Donald Trump made 12 false claims in his State of the Union address

[Saviolo]

Once again, Daniel Dale's thorough reporting on Trump's lies in the Toronto Star. Full article here.

Here are the false claims Trump made in his State of the Union:

1) “After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.”

Wages have been rising since 2014. As PolitiFact reported: “For much of the time between 2012 and 2014, median weekly earnings were lower than they were in 1979 — a frustrating disappearance of any wage growth for 35 years. But that began changing in 2014. After hitting a low of $330 a week in early 2014, wages have risen to $354 a week by early 2017. That’s an increase of 7.3 per cent over a roughly three-year period.” FactCheck.org reported: “For all private workers, average weekly earnings (adjusted for inflation) rose 4% during Obama’s last four years in office.” The Washington Post noted that wages “actually declined in the fourth quarter of 2017, from $353 a week to $345 in inflation-adjusted dollars.”

4) “We have ended the war on American energy — and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal.”

We’ll leave aside the debate about the existence of a “war on American energy,” and Trump has indeed taken steps to encourage the coal industry — but the phrase “clean coal” is dishonest in itself, a creation of industry spin. As the Washington Post reports: “There’s no such thing as ‘clean coal.’ Power plants can mitigate some of the effects of burning coal by capturing and burying carbon-dioxide emissions, but that doesn’t cleanse the coal itself.” The phrase “clean coal,” the New York Times reported last year, “is often understood to mean coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks and bury it underground as a way of limiting global warming.” This technology, though, is not widely — — and Trump appears to extra-misleadingly use the phrase “clean coal” to describe coal extraction and use of any kind.

11) “The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration.”

This is simple nonsense. There is no reasonable argument that the “nuclear family” would be protected if Trump no longer allowed people to sponsor family members, such as children and parents, to immigrate to the U.S.


If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? The answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

You can read the entire list at the link at the top of this post.

[unblock]

1. only 12? wow, if that's really it, that's a record low for such a long speech!

donnie's more than capable of telling two or three lies between breaths.

maybe he finally is pivoting.

[underpants]

2. Love the disclaimer

Great article

[Motley13]

3. Every time I hear "clean coal" I want to puke

the moron probably does think it is clean, would love to see him in a mine for a day, what an imbecile.

[Saviolo]

4. I'll bet if someone he trusted handed him a chunk of quartz

And told him it was "clean coal" he'd go around showing everyone the amazing clean coal that US ingenuity is helping create.

Also, the term "clean coal" also makes me physically ill, so I'm right there with you. Also, it should never be used without quotation marks around it.