Day: 10/10/2018

Trump’s Lie-Riddled ‘Medicare-for-All’ Op-Ed in USA Today is Obliterated By Fact-Checkers

Posted by on October 10, 2018 at 2:39 pm. 1 Comments :

Not content with the 280 characters that Twitter gives him to dissemble incoherently every day, Donald Trump put crayon to paper for an Op-Ed in USA Today – or more likely, his minders wrote it for him. In his defense, it’s hard to squeeze more lies into the finite confines of a tweet than he has already done. So having the luxury of nearly 5,000 characters to lie within must have given him a sense of freedom.

Donald Trump

The subject of the editorial was Medicare-for-All and, needless to say, Trump is against it, just as he is against anything that actually helps people more than corporations. The lede for his falsehood-laden tirade says that “The Democrats want to outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross our border. We must win this.” But while Trump’s opposition comes as no surprise, the rapid fire velocity of his blatant untruths was a little shocking, even for him. And that didn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the press that values honesty and factual reporting. Just a few of the media fact-checkers that weighed in on Trump’s bucket of bullpucky included these:

  • The Washington Post: Fact-checking President Trump’s USA Today op-ed on ‘Medicare-for-All. Nearly every line of President Trump’s USA Today op-ed contained a false or misleading statement.
  • Vox Media: Trump’s USA Today op-ed on Medicare is an absurd tissue of lies
  • Newsweek: Chuck Schumer Fact Checks Trump’s USA Today Op-Ed with More Than a Dozen Corrections
  • Huffington Post: Wildly Inaccurate Trump Op-Ed On Health Care Receives Swift Backlash
  • NBC News: USA Today criticized for printing Trump op-ed despite inaccuracies
  • NPR: FACT CHECK: Trump’s False Claims On ‘Medicare For All’
  • Los Angeles Times: Trump’s USA Today op-ed on Medicare is full of lies — but does anyone really believe he wrote it himself?
  • PolitiFact: Fact-checking Donald Trump’s op-ed against Medicare for All in USA Today

The analyses from these actual journalists covered many of the same blatant lies that Trump espoused in his vanity rant. They included his charge that a single-payer system would eliminate private health care. It would not. Private plans are available for those who can afford more in every country that currently offers universal coverage. Trump also complained that Medicare-for-All would cost $32 trillion, but he failed to mention that the current system costs $34 trillion, so we would save $2 trillion.

Trump also reminded readers that he promised to protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions. However, his proposals actually eliminate that benefit. So then he sought to claim that under his programs premiums have been declining. In fact, they declined as a result of ObamaCare, but rose after Trump’s sabotage of it was implemented.

Trump tried to foist the lie that ObamaCare cut Medicare by $800 billion. The truth is that it moved that money from Medicare to ObamaCare, and then provided more benefits with the same funding. Also Trump claimed that Medicare-for-All would outlaw private plans, end of choice for seniors, and prevent people from seeing the doctor of their choice. None of that is true. Especially the last item because, without physician networks people could go to any doctor they want.

Then Trump segued completely away from health care to lob some unrelated and unprovoked insults at Democrats. He began by fuming that “the centrist Democratic Party is dead. The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.” Which is, of course, total nonsensical babbling from a deranged mind. He railed at “Democrats’ absolute commitment to end enforcement of our immigration laws, and charged that “Today’s Democratic Party is for open-borders socialism.” Which he must have picked up from one of his white supremacist buddies like Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Finally, Trump projected the Republican agenda to “slash budgets for seniors’ Medicare and Social Security” onto Democrats, who have always fought to preserve and improve those programs. Even now the Republican Congress is proposing severe cuts due to funding shortfalls caused by Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. That’s just another of the parade of lies that our Pathological-Liar-in-Chief is spewing in a never ending effort to break his own records for lies-per-minute. And on this matter alone Trump can actually claim to be winning.

Crybaby Trump Lashes Out at the Media for Accurately Reporting His Frequent Failures

Posted by on October 10, 2018 at 11:06 am. 2 Comments :

With Hurricane Michael bearing down on the Gulf Coast, Donald Trump managed to find time to tweet about the media that he regards as “the enemy of the people.” He’s been doing that most of the last two years, even after the GOP-controlled Senate rebuked him for his blatantly anti-constitutional blather.

Donald Trump

In his latest Twitter tantrum, Trump characteristically whined about what he thinks is biased treatment by the press. He continues to prove that he is a weakling who can’t take the heat of public service like all the presidents who preceded him. So he lashes out incoherently and clings to sycophantic supporters who oblige him with undeserved flattery. Wednesday morning’s rant was especially deranged:

The Media Research Center is a notoriously biased pack of right-wing shills. What they publish as “studies” wouldn’t stand the scrutiny of credible media analysts. And their results are similar to those of dictatorships where the tyrant in residence always seems to get ninety-plus percent in every election. It’s uncanny how much murderous totalitarians like Trump’s pals Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are loved by the people they oppress.

In Trump’s attack on the press he makes a point of calling out all of the broadcast media offenders: ABC, CBS and ABC. He must really hate ABC because he put them in there twice. And surprisingly, he left out NBC, the network he hates more than all the others. Is his hostility just so intense that he can’t even bring himself to utter their name? And Trump’s complaint about negative stories is completely off base. The press is reporting on him accurately, and it isn’t their fault that almost everything he does is negative.

Trump did manage to include his newspaper nemesis, the New York Times, which is hardly failing. Trump is very upset that the Times didn’t put the Kavanaugh “victory” on the front page Tuesday. First, let’s note that Dr. Ford, and millions of American women, don’t think that Kavanaugh’s presence on the Supreme Court is a victory. But more to the point, Trump is once again demonstrating his ignorance and/or dishonesty. That’s because the Senate confirmation vote occurred on Saturday, and it was on the front page of the Times on Sunday:

It continues to boggle the mind how Trump can keep exhibiting ever lower stages of mental infirmity. The simplest things are screwed up to an astonishing degree. And even when he is apprised of his errors, he persists in repeating them. It’s a symptom of his senile dementia and malignant narcissism. And it’s embarrassing to the nation and the majority of its citizens. But what’s even more troubling is that there is a small core of StormTrumpers who eat this up. They are as delusional as he is and are incapable of being corrected no matter how solid the facts. What’s truly frightening is that Trump will eventually be gone, but they will remain.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.