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dalton99a

(81,526 posts) Sat Nov 16, 2019, 02:18 PM Nov 2019

A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/16/politics/fact-check-trump-dishonesty-ukraine-and-impeachment/index.html

Fact check: A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment
By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is dishonest about a whole lot of things. But he is rarely as comprehensively dishonest as he has been about his dealings with Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they have triggered.

Relentless deceit has seemed to be his primary defense strategy in the court of public opinion. Trump has made false claims about almost every separate component of the story, from his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the whistleblower who complained about the call to Democrats' impeachment inquiry hearings.

The President is dissembling about so many different topics at once that it can be difficult to keep track of what is true and what isn't. To help you fight Trump-induced dizziness, here are brief fact checks of 45 separate false claims Trump has made on the subject of Ukraine or impeachment.

The phone call with Zelensky

1. Trump released an "exact transcript" of his call with Zelensky. (The document says on its first page that it is "not a verbatim transcript." )

2. Trump did not ask Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)

3. Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch "out of the blue" on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.)

4. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "angry" when she saw the rough transcript of the call, and she said, "This is not what the whistleblower said." (Pelosi has said no such thing in public, and there is no evidence she has said anything like that in private. Her public statement on the call was scathing.)

5. "Everybody" that looked at the text of the call agreed that it was "perfect." (Some of Trump's staunch defenders agreed with this characterization, but clearly not "everybody" did.)

6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to Trump about the call and said, "That was the most innocent phone call that I've read." (McConnell said he doesn't recall speaking to Trump about the call. His public statement on the call was far less effusive than Trump's description.)

7. People are not talking about the call anymore. (People continue to talk about the call, a central focus of the impeachment inquiry.)

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