I wonder how much they've spent on "impeachment"? Remember when that was a thing? And pssssssst, the Dems made them this way and its all the Dems' fault, being the chaos agents they are.
OpinionMeet the Biden impeachment managers: Larry, Moe and Curly
After House Republicans’ caucus meeting in the Capitol basement this week, Speaker Mike Johnson gave the media an update on his release of thousands of hours of security footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The release had been slowed, Johnson explained, because “we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day, because we don’t want them to be retaliated against — and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”
It was as clear a statement as there could be on where the new speaker’s allegiance lies: protecting those who sacked the Capitol from being brought to justice for their crimes. Johnson (La.) was openly siding with the insurrectionists and against the United States government he swore an oath to defend.
The Justice Department already has the undoctored footage, as Johnson’s spokesman later acknowledged, so, presumably, the speaker is trying to prevent members of the public from identifying anyone in the violent mob (“persons who participated in the events of that day”) that law enforcement might have overlooked. Sure, they attacked the seat of government in their bloody attempt to overthrow a free and fair election, but let us respect their privacy! After all the yammering from the right about transparency, Johnson is manipulating the footage — not to protect the Capitol’s security but to protect the attackers.
Hours after aligning himself with the insurrectionists, Johnson went to break bread with the Christian nationalists. At the Museum of the Bible, he gave the keynote address to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group whose founder and leader, Jason Rapert, has said, “I reject that being a Christian nationalist is somehow unseemly or wrong.”
At the group’s meeting in June, one of the speakers noted with approval that “the American colonies imposed the death penalty for sodomy.” Confirmed speakers and award recipients for the gathering Johnson addressed included: a man who proposed that gay people should wear “a label across their forehead, ‘This can be hazardous to your health’”; a woman who blames gay marriage for Noah’s flood; and, as the liberal watchdog Media Matters reported, various adherents of “dominionist” theology, which holds that the United States should be governed under biblical law by Christians.
Reporters were kicked out of this week’s event before Johnson spoke but, before the event, Rapert called Johnson “an answer to prayer,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Alex Thomas reported.
Err, was that a prayer for the branding of gay people?
Former speaker Kevin McCarthy this week became the 31st lawmaker in the House to announce his retirement, as members of both parties stampede to exit the woefully dysfunctional chamber. McCarthy, the California Republican who spent most of 2023 saying “I do not quit,” will quit this month, with a year left in his term.
Freshman Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) decried the “brain drain” in his party — veteran Republicans Patrick McHenry (N.C.), Michael Burgess (Tex.) and Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) are among those on the way out — although, in fairness, there wasn’t a whole lot of brain in the first place. Of more immediate concern to Republicans is a vote drain: After the expulsion of George Santos (N.Y.) and McCarthy’s resignation, the GOP, paralyzed with a four-vote majority throughout this year, will have just a two-vote majority.
McCarthy, announcing his departure in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, reflected: “It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets.” By this standard, he should be delighted with the current Congress. Famously unproductive during his tenure as speaker, it is now doing almost nothing.
U.S. funds for Ukraine’s defense will run dry by the end of the month, leaving the invaded country vulnerable to a Russian takeover. But Johnson said he won’t take up Ukraine support in the House unless Democrats pay a ransom: a nonnegotiable demand that they swallow House Republicans’ entire wish list of border policies. That obstinance has blown up negotiations in the Senate, where Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) calls Johnson’s position “not rational,” Punchbowl News reported.
Johnson has likewise stalled military aid to Israel, which commands overwhelming bipartisan support, by making another unrelated ransom demand: Democrats must repeal legislation that gave the IRS more clout to go after wealthy tax cheats. Johnson has also bottled up attempts to fund the government after next month by failing to agree to the overall spending number that Senate Republicans and House and Senate Democrats have all accepted.
In rare cases when Johnson does try to do something productive, his fellow Republicans denounce him. After a double flip-flop, the speaker finally blessed a compromise with Senate Democrats on the annual National Defense Authorization Act, including a temporary extension of the 9/11-era FISA 702 surveillance authority. “Outrageous … a total sell-out,” protested Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.). Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.) told the Messenger’s Lindsey McPherson this was “strike two and a half — if not more” against Johnson.
The new speaker has even managed to divide the chamber on a matter where there had been virtually no disagreement: the need to denounce the recent rise in antisemitism. The House Education Committee held one of the best hearings of the year this week, in which the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT disgraced themselves by suggesting, in response to questions by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and others, that their students should feel free to run around calling for the genocide of Jews.
It was an entirely different picture on the House floor, where Republicans brought up the latest of several resolutions condemning antisemitism. This resolution, however, declared that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” a dubious proposition equating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. A group of Jewish Democrats, arguing that “the safety of Jewish lives is not a game,” urged colleagues to vote “present” in protest — and 92 of them did. But for Republicans, it was a game: After the vote, the National Republican Campaign Committee, the House GOP’s political arm, put out a statement saying “extreme House Democrats just refused to denounce the … drastic rise of antisemitism.”
Alas, for the NRCC, the one genuinely antisemitic act from the episode came from Republican Rep. Tom Massie (Ky.), who suggested in a post on X that Congress placed “Zionism” above “American patriotism.”
Still, it would be unfair to suggest that House Republicans have been entirely unproductive during Johnson’s tenure. They have continued to censure each other at a record-setting pace. This week, it was Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s turn. What grave constitutional offense had been committed this time? The New York Democrat had pulled a fire alarm in one of the House office buildings in September.
“If extreme MAGA Republicans are going to continue to try to weaponize the censure,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said on the House floor on Wednesday, “going after Democrats repeatedly, week after week after week because you have nothing better to do, then I volunteer: Censure me next! … That’s how worthless your censure effort is.”
The race to censure has become a competitive sport among Republicans. After McCormick recently got a vote on his motion to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) before Greene got a vote on her motion to censure Tlaib, Greene accused her fellow Georgian of “assault,” Politico’s Olivia Beavers reports. McCormick said he shook Greene by the shoulders in a “friendly” gesture.
And censure is just a warm-up for the main event. Next week, House Republicans plan to vote to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. You see, they believe they have finally found the smoking gun that proves Biden guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors: He helped his son buy a pickup truck in 2018.
They have become the Three Stooges of the House’s Biden investigations: Jim, Jason and James, stepping on rakes and getting hit by falling flowerpots as they try to make a case for their predetermined outcome of impeaching the president. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is Moe, thundering and blundering in his repeated failures to prove Biden’s “weaponization” of the government. Jason Smith, the in-over-his-head chairman of Ways and Means, is Larry, brainlessly reciting whatever script is in front of him. And Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is Curly, perpetually getting a pie in the face when the “evidence” he produces is immediately debunked.
“BREAKING,” Comer announced on social media this week, with two siren emojis. “Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.” This was evidence that the president “knew & benefitted from his family’s business schemes.” But it turned out the payments, for all of $1,380 each, were repayments for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck Biden helped his son Hunter buy at a time when the younger Biden was broke because of his drug addiction.
Their act is so weak that these stooges have already gone into reruns. Last week, Jordan’s “weaponization” panel held a hearing on supposed censorship at Twitter — the same topic of a hearing he had in March, with two of the same witnesses. This week, Smith’s committee had a hearing with the same two IRS “whistleblowers” who already testified about the Hunter Biden case before that panel, as well as before the Oversight Committee, earlier this year.
Comer, after seeing his allegations refuted in hearing after disastrous hearing, has said he doesn’t want to have any additional public sessions. He prefers the safety of closed-door depositions, from which he can selectively leak misleading tidbits.
Last week, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client would be happy to testify publicly before Congress. “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public,” he wrote. “We therefore propose opening the door.” But Comer immediately rejected the offer, and he and Jordan are now threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for insisting on public, rather than closed-door, testimony.
Their desire for secrecy is perfectly understandable, given the absence of evidence against the president. Last week, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo asked a Republican member of Comer’s Oversight panel, Lisa McClain (Mich.), whether investigators had been able to “identify any actual policy changes” that Biden made related to his family’s business dealings. “The short answer is no,” McClain replied.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
This week, the three stooges assembled in the echoey lobby of the Longworth House Office Building for a “media availability” on the impeachment inquiry. Smith alleged that the Bidens moved “an unimaginable sum of money” (actually, between $10 million and $20 million, compared with multiple billions of dollars similarly received by Trump family members from foreign interests). Comer repeated his allegation about the “monthly payments” made to Biden, again omitting that they were for Hunter’s pickup truck.
The three suddenly hustled away. “No questions?” Washington Examiner’s Reese Gorman called after them. “I thought this was a press conference.”
Smith then gaveled in the Ways and Means Committee to hear once more from his “whistleblowers.” His first order of business: to close the meeting to the public and the media.
The ranking Democrat, Richard Neal (Mass.), made a motion for the hearing to remain open to the public. “You’re not recognized,” Smith replied.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) asked to debate the Republicans’ motion to kick out the public. “It’s not debatable,” Smith shot back.
Republicans repelled the Democratic attempts at transparency in party-line votes; Smith ordered the room cleared of journalists and spectators. Republicans said they would release a transcript “upon completion of our meeting,” but it didn’t come out that day, or the next.
Their fevered efforts to hide from the public make it clear House Republicans have lost the plot in their attempt to implicate Biden. But will they impeach him anyway? Certainly! Woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,401
edited December 2023
tell me you're running to be vp without yelling me you're running to be vp.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
0
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,401
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
“American people will overwhelmingly agree?” Too many too far gone. Way too many. Too late.
Yup. I think there’s too many people in denial about the republican party and that they’ll all have some awakening where there will be a return to past “normalcy” (which was already a historical myth anyway).
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,501
Jesus. Just casually scrolling through this page.....
Between Catturd and the state of Texas essentially trying to kill some lady over an abortion....40% of this country is just beyond lost for associating with these people.
Jesus. Just casually scrolling through this page.....
Between Catturd and the state of Texas essentially trying to kill some lady over an abortion....40% of this country is just beyond lost for associating with these people.
The stupid spreads like rabies. There is no getting through the thick layer of stupid.
I just met with a guy that wants to start taking social security at 62 because he is convinced the democrats are going to take it away and he wants some before they do that. It makes financial planning difficult.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Jesus. Just casually scrolling through this page.....
Between Catturd and the state of Texas essentially trying to kill some lady over an abortion....40% of this country is just beyond lost for associating with these people.
The stupid spreads like rabies. There is no getting through the thick layer of stupid.
I just met with a guy that wants to start taking social security at 62 because he is convinced the democrats are going to take it away and he wants some before they do that. It makes financial planning difficult.
Well, Dems want chaos and Hunter's laptop exists, so what other conclusion can one come to?
We need to vote trump next year to keep the criminals out of the White House.
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,501
I talk to morons every single day at work who tell me similarly dumb things about the economy and interest rates etc. Everything is Joe Biden's fault......just like everything was Obama's fault 10 years ago lol
I talk to morons every single day at work who tell me similarly dumb things about the economy and interest rates etc. Everything is Joe Biden's fault......just like everything was Obama's fault 10 years ago lol
The scary thing for me was that during the Obama years friends and family, smart, educated and successful people, were highly critical of Obama and quite open about it, typically unsolicited. When I engaged them and asked for specifics or details of why they thought he was a terrible POTUS, they couldn’t express the specifics. If I pointed out facts to dispute their criticism, they were highly skeptical and wouldn’t believe me or the facts. It was exhausting.
What did they all have in common? Faux News on multiple televisions constantly. They had no interest in alternative sources of information and were firm in their disinformation as “fact” or “truth.” I knew then that the US political landscape had undergone a massive shift. I held out hope that the average US voter wasn’t this misinformed or susceptible to a POS like POOTWH but him getting elected and his continuing dominance of the repub party has shaken that faith to the point where it doesn’t exist.
27 years of broadcasting an alternative reality has worked. And not just in the US. It’s too late. Way too late.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
How is it that this is accepted? By anyone? POOTWH is a cult leader and if you support him, you're in a cult too. Is this how Hitler spoke to the masses or gave press interviews? Did he also dumb it down to a 4th grade level and just make shit up?
Trump on Hannity’s show: 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes
A bogus claim every 12 seconds, on average. That’s what a single five-minute clip of former president Donald Trump speaking in Iowa on Dec. 5 yielded. In the clip, from a Fox News “town hall” hosted by Sean Hannity and brought to our attention by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB), Trump ludicrously asserts that American oil and natural gas resources — “liquid gold” in the ground — could solve Social Security’s looming fiscal imbalance. That claim comes toward the end of the clip; to get there, a listener must first hear falsehood after falsehood in rapid succession.
Hannity tees up Trump by noting that he had mentioned energy. Hannity says that with $34 trillion of debt, the United States is paying $1 trillion in annual interest costs — a correct statement — and says “that is unsustainable.”
We went through a transcript of Trump’s response, noting each false or misleading statement in boldface and providing a time stamp. The first falsehood comes in the 43rd second.
0:43
“So before covid hit us, a gift from China. That was our gift. What happened to us with covid, commonly known as the China virus. They don’t like that. But it was a China virus.”
The coronavirus that sparked the 2020 pandemic is not commonly known as the China virus. The origin has not been pinpointed, although the first known cases appeared in China in late 2019. But viruses are not country-specific and do not honor borders; the so-called Spanish flu of 1918, for example, appears to have started in Kansas.
0:53
“We were doing energy, taking our liquid gold out of the ground at a rate that’s never been seen before. And it was going up.”
This is misleading. Trump often takes credit for trends that were apparent before he became president. The U.S. energy boom began during the Obama administration, largely because of the expansion of fracking and new drilling technologies. U.S. production of crude oil began increasing rapidly after 2010, and in 2013, the International Energy Agency predicted that the United States in 2016 would leap ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top oil producer. That happened in 2017, early in Trump’s presidency. As you will see below, Trump falsely takes credit for that. In fact, when both petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons are counted, the United States became the largest producer in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).
1:00
“We were going to be using that liquid gold to sell to Europe instead of the pipeline from Russia, which I exposed.”
Nord Stream 2 is a Russian pipeline that would have doubled the export of Russian natural gas to Germany. Trump did not expose it; U.S. policymakers, including the Biden administration, have long objected to it. “Successive U.S. Administrations and Congresses have opposed Nord Stream 2, reflecting concerns about European dependence on Russian energy and the threat Russia poses to Ukraine,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2021 report.
1:02
“And I stopped, you know, I stopped that line.”
False. During the Trump administration, Congress imposed sanctions that temporarily halted construction for only one year. Germany was progressing with certification of the pipeline but warned that a Russian attack on Ukraine could halt the deal. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the project was killed.
1:08
“Then they say I was nice to Russia. There was nobody that was nice. I was not nice to Russia.”
False. Trump sided with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community in a news conference in Helsinki in 2018, saying he did not believe Russia tried to intervene in the 2016 election. Trump often resisted congressional efforts to sanction Russia and led a charge to weaken NATO and the European Union — two important goals of Putin’s. He has suggested that he might pull the United States out of NATO if he’s elected to a second term.
1:15
“I stopped that pipeline. We would have been selling oil and gas to Europe, to Asia, all over the world. We would have been paying off debt.”
False. Trump often has magical thinking about the national debt. When he first ran for president, Trump confidently claimed that he could eliminate the national debt — then $19 trillion — in just eight years through better trade deals. We gave him Four Pinocchios. He walked back the pledge, saying he would reduce a percentage of the debt. That didn’t happen. Instead, under Trump, the debt climbed to $27.8 trillion from not quite $20 trillion, a gain of $7.9 trillion. (More than half of the debt under Trump came in the last 10 months of his term because of the pandemic.)
Running again for president, Trump now claims the debt would be reduced by money generated by oil and natural gas reserves in the ground. But most of the money is earned by oil producers, not the federal government. The federal government might own some of the land and earn leasing fees. Such fees on U.S. federal lands, federal waters and Native American lands amounted to about $20 billion in fiscal 2022, according to CFRB. The government also earns fees from taxes on sales, with a substantial portion already dedicated to transportation projects. All told, the federal government earns about $100 billion a year from fees and taxes on fossil fuel, according to a 2022 report from Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research group.
The United States had a budget deficit almost four times as high — $383 billion — just in the first two months of fiscal 2024 (which began Oct. 1), showing the folly of Trump’s logic.
1:19
“That debt would be way down right now because we have more than — What people don’t know, we have more liquid gold than any other country in the world by far.”
False. According to the EIA, the United States has proven crude oil reserves of 44 billion barrels, which would put the country in 10th place. Venezuela, with 304 billion of oil reserves, is in first place, followed by Saudi Arabia (259 billion), Iran (209 billion), Canada (170 billion) and Iraq (145 billion).
1:24
“And we started off in fourth place. We were No. 4 with Saudi Arabia. It was Russia. It was two countries fighting for No. 3. And it was us at No. 4 or 5.”
False. Trump here appears to switch from talking about reserves to crude oil production. In 2016, Barack Obama’s last year as president, the United States ranked third, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. In 2017, the United States produced 13.1 million barrels a day, compared to 12 million for Saudi Arabia and 11.3 million for Russia.
1:37
“By the time I left, we were No. 1 by 25 percent.”
This is exaggerated. According to EIA, the United States produced 11.3 million barrels a day in 2020, compared to 9.9 for Russia, or 14 percent more. Saudia Arabia was in third place with 9.4 million barrels. Oil production actually went down — 8 percent from 2019 in the United States — because the pandemic sharply cut oil consumption.
1:41
“We would have been No. 1 by 100 and we would have done twice what they were going to do combined. We would have been paying off debt. That we would have been.”
This is an absurd assertion. Trump repeats his falsehood about paying off the debt.
1:47
“We gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, bigger than the Reagan tax cut.”
The audience burst into applause with this line, but it’s false. Trump’s tax cut amounted to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it was far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest tax cut in the past century — and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.
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1:58
“We would have been reducing taxes still further. And that’s why, Sean, that’s why we had the most jobs of any president ever.”
False. Trump says “jobs,” but as he did during his presidency, he’s referring to the number of Americans employed. That’s mostly a function of population growth. The number of Americans in non-farm jobs peaked at 152 million in February 2020 but then plunged because of the pandemic. It was about 143 million by the time Trump left office. Biden can claim to have beaten Trump on this (mostly meaningless) statistic. As of last month, 157 million Americans had non-farm jobs.
2:04
“We got rid of regulations. Tremendous. No president got rid of more regulations or close.”
Trump’s claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified and appears to be false. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits. A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said that the Trump administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book and that it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data was examined.
2:28
“And we gave you the big tax cuts. So everybody had incentive and everybody was happy and everybody was working. I remember groups came to see me that wouldn’t normally like me, and they said, ‘We’ve never seen anything like it.’ We were actually starting to get along, but we got hit with the China virus. There were some people think purposely. I don’t. I think it was incompetence, but some people think purposely because we were doing so much better than any other country ever and we got hit.”
This is mostly Trump patting himself on the back, although he slips in a reference to the conspiracy theory that “some people” think China purposely attacked the United States with the coronavirus. The falsehood here is that the United States was doing better than any country ever. Before the pandemic struck, many other countries had faster growth rates, including China, India, Latvia, Poland and Greece.
In the United States, by just about any key measure in the modern era, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton presided over stronger economic growth than Trump.
2:33
“But I will tell you, we would be paying that debt off right now at levels like never seen before. We would create a beautiful thing.”
Trump once again falsely says he would have been paying off the debt. If he had beaten Biden, he, and not Biden, would have faced the challenge of large budget deficits created by the pandemic.
At this point, Hannity interrupted Trump to repeat one of Trump’s favorite false claims: “You brought us to energy independence for the first time in 75 years.” While the United States exported more crude and refined products than it imported, it still relied on other countries for its energy needs. Hannity then emphasized the false message Trump has been making: “You’re saying that in a second term, you will push America to be the most energy-dominant country on earth and that you could pay down that $34 trillion in debt and we won’t have $1 trillion interest payment every year?”
3:13
“So it’s Biden inflation. That’s what it is.”
Biden is the president, and so he’s going to be blamed for inflation. But if Trump had been reelected, he would have faced the same post-pandemic inflationary pressures caused by supply chain issues and a surge in energy consumption. Inflation struck every major industrialized country in the world, not just the United States.
“What he did with energy is unbelievable because energy went up so much. Gasoline, $5, $6 a gallon, that that’s what caused inflation.”
This is slightly exaggerated. The average retail price of gasoline spiked at $5.032 a gallon in June 2022, according to EIA, not $6 — although of course it was higher in individual markets such as California. Fuel prices shot up in 2022 largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding to inflationary pressures caused by the pandemic.
3:27
“Now it’s all over the place. But you have 29 percent total inflation.”
Another exaggerated figure. The consumer price index calculator on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website shows that $100 in January 2021, when Biden took office, would have the same buying power at $117.62 in October. That’s an increase of 18 percent.
3:32
“Now, when it holds up, because the economy is starting to slow down very substantially. So when it holds up, he’s saying, well, we don’t have too much inflation. But he doesn’t talk about all of the inflation that you’ve had to suffer over the last three years.”
The Federal Reserve has boosted interest rates to the highest level in 22 years to bring down inflation. But the economy, contrary to many expectations, has not slowed substantially, as Trump claims. The U.S. economy created 199,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent, the BLS said last week.
3:57
“Now, we will have numbers like you’ve never seen. We have a thing in Alaska called ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge]. Ronald Reagan tried to get it approved. Everybody, Bush, maybe a little bit. You know, he didn’t work as hard. But we have we have ANWR in Alaska, the biggest anywhere in the world, including probably Saudi Arabia.”
This is false. On the basis of geology, the U.S. Geological Survey in 2016 projected that there could be anywhere from 11.6 billion to 31.5 billion barrels of oil in the ANWR field. The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, which has been producing oil since the 1950s, had 58 billion barrels left in reserves as of the end of 2018. At least 10 oil fields now in operation are estimated to have more than 20 billion barrels of oil, the midpoint of the USGS survey. (George W. Bush sought drilling in the Arctic refuge, but Democrats repeatedly blocked congressional approval.)
4:04
“I got it approved. I was so proud of it. They ended it in the first week. They ended it. We will get it back.”
This is exaggerated. The Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic refuge four months after Biden took office, citing problems with the environmental review process. Trump had offered the leases in his remaining weeks in office, but few companies were interested. “The Jan. 6 sale of 11 tracts in the refuge on just over 550,000 acres netted roughly $14.4 million, a tiny fraction of what Republicans initially predicted it would yield,” The Washington Post reported. “Only two of the bids were competitive, so nearly all of the drilling rights on the land sold for the minimum price of $25 an acre.”
4:27
“But we have more than anybody. We have more wealth than anybody, but we don’t use it. And then guys like [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis and guys like many of the Democrats, but guys like DeSantis and to a lesser extent, Nikki Haley, they want to play around with your Social Security. You don’t have to touch Social Security. We have money laying in the ground,far greater than anything we can do by hurting senior citizens with their Social Security.”
We’ve demonstrated that this is false. Oil revenue would not make up the difference in Social Security. CFRB estimates that revenue from oil and gas leases would need to be about 27 times larger to cover Social Security’s actuarial deficit. If benefits are not changed, the fiscal imbalance in Social Security can be solved only by raising payroll taxes or boosting the income level subject to tax — nonstarters for Republicans — or financing it out of other government revenue, which would further increase the national debt.
4:55
“Ron DeSantis wanted to bring up — on Social Security. Now, of course, he says, well, I wouldn’t. But, you know, one thing I learned about politicians, I’ve known them. I’ve dealt with them on the other side for a long time. Their first thought is always the thought that they go to. He wanted to raise the minimum age to the age on Social Security to 70. That’s a big increase. But he also wanted to raise it to 75. If that happened, people would be devastated.”
This is false. DeSantis, a rival for the GOP presidential nomination, never supported raising the retirement age to 75. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, DeSantis, as a member of Congress, supported budget plans drawn up by a conservative group of House members that called for raising the retirement age for younger workers to 70. Running for president, however, DeSantis has rejected that idea. Asked by Fox News in March about the possibility of raising the retirement age to 70, DeSantis replied: “We are not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.”
Trump attacks DeSantis for the shift, saying he should be judged on his original proposal. But Trump also once called for raising the retirement age to 70 — just like DeSantis.
“A firm limit at age seventy makes sense for people now under forty,” Trump wrote. “We’re living longer. We’re working longer. New medicines are extending healthy human life. Besides, how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon? The way the workweek is going, it will probably be down to about twenty-five hours by then anyway. This is a sacrifice I think we all can make.”
5:00
“We have such incredible wealth under our feet.”
The clip ends with Trump yet again reiterating this false talking point.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
republicans claim to be passionate about the rights of an unborn fetus, yet they don’t seem the least bit concerned about the killing of actual living and breathing babies in Gaza. “my” esteemed republican senator, mike lee, wants us out of the UN because the president of that body spoke some truth that this mess “didn’t occur in a vacuum.” pandering, at its finest.
If I had known then what I know now...
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republicans claim to be passionate about the rights of an unborn fetus, yet they don’t seem the least bit concerned about the killing of actual living and breathing babies in Gaza. “my” esteemed republican senator, mike lee, wants us out of the UN because the president of that body spoke some truth that this mess “didn’t occur in a vacuum.” pandering, at its finest.
Nice to see you....I hope you make it out of here ok
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,401
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Gym F’n Jordan demanding HBiden show up for subpoena is completely deaf and yet not one reporter ask him why he didn’t show up is mindless! Our media has failed this nation too many politicians get away with no pushback
jesus greets me looks just like me ....
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,401
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Gym F’n Jordan demanding HBiden show up for subpoena is completely deaf and yet not one reporter ask him why he didn’t show up is mindless! Our media has failed this nation too many politicians get away with no pushback
hunter's attorney should tell jordan "you first".
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
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Opinion Meet the Biden impeachment managers: Larry, Moe and Curly
After House Republicans’ caucus meeting in the Capitol basement this week, Speaker Mike Johnson gave the media an update on his release of thousands of hours of security footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The release had been slowed, Johnson explained, because “we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day, because we don’t want them to be retaliated against — and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”
It was as clear a statement as there could be on where the new speaker’s allegiance lies: protecting those who sacked the Capitol from being brought to justice for their crimes. Johnson (La.) was openly siding with the insurrectionists and against the United States government he swore an oath to defend.
The Justice Department already has the undoctored footage, as Johnson’s spokesman later acknowledged, so, presumably, the speaker is trying to prevent members of the public from identifying anyone in the violent mob (“persons who participated in the events of that day”) that law enforcement might have overlooked. Sure, they attacked the seat of government in their bloody attempt to overthrow a free and fair election, but let us respect their privacy! After all the yammering from the right about transparency, Johnson is manipulating the footage — not to protect the Capitol’s security but to protect the attackers.
Hours after aligning himself with the insurrectionists, Johnson went to break bread with the Christian nationalists. At the Museum of the Bible, he gave the keynote address to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group whose founder and leader, Jason Rapert, has said, “I reject that being a Christian nationalist is somehow unseemly or wrong.”
At the group’s meeting in June, one of the speakers noted with approval that “the American colonies imposed the death penalty for sodomy.” Confirmed speakers and award recipients for the gathering Johnson addressed included: a man who proposed that gay people should wear “a label across their forehead, ‘This can be hazardous to your health’”; a woman who blames gay marriage for Noah’s flood; and, as the liberal watchdog Media Matters reported, various adherents of “dominionist” theology, which holds that the United States should be governed under biblical law by Christians.
Reporters were kicked out of this week’s event before Johnson spoke but, before the event, Rapert called Johnson “an answer to prayer,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Alex Thomas reported.
Err, was that a prayer for the branding of gay people?
Rapert’s organization also promotes the pine-tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which has been embraced by Christian nationalists, was among the banners flown at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 — and, by total and remarkable coincidence, is proudly displayed outside Johnson’s congressional office.
Former speaker Kevin McCarthy this week became the 31st lawmaker in the House to announce his retirement, as members of both parties stampede to exit the woefully dysfunctional chamber. McCarthy, the California Republican who spent most of 2023 saying “I do not quit,” will quit this month, with a year left in his term.
Freshman Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) decried the “brain drain” in his party — veteran Republicans Patrick McHenry (N.C.), Michael Burgess (Tex.) and Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) are among those on the way out — although, in fairness, there wasn’t a whole lot of brain in the first place. Of more immediate concern to Republicans is a vote drain: After the expulsion of George Santos (N.Y.) and McCarthy’s resignation, the GOP, paralyzed with a four-vote majority throughout this year, will have just a two-vote majority.
McCarthy, announcing his departure in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, reflected: “It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets.” By this standard, he should be delighted with the current Congress. Famously unproductive during his tenure as speaker, it is now doing almost nothing.
U.S. funds for Ukraine’s defense will run dry by the end of the month, leaving the invaded country vulnerable to a Russian takeover. But Johnson said he won’t take up Ukraine support in the House unless Democrats pay a ransom: a nonnegotiable demand that they swallow House Republicans’ entire wish list of border policies. That obstinance has blown up negotiations in the Senate, where Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) calls Johnson’s position “not rational,” Punchbowl News reported.
Johnson has likewise stalled military aid to Israel, which commands overwhelming bipartisan support, by making another unrelated ransom demand: Democrats must repeal legislation that gave the IRS more clout to go after wealthy tax cheats. Johnson has also bottled up attempts to fund the government after next month by failing to agree to the overall spending number that Senate Republicans and House and Senate Democrats have all accepted.
In rare cases when Johnson does try to do something productive, his fellow Republicans denounce him. After a double flip-flop, the speaker finally blessed a compromise with Senate Democrats on the annual National Defense Authorization Act, including a temporary extension of the 9/11-era FISA 702 surveillance authority. “Outrageous … a total sell-out,” protested Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.). Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.) told the Messenger’s Lindsey McPherson this was “strike two and a half — if not more” against Johnson.
The new speaker has even managed to divide the chamber on a matter where there had been virtually no disagreement: the need to denounce the recent rise in antisemitism. The House Education Committee held one of the best hearings of the year this week, in which the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT disgraced themselves by suggesting, in response to questions by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and others, that their students should feel free to run around calling for the genocide of Jews.
It was an entirely different picture on the House floor, where Republicans brought up the latest of several resolutions condemning antisemitism. This resolution, however, declared that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” a dubious proposition equating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. A group of Jewish Democrats, arguing that “the safety of Jewish lives is not a game,” urged colleagues to vote “present” in protest — and 92 of them did. But for Republicans, it was a game: After the vote, the National Republican Campaign Committee, the House GOP’s political arm, put out a statement saying “extreme House Democrats just refused to denounce the … drastic rise of antisemitism.”
Alas, for the NRCC, the one genuinely antisemitic act from the episode came from Republican Rep. Tom Massie (Ky.), who suggested in a post on X that Congress placed “Zionism” above “American patriotism.”
Still, it would be unfair to suggest that House Republicans have been entirely unproductive during Johnson’s tenure. They have continued to censure each other at a record-setting pace. This week, it was Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s turn. What grave constitutional offense had been committed this time? The New York Democrat had pulled a fire alarm in one of the House office buildings in September.
“If extreme MAGA Republicans are going to continue to try to weaponize the censure,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said on the House floor on Wednesday, “going after Democrats repeatedly, week after week after week because you have nothing better to do, then I volunteer: Censure me next! … That’s how worthless your censure effort is.”
The race to censure has become a competitive sport among Republicans. After McCormick recently got a vote on his motion to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) before Greene got a vote on her motion to censure Tlaib, Greene accused her fellow Georgian of “assault,” Politico’s Olivia Beavers reports. McCormick said he shook Greene by the shoulders in a “friendly” gesture.
And censure is just a warm-up for the main event. Next week, House Republicans plan to vote to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. You see, they believe they have finally found the smoking gun that proves Biden guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors: He helped his son buy a pickup truck in 2018.
They have become the Three Stooges of the House’s Biden investigations: Jim, Jason and James, stepping on rakes and getting hit by falling flowerpots as they try to make a case for their predetermined outcome of impeaching the president. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is Moe, thundering and blundering in his repeated failures to prove Biden’s “weaponization” of the government. Jason Smith, the in-over-his-head chairman of Ways and Means, is Larry, brainlessly reciting whatever script is in front of him. And Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is Curly, perpetually getting a pie in the face when the “evidence” he produces is immediately debunked.
“BREAKING,” Comer announced on social media this week, with two siren emojis. “Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.” This was evidence that the president “knew & benefitted from his family’s business schemes.” But it turned out the payments, for all of $1,380 each, were repayments for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck Biden helped his son Hunter buy at a time when the younger Biden was broke because of his drug addiction.
Their act is so weak that these stooges have already gone into reruns. Last week, Jordan’s “weaponization” panel held a hearing on supposed censorship at Twitter — the same topic of a hearing he had in March, with two of the same witnesses. This week, Smith’s committee had a hearing with the same two IRS “whistleblowers” who already testified about the Hunter Biden case before that panel, as well as before the Oversight Committee, earlier this year.
Comer, after seeing his allegations refuted in hearing after disastrous hearing, has said he doesn’t want to have any additional public sessions. He prefers the safety of closed-door depositions, from which he can selectively leak misleading tidbits.
Last week, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client would be happy to testify publicly before Congress. “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public,” he wrote. “We therefore propose opening the door.” But Comer immediately rejected the offer, and he and Jordan are now threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for insisting on public, rather than closed-door, testimony.
Their desire for secrecy is perfectly understandable, given the absence of evidence against the president. Last week, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo asked a Republican member of Comer’s Oversight panel, Lisa McClain (Mich.), whether investigators had been able to “identify any actual policy changes” that Biden made related to his family’s business dealings. “The short answer is no,” McClain replied.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
This week, the three stooges assembled in the echoey lobby of the Longworth House Office Building for a “media availability” on the impeachment inquiry. Smith alleged that the Bidens moved “an unimaginable sum of money” (actually, between $10 million and $20 million, compared with multiple billions of dollars similarly received by Trump family members from foreign interests). Comer repeated his allegation about the “monthly payments” made to Biden, again omitting that they were for Hunter’s pickup truck.
The three suddenly hustled away. “No questions?” Washington Examiner’s Reese Gorman called after them. “I thought this was a press conference.”
Smith then gaveled in the Ways and Means Committee to hear once more from his “whistleblowers.” His first order of business: to close the meeting to the public and the media.
The ranking Democrat, Richard Neal (Mass.), made a motion for the hearing to remain open to the public. “You’re not recognized,” Smith replied.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) asked to debate the Republicans’ motion to kick out the public. “It’s not debatable,” Smith shot back.
Republicans repelled the Democratic attempts at transparency in party-line votes; Smith ordered the room cleared of journalists and spectators. Republicans said they would release a transcript “upon completion of our meeting,” but it didn’t come out that day, or the next.
Their fevered efforts to hide from the public make it clear House Republicans have lost the plot in their attempt to implicate Biden. But will they impeach him anyway? Certainly! Woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop.
Opinion | Meet the Biden impeachment managers: Larry, Moe and Curly - The Washington Post
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Good for her...fucking backward ass TX
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/media/project-veritas-hannah-giles-quits/index.html
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Between Catturd and the state of Texas essentially trying to kill some lady over an abortion....40% of this country is just beyond lost for associating with these people.
I just met with a guy that wants to start taking social security at 62 because he is convinced the democrats are going to take it away and he wants some before they do that. It makes financial planning difficult.
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
We need to vote trump next year to keep the criminals out of the White House.
What did they all have in common? Faux News on multiple televisions constantly. They had no interest in alternative sources of information and were firm in their disinformation as “fact” or “truth.” I knew then that the US political landscape had undergone a massive shift. I held out hope that the average US voter wasn’t this misinformed or susceptible to a POS like POOTWH but him getting elected and his continuing dominance of the repub party has shaken that faith to the point where it doesn’t exist.
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"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
i work with a surgeon that is maga and he always brings up biden for no reason.
i just do not, for the life of me, understand how educated people make the maga party their entire personality.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Trump on Hannity’s show: 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes
A bogus claim every 12 seconds, on average. That’s what a single five-minute clip of former president Donald Trump speaking in Iowa on Dec. 5 yielded. In the clip, from a Fox News “town hall” hosted by Sean Hannity and brought to our attention by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB), Trump ludicrously asserts that American oil and natural gas resources — “liquid gold” in the ground — could solve Social Security’s looming fiscal imbalance. That claim comes toward the end of the clip; to get there, a listener must first hear falsehood after falsehood in rapid succession.Hannity tees up Trump by noting that he had mentioned energy. Hannity says that with $34 trillion of debt, the United States is paying $1 trillion in annual interest costs — a correct statement — and says “that is unsustainable.”
We went through a transcript of Trump’s response, noting each false or misleading statement in boldface and providing a time stamp. The first falsehood comes in the 43rd second.
0:43
“So before covid hit us, a gift from China. That was our gift. What happened to us with covid, commonly known as the China virus. They don’t like that. But it was a China virus.”
The coronavirus that sparked the 2020 pandemic is not commonly known as the China virus. The origin has not been pinpointed, although the first known cases appeared in China in late 2019. But viruses are not country-specific and do not honor borders; the so-called Spanish flu of 1918, for example, appears to have started in Kansas.
0:53
“We were doing energy, taking our liquid gold out of the ground at a rate that’s never been seen before. And it was going up.”
This is misleading. Trump often takes credit for trends that were apparent before he became president. The U.S. energy boom began during the Obama administration, largely because of the expansion of fracking and new drilling technologies. U.S. production of crude oil began increasing rapidly after 2010, and in 2013, the International Energy Agency predicted that the United States in 2016 would leap ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top oil producer. That happened in 2017, early in Trump’s presidency. As you will see below, Trump falsely takes credit for that. In fact, when both petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons are counted, the United States became the largest producer in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).
1:00
“We were going to be using that liquid gold to sell to Europe instead of the pipeline from Russia, which I exposed.”
Nord Stream 2 is a Russian pipeline that would have doubled the export of Russian natural gas to Germany. Trump did not expose it; U.S. policymakers, including the Biden administration, have long objected to it. “Successive U.S. Administrations and Congresses have opposed Nord Stream 2, reflecting concerns about European dependence on Russian energy and the threat Russia poses to Ukraine,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2021 report.
1:02
“And I stopped, you know, I stopped that line.”
False. During the Trump administration, Congress imposed sanctions that temporarily halted construction for only one year. Germany was progressing with certification of the pipeline but warned that a Russian attack on Ukraine could halt the deal. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the project was killed.
1:08
“Then they say I was nice to Russia. There was nobody that was nice. I was not nice to Russia.”
False. Trump sided with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community in a news conference in Helsinki in 2018, saying he did not believe Russia tried to intervene in the 2016 election. Trump often resisted congressional efforts to sanction Russia and led a charge to weaken NATO and the European Union — two important goals of Putin’s. He has suggested that he might pull the United States out of NATO if he’s elected to a second term.
1:15
“I stopped that pipeline. We would have been selling oil and gas to Europe, to Asia, all over the world. We would have been paying off debt.”
False. Trump often has magical thinking about the national debt. When he first ran for president, Trump confidently claimed that he could eliminate the national debt — then $19 trillion — in just eight years through better trade deals. We gave him Four Pinocchios. He walked back the pledge, saying he would reduce a percentage of the debt. That didn’t happen. Instead, under Trump, the debt climbed to $27.8 trillion from not quite $20 trillion, a gain of $7.9 trillion. (More than half of the debt under Trump came in the last 10 months of his term because of the pandemic.)
Running again for president, Trump now claims the debt would be reduced by money generated by oil and natural gas reserves in the ground. But most of the money is earned by oil producers, not the federal government. The federal government might own some of the land and earn leasing fees. Such fees on U.S. federal lands, federal waters and Native American lands amounted to about $20 billion in fiscal 2022, according to CFRB. The government also earns fees from taxes on sales, with a substantial portion already dedicated to transportation projects. All told, the federal government earns about $100 billion a year from fees and taxes on fossil fuel, according to a 2022 report from Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research group.
The United States had a budget deficit almost four times as high — $383 billion — just in the first two months of fiscal 2024 (which began Oct. 1), showing the folly of Trump’s logic.
1:19
“That debt would be way down right now because we have more than — What people don’t know, we have more liquid gold than any other country in the world by far.”
False. According to the EIA, the United States has proven crude oil reserves of 44 billion barrels, which would put the country in 10th place. Venezuela, with 304 billion of oil reserves, is in first place, followed by Saudi Arabia (259 billion), Iran (209 billion), Canada (170 billion) and Iraq (145 billion).
1:24
“And we started off in fourth place. We were No. 4 with Saudi Arabia. It was Russia. It was two countries fighting for No. 3. And it was us at No. 4 or 5.”
False. Trump here appears to switch from talking about reserves to crude oil production. In 2016, Barack Obama’s last year as president, the United States ranked third, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. In 2017, the United States produced 13.1 million barrels a day, compared to 12 million for Saudi Arabia and 11.3 million for Russia.
1:37
“By the time I left, we were No. 1 by 25 percent.”
This is exaggerated. According to EIA, the United States produced 11.3 million barrels a day in 2020, compared to 9.9 for Russia, or 14 percent more. Saudia Arabia was in third place with 9.4 million barrels. Oil production actually went down — 8 percent from 2019 in the United States — because the pandemic sharply cut oil consumption.
1:41
“We would have been No. 1 by 100 and we would have done twice what they were going to do combined. We would have been paying off debt. That we would have been.”
This is an absurd assertion. Trump repeats his falsehood about paying off the debt.
1:47
“We gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, bigger than the Reagan tax cut.”
The audience burst into applause with this line, but it’s false. Trump’s tax cut amounted to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it was far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest tax cut in the past century — and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.
1:58
“We would have been reducing taxes still further. And that’s why, Sean, that’s why we had the most jobs of any president ever.”
False. Trump says “jobs,” but as he did during his presidency, he’s referring to the number of Americans employed. That’s mostly a function of population growth. The number of Americans in non-farm jobs peaked at 152 million in February 2020 but then plunged because of the pandemic. It was about 143 million by the time Trump left office. Biden can claim to have beaten Trump on this (mostly meaningless) statistic. As of last month, 157 million Americans had non-farm jobs.
2:04
“We got rid of regulations. Tremendous. No president got rid of more regulations or close.”
Trump’s claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified and appears to be false. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits. A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said that the Trump administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book and that it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data was examined.
2:28
“And we gave you the big tax cuts. So everybody had incentive and everybody was happy and everybody was working. I remember groups came to see me that wouldn’t normally like me, and they said, ‘We’ve never seen anything like it.’ We were actually starting to get along, but we got hit with the China virus. There were some people think purposely. I don’t. I think it was incompetence, but some people think purposely because we were doing so much better than any other country ever and we got hit.”
This is mostly Trump patting himself on the back, although he slips in a reference to the conspiracy theory that “some people” think China purposely attacked the United States with the coronavirus. The falsehood here is that the United States was doing better than any country ever. Before the pandemic struck, many other countries had faster growth rates, including China, India, Latvia, Poland and Greece.
In the United States, by just about any key measure in the modern era, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton presided over stronger economic growth than Trump.
2:33
“But I will tell you, we would be paying that debt off right now at levels like never seen before. We would create a beautiful thing.”
Trump once again falsely says he would have been paying off the debt. If he had beaten Biden, he, and not Biden, would have faced the challenge of large budget deficits created by the pandemic.
At this point, Hannity interrupted Trump to repeat one of Trump’s favorite false claims: “You brought us to energy independence for the first time in 75 years.” While the United States exported more crude and refined products than it imported, it still relied on other countries for its energy needs. Hannity then emphasized the false message Trump has been making: “You’re saying that in a second term, you will push America to be the most energy-dominant country on earth and that you could pay down that $34 trillion in debt and we won’t have $1 trillion interest payment every year?”
3:13
“So it’s Biden inflation. That’s what it is.”
Biden is the president, and so he’s going to be blamed for inflation. But if Trump had been reelected, he would have faced the same post-pandemic inflationary pressures caused by supply chain issues and a surge in energy consumption. Inflation struck every major industrialized country in the world, not just the United States.
Continued next post
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3:20
“What he did with energy is unbelievable because energy went up so much. Gasoline, $5, $6 a gallon, that that’s what caused inflation.”
This is slightly exaggerated. The average retail price of gasoline spiked at $5.032 a gallon in June 2022, according to EIA, not $6 — although of course it was higher in individual markets such as California. Fuel prices shot up in 2022 largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding to inflationary pressures caused by the pandemic.
3:27
“Now it’s all over the place. But you have 29 percent total inflation.”
Another exaggerated figure. The consumer price index calculator on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website shows that $100 in January 2021, when Biden took office, would have the same buying power at $117.62 in October. That’s an increase of 18 percent.
3:32
“Now, when it holds up, because the economy is starting to slow down very substantially. So when it holds up, he’s saying, well, we don’t have too much inflation. But he doesn’t talk about all of the inflation that you’ve had to suffer over the last three years.”
The Federal Reserve has boosted interest rates to the highest level in 22 years to bring down inflation. But the economy, contrary to many expectations, has not slowed substantially, as Trump claims. The U.S. economy created 199,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent, the BLS said last week.
3:57
“Now, we will have numbers like you’ve never seen. We have a thing in Alaska called ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge]. Ronald Reagan tried to get it approved. Everybody, Bush, maybe a little bit. You know, he didn’t work as hard. But we have we have ANWR in Alaska, the biggest anywhere in the world, including probably Saudi Arabia.”
This is false. On the basis of geology, the U.S. Geological Survey in 2016 projected that there could be anywhere from 11.6 billion to 31.5 billion barrels of oil in the ANWR field. The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, which has been producing oil since the 1950s, had 58 billion barrels left in reserves as of the end of 2018. At least 10 oil fields now in operation are estimated to have more than 20 billion barrels of oil, the midpoint of the USGS survey. (George W. Bush sought drilling in the Arctic refuge, but Democrats repeatedly blocked congressional approval.)
4:04
“I got it approved. I was so proud of it. They ended it in the first week. They ended it. We will get it back.”
This is exaggerated. The Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic refuge four months after Biden took office, citing problems with the environmental review process. Trump had offered the leases in his remaining weeks in office, but few companies were interested. “The Jan. 6 sale of 11 tracts in the refuge on just over 550,000 acres netted roughly $14.4 million, a tiny fraction of what Republicans initially predicted it would yield,” The Washington Post reported. “Only two of the bids were competitive, so nearly all of the drilling rights on the land sold for the minimum price of $25 an acre.”
4:27
“But we have more than anybody. We have more wealth than anybody, but we don’t use it. And then guys like [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis and guys like many of the Democrats, but guys like DeSantis and to a lesser extent, Nikki Haley, they want to play around with your Social Security. You don’t have to touch Social Security. We have money laying in the ground, far greater than anything we can do by hurting senior citizens with their Social Security.”
We’ve demonstrated that this is false. Oil revenue would not make up the difference in Social Security. CFRB estimates that revenue from oil and gas leases would need to be about 27 times larger to cover Social Security’s actuarial deficit. If benefits are not changed, the fiscal imbalance in Social Security can be solved only by raising payroll taxes or boosting the income level subject to tax — nonstarters for Republicans — or financing it out of other government revenue, which would further increase the national debt.
4:55
“Ron DeSantis wanted to bring up — on Social Security. Now, of course, he says, well, I wouldn’t. But, you know, one thing I learned about politicians, I’ve known them. I’ve dealt with them on the other side for a long time. Their first thought is always the thought that they go to. He wanted to raise the minimum age to the age on Social Security to 70. That’s a big increase. But he also wanted to raise it to 75. If that happened, people would be devastated.”
This is false. DeSantis, a rival for the GOP presidential nomination, never supported raising the retirement age to 75. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, DeSantis, as a member of Congress, supported budget plans drawn up by a conservative group of House members that called for raising the retirement age for younger workers to 70. Running for president, however, DeSantis has rejected that idea. Asked by Fox News in March about the possibility of raising the retirement age to 70, DeSantis replied: “We are not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.”
Trump attacks DeSantis for the shift, saying he should be judged on his original proposal. But Trump also once called for raising the retirement age to 70 — just like DeSantis.
In a 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” published when Trump sought the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, Trump made an emphatic case for a higher retirement age.
“A firm limit at age seventy makes sense for people now under forty,” Trump wrote. “We’re living longer. We’re working longer. New medicines are extending healthy human life. Besides, how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon? The way the workweek is going, it will probably be down to about twenty-five hours by then anyway. This is a sacrifice I think we all can make.”
5:00
“We have such incredible wealth under our feet.”
The clip ends with Trump yet again reiterating this false talking point.
Trump makes 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes on Hannity show - The Washington Post
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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republicans claim to be passionate about the rights of an unborn fetus, yet they don’t seem the least bit concerned about the killing of actual living and breathing babies in Gaza. “my” esteemed republican senator, mike lee, wants us out of the UN because the president of that body spoke some truth that this mess “didn’t occur in a vacuum.” pandering, at its finest.
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1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
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2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."