I am tired of hearing about all the lies that Trump tells, yet I have seen very little documentation of the Truth of such lies, and that he has told 20,000 lies sounds like a lie as well. To bring some clarification to this, I wrote this essay as an attempt to provide some documentation. Webster’s College Dictionary defines “lie” as “not the truth.” Then what is “truth”? It is defined as, ” being in accord with reality and fact.” Many of Trump’s statements that are put in the column of lies seem to deal with exaggerations, opinion, wishful thinking, and predictions. They deal with unknowables, guesses, and future events, the reality of which has not yet happened and, therefore, do not fit the definition. For example, the statement, “The pandemic will just fade away,” is a presumption — anyone who sees that as Truth has an I.Q. issue and needs education or therapy. The maker of that statement should assume he is speaking to normal people, and should not modify his address as if his audience is mentally deficient or childish. The Mueller investigation had 15 prosecutors, took two years and spent $32,000,000 of taxpayer money, issued 2800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, interviewed 40 FBI agents and 500 witnesses under oath, and still failed to prove Russian collusion! We must assume, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was no collusion. That removes a large number of Trump lies out of the lie list.
To be fair, however, I thought I would discuss the lies from the left. Even Biden has called Trump out as being a lier. Biden has questionable credentials to make those claims. Biden stated he had three degrees, that he was near the top of his law school class, and that he had an academic scholarship. That he was first in his family to attend college is one of his favorite lies he resurrected from decades ago, and just repeated at a recent town hall meeting. He forgot about his great grandfather and several members of his mother’s family. He had only one undergraduate degree. In fact, he was near the bottom of his class in all three years of law school. His scholarship was based on financial need and not because of academic excellence. Check it out yourself: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/may/07/ad-watch-fact-checking-video-about-bidens-academic/
Biden has a compulsive bent towards plagiarism, copying President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, Neil Kinnock, British Labor Party leader verbatim without acknowledgment, even plagiarizing of all people, Trump about buying American products and hiring American workers. He also likes to fabricate events that put him in a heroic light, like having been shot at in South Africa, participating in civil rights marches, and backing black high school classmates who were discriminated against. Unfortunately, none of those things happened. If he plays footloose with his own history, how do you think he will play with your history, your future, your rights, and freedoms?
The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer is a favorite line of Bernie Sanders, but it is also a lie. The rich invest their money, creating jobs that create income for the poor and the middle class. The world poverty rate for a family of four is an annual income at $2800. It is $25,250 in the U.S., which does not include the $1.3 trillion of welfare that the poor additionally get for health care, food stamps, subsidized housing, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These are not included in the calculation for income that most of the rest of the world’s poor do not get. The poor in the U.S. do not pay tax on welfare, which is substantial, at least doubling their income and in some cases tripling it. Also at a certain threshold, the poor pay no federal income tax at all, but still qualify for various tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. And of course, the poor do not pay an estate tax, which is a tax on money that has already been taxed once. So much for the Boston Tea Party, which protested another unfair tax. America’s poor are the rest of the world’s rich. America’s poor all eat well, live in decent housing, have medical care, a car, a cell phone, a refrigerator, color T.V., and a heated home. The rest of the world does not.
Bernie needs to change his line to, “A rising tide raises all boats.” That is why the rest of the world all want to live in the USA! That is why we need a wall. America is one of the few countries where you can reach your dreams if you are willing to delay gratification and put the work and time into it. My family came here from Europe with $500 of assets in 1954. Both my sister and I went to college and have had a rewarding life. We were not given anything; we earned every bit of it!
Trickle-down economics does work. That is something that anyone with half a brain should be able to intuitively figure out. If you have the money, it will not go under the mattress. You will either save it or spend it. If you spend it, this will create a need to replace whatever you bought. Someone will need to make your purchased product to replace it. That creates a job. If you save it, it gives the bank more money to lend to buy a car or a loan for a small business to grow. Only a democratic politician would claim that trickle-down does not work, and only a person that does not understand economics and cannot reason would believe it.
When people say the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes that is absolutely absurd! The upper 1% of taxpayers pay 38% of all taxes, and the top 50 % pay 97% of taxes, while the bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 3% of taxes. I have liberal friends that dispute this, but refuse to look on the IRS website, as they believe those numbers are impossible and that I am lying. Besides, I doubt that they care what the Truth is.
America is “systemically racist” is an accusation that is dubious, to say the least. First, all slaves that came to America were brought here by the English, who bought them from black African royalty that enslaved black people and sold them. 338,000 black people came to North America! Do the African aristocracy that captured the misfortunate and the slave traders get any of the blame? Slaves were gradually freed after 1776, and the North fought the most bloody war 85 years later to free the rest, with a loss of mostly white men’s lives of 350,000. Was that the “White Privilege” to die at Gettysburg, Antietam, Manassas, Bull Run, Shiloh, and 10,000 more battlefields that everybody talks about? Can’t we get some credit and gratitude for that instead of blame? We should be proud of that achievement instead of taking a knee! White folk are the heroes of that fight! Are we forgetting that? Slavery has existed for at least 11,000 years. It is true that we were not the first to abandon slavery in 1862 with the Emancipation Proclamation, but we were not the last either. It took the United Nations until 1948 to abolish worldwide slavery. Syria waited until 2019 to make it illegal! That was just last year!
Almost half of the voting electorate who voted for Obama were white. Were all those people racists? Really? Many of the black intelligentsia like Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Candice Owens, Morgan Freeman, Condoleezza Rice, Ben Carson, and many more black intellectuals question the reality of “systemic racism.” I see systemic racism as one of those Socialist “Big Lies.” Stalin invented the concept. If you repeat the same lie over and over, they will eventually believe it.
Biden in the first presidential debate, denied that he supports the “Green New Deal,” but his website says he does. Which lie are we supposed to believe? Or is it just a typo?
A popular conception is that President Trump made the Corona pandemic much more lethal, causing many more unnecessary deaths. Much is made of what he said and when he said it. The world’s mortality numbers, however, show the U.S. is in the upper third in successfully controlling the virus. What is important is not what he said, but what he did and what the ultimate result was. When you look at the mortality of the most affected countries in the world, the U.S. did not do all that badly. Europe’s death numbers are now 200,000, nearly equal to ours.
A more accurate comparison of mortality is seen on the Johns Hopkins Mortality chart of percent of deaths per 100,000 population as of 10/5/2020. The worst in the world, Italy, was not even included at 11.1% deaths per 100,000. We did 3.8 times better than Italy, 1.8 times better than France, and half as good as India, the best country at 0.55. It is true that we had more cases than most. This is a function of public health enforcement. While we were defunding the police, most of Europe was hiring more law enforcement, and people that did not comply with public health edicts were fined with very stiff penalties, some exceeding several thousand euros, and if they still didn’t comply, they went to jail. Admittedly our President didn’t wear his mask consistently, and Nancy Pelosi went to hair salons when it was not allowed. The will of our population would not tolerate that level of stringency. We can’t even control looters, arsonists, and rioters. How are we going to enforce mask-wearing, social distancing, and handwashing? The politicians and public were also very concerned about the balance of the pandemic vs. the economy, and that has become a major contributor to our lax attitude.
What Trump said about hydroxychloroquine was when there were still prominent supporters like the Lancet, the world’s best known medical journal, and others who still do. If you paid attention, you will note he didn’t take it now when he had the infection. Besides, taking it or not had as much effect as acupuncture, that many still hold in high esteem. More to the point, that Trump is to blame for more deaths is not supported by the evidence or the numbers. I have to conclude that it is just another lie!
Republicans are the party of the rich. That used to be true, but in 2018 the Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives because of gains among the rich. The wealthier counties have flipped to blue. There is a worldwide movement that has attracted the rich to become more liberal. The U.K. has increasingly seen a rise in the Liberal Democrats, and in Germany, the Green Party has made gains all because the upper-middle class has joined with the populists as they have in the U.S. The Democrats have now become the party of the rich.
The biggest lie is what Democratic Socialists are. We are about to vote on one of the more important elections of our life. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Democratic Socialists have vowed to tear down our system and fundamentally change our way of life, our economy, our government, our Constitution, our energy consumption, and more! Do the smart Democrats not pay attention to what they say? Or do they not care?
I have not gotten to 20,000 lies yet, but give me time!
*Several concepts are taken from an essay: “Democrats, Progressives, and Socialists – Exposing the Danger” by Bruce Hendry