspaper of record for the truthful conservative right.
I am afraid TWT has succumbed to economic pressures to promote click-bait as news.
Again I wish WUWT would stick to discussing climate and weather and avoid becoming a Trumpian echo chamber.
It’s instructive to focus on Trump’s lies that are the most egregious or inciting hatred or damaging to democracy and international relations. Please do not reinterpret or soften the statements away from their obvious intended interpretation.
1) He claimed millions of illegal aliens voted in the election. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38126438 — there is no credible evidence of any significant voter fraud. He made it up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2865a6c8e7bc
2) He said the EU is one of the biggest foes of the US. https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-putin-russia-europe-one-of-united-states-biggest-foes/ — No in fact they are one of our biggest trading partners and allies.
3) He said Mexico sends rapists to the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mexicans-rapists-remark-reference-2018-4 — no they don’t. Most mexicans entering the US are hard working decent people seeking a better life. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/08/24/do-immigrants-steal-jobs-from-american-workers/
4) He said reports that he called British PM May “weak” were “fake news” in spite of the fact that anyone with an internet connection can *listen to him saying it* https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/trump-may-sun-interview-fake-news-but-theres-audio.html
5) He said many times there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russian disinformation efforts. Now he admits collusion but says “it’s not a crime”. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/07/30/no-collusion-oh-wait-maybe-collusion-but-collusions-not-a-crime/?utm_term=.7f790bd1e0bf
6) He said Russia was opposed to his election *immediately after Putin admitted he wanted Trump to win*. https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-wanted-trump-to-win-2016-election-2018-7
7) He said that allegations of Russian disinformation interference in US politics is a “hoax” at the same time as his own administration is warning of dangerous interference https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/02/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-pennsylvania-rally/index.html
8) He said that the special counsel investigation is a “fake news” “witch hunt” even though they are clearly uncovering evidence and making progress (see 5).
9) He said nobody has been tougher on Russia even though he has consistently opposed efforts to punish Russia for violations of all sorts https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/16/heres-where-trump-has-been-tough-on-russia–and-where-hes-backed-do.html
10) He said the media is “the enemy of the people” …
I give up.
The special counsel is investigating WHAT based on which LAW?
What progress has he made?
The NYT says he’s making progress, therefore Trump is days away from being jailed.
That’s what all true leftists believe.
Yes, and they (NYT, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the usual suspects) have been claiming that imminent jailing/impeachment of Trump since the day the investigation started. When it’s not all Russia Russia Russia with them it’s all Stormy, Stormy, Stormy. Whatever happened to actually reporting on the news?
Aaron, if you really want WUWT to stick to climate and weather, you would have given up at “1”.
Ah yes, the typical left wing whine.
Only his interpretation can be considered legitimate.
1) Evidence exists that there were many illegal votes in the past election. Were there millions? Hard to tell, the Democrats fight tooth and nail to make impossible to tell who is or isn’t a legal voter.
2) The fact that the EU trades with us doesn’t prove that they don’t oppose us in many areas we consider important.
3) While Mexico may not have a direct policy of shipping rapists to the US, there are more than a few rapists in each year’s class of illegal aliens.
4) As usual, leftists feel free to interpret words anyway they care to.
5) As usual, leftists feel free to interpret words anyway they care to.
6) And Putin never lies, but Trump always does.
7) Poor troll can’t tell the difference between two years and present.
8) As usual, leftists feel free to interpret events anyway they care to.
9) Not familiar with this latest attack.
10) Trump’s on solid ground here.
“He said the media is “the enemy of the people”
No, Trump said Fake News, the Lies told by the Leftwing News Media, is the Enemy of the People. Trump is right.
There is a difference between “media” and a “lying media”. The Lying Media is dangerous to America. The media that tell the truth are a benefit to America. Trump is calling out the liars.
The funny thing is, by twisting Trumps words to blanketly apply to themselves, the leftwing News media is admitting that they are fake news.
“The New York Times lies”
— not necessary to write “lies”,
because they print all the leftist
“news” that they decide
leftists need to know.
And according to leftist rule 9a
“news” does not have to be true
— consider the wild speculation
in just about every scary
climate change claim
printed by the New york Times !
On the other hand, Trump’s “exaggerations”
and “errors” have reached a point where
he is annoying me, and I’m very tolerant
of politicians (I expect them to lie and mislead).
They are not really “lies” unless Trump
knows they are not true, and with Trump,
he always sounds like he believes what he says
(perhaps the mark of a master salesman?).
I wrote a brief article
about Trump’s “Alternative Facts”
posted in my politics blog two days ago, here:
http://electioncircus.blogspot.com/2018/08/trump-talk-collection-of-non-facts.html
I also wrote an article about
the false / premature claims
of a ‘Trump economic boom”,
mainly by his fans on Fox News,
posted on my economics blog today, here:
http://el2017.blogspot.com/2018/08/trump-brags-and-brags-about-july-jobs.html
Trump is a master salesman,
and master salesmen
are master BS’ers, IMHO !
Trump recently speculated
about 8% or 9% economic growth
coming under his watch
after he wins the ‘trade war’.
That claim is ridiculous — here’s what he is facing:
(A) U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
projects that the U.S. labor force will grow
just 0.2% annually over the coming 7 years.
(B) Over the past decade, productivity growth
has declined from a post-war average of 2%
to a growth rate of just 1.2% annually,
with growth of just 0.6% annually
over the past 5 years.
Real GDP growth comes from
growth of (A) and (B)
(more people working, and
workers getting more productive).
Trump has both trends
working against him,
so an average of 3% growth
over his first four years
would be a success, IMHO.
(+2.7% average Real GDP growth so far,
in Trump’s first six quarters)
My climate change blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
I don’t know if anyone else has brought this fact forward but, it seems that the ‘mainstream media’ has a great deal of difficulty in admitting they are/were wrong. Once they made a pronouncement ie ‘Hillary will win” they cannot figure out that the facts got in the way.
I first noted this, in spades, after the OJ Simpson murder trial: just before the end the media and pundits were declaring that he would be found guilty. when the jury determined otherwise it was like a slap in the face. ‘They’ have not admitted the fact of the not guilty verdict to this day. OJ himself has been hounded mercilessly apparently simply because he was determined to be not guilty. [Please note that I did NOT say he didn’t do it, only that he is ‘Not Guilty’ as determined by the jury]
Many of the NYT pronouncements fall into this category – ie Trumps statements are interpreted by the Times to fit their predetermined narrative of his supposed faults.
In an email conversation with one of my brothers, I investigated some of the New York Times’ accusations of lying, made against Donald Trump. Also some from the Washington Post.
Like you, Andy, I found that the New York Times was itself lying. Likewise the Washington Post, but I’ll confine myself here to the material on the NYT.
The New York Times rendition is especially clear on trying to promote DT as unfit to be president. They published a story, here, complete with a graph, that says BO told only 19 lies during his entire eight years as president, while DT has already told 103 lies in just ten months.
The NYT apparently missed the lie he told on September 9 2009 in an otherwise admirable talk, video here, he gave to students at Wakefield HS in Arlington VA. In minute 9:12 he says, “My father left my family when I was 2 years old.” In fact his father left when BO was, at most, a few weeks old, story here. That story describes several other apparent biographical lies BO told before he was president.
Although mentioning the Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare), the New York Times didn’t see fit to mention that the Act was founded on a lie.
It was written to conceal the fact that it was a tax. Forbes story here, Washington Post here, Washington Times here.
The fact that The Affordable Care Act was a hidden tax also means that BO deliberately violated the Constitutional separation of powers. Only Congress has legal authority to tax.
That lie, which is a direct betrayal of his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, is alone more serious than all of DT’s lies combined.
Other sites detailing lies that the New York Time apparently overlooked:
This listing alone exceeds the list of 18 from the New York Times:
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/obamas-whoppers/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-york-times-claims-obama-only-told-18-falsehoods-during-his-whole-presidency-here-are-18-he-told-in-selling-obamacare-in-2009-alone
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/10/01/fact-checking-false-and-misleading-democratic-assertions-about-obamacare/#6b92cf866c34
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/01/07/obama-and-guns-eleven-false-or-misleading-claims-from-presidents-remarks-this-week.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/09/the_unspoken_obama_lie_that_led_to_benghazi.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/12/why_is_obama_disowning_his_relatives.html
Summary: The New York Times was outstandingly dishonest in its representation of BO’s culpability.
An internet search reveals far more lies from BO than allowed by DT’s critics. Readily available evidence shows that DT’s lies are not more serious and probably not more plentiful than BO’s lies.
In the Affordable Care Act, BO lied about its hidden tax. In this, BO also violated the Constitutional limits of his power.
This is a lie that the New York Times completely ignored in compiling its exhaustive list of BO’s economies of truth.