The Whoppers of 2016
A year ago, we broke with past practice and named Donald Trump our first ever “King of Whoppers.” This year, the reigning champ defended his title well – once again dominating our annual review of political whoppers.
At his campaign rallies, Trump regularly disparaged the media as “dishonest,” referring at one point to fact-checkers as “dishonest scum.” Yet, he peddled conspiracy theories from a supermarket tabloid and a website that serves as a platform for the alt-right.
The Republican president-elect used a thinly sourced story from the National Enquirer to make the baseless claim that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father “was with Lee Harvey Oswald” prior to John F. Kennedy’s assassination — a claim he doubled down on after Cruz already had dropped out of the presidential primary. Trump also cited Breitbart as evidence that he was “right” when he suggested that President Obama supported terrorists. No, Trump wasn’t right.
During the campaign, Trump also made the wild accusation that Obama “is the founder of ISIS,” the terrorist group based in Syria and Iraq, and retweeted a fake image of Fox News host Megyn Kelly that purported to show her posing with Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.
Of course, we wrote about plenty of others who distorted the facts and made false claims in 2016. After all, it was the year when the facts caught up with Hillary Clinton’s numerous false and distorted claims regarding her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Contrary to what she said, Clinton did have classified material on her server and did not have government approval to use a private server because she never requested it.
Even so, Trump is in a league of his own.
Here we present — as we do every year — a wrap-up of the biggest whoppers in an election year that stunned the political experts, shook up the party establishment and kept fact-checkers very busy.
Analysis
Trump’s Whoppers
On the campaign trail, Trump relentlessly portrayed the U.S. as a once-proud nation in decline, and held himself out to voters as the man who could make it great again. That’s his opinion, of course, and he is entitled to it.
We took issue, though, with how he distorted the facts on employment, crime, immigration, taxes, refugees, terrorism and other topics, to make his case.
In February, Trump said he “heard” the unemployment rate was really 42 percent, and vowed to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” At the time, the official unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, and it has since dropped to 4.6 percent — the lowest in more than nine years. Trump’s inflated figure includes millions of people 16 years and older who are not in the labor force and don’t want to work — including retirees, high school and college students, and stay-at-home parents.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-whoppers-of-2016/ar-AAlJJoq?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
