Some lowlights:
- Trump touted 20 universities which do not have any hospitalizations due to the coronavirus as a reason colleges should reopen. There are nearly 4,300 separate colleges and universities in the US; the number touted by Trump is 0.5% of them.
- Trump falsely accused Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of being an “anti-vaxxer” for “political purposes.” “You don’t want to be talking about the vaccines in a negative way ‘specially when you see the statistics that we’re starting to see. They’re incredible, actually.” (Trump showed no statistics, incredible or otherwise.)
- In a fit of projection: “Biden’s perfectly happy to endanger the lives of other people by doing something that he thinks is going to help him politically because his polls are getting very bad.”
- “This was an election that was going to be very easy, very quick and then the China virus came in and I had to go back to work politically unfortunately. I hadta devote more time politically than the other things we do which are very important for our country, but I hadta go back to work and it looks like, uh, it looks like we’re going up very rapidly.”
- “We’re going to talk about how great these vaccines are, if they are in fact great, and I think you’ll see numbers that are very, very impressive.”
- Trump says they won’t be “depending on experts”: “The approach to the virus is a very unscientific blanket lockdown by the Democrats, that’s what they’re talking about, which takes all of these incredible statistics records and throws ’em out the window. Now they did say it would be on the recommendation of the expert, but, y’know, expert or not, we’re not doing anymore shutdowns. We did the shutdown, and now we’re doing the opening, and there won’t be anymore shut down. There could be a little section, a small section, we have a breakout, but we’re not talkin’ ’bout shut downs like, they were talkin’ about depending on experts. We’re not going to be doing that.”
- Speaking about the Swine Flu/H1N1 outbreak during the Obama Administration: “270,000 Americans were hospitalized during this attack. The outbreak was so rampant that the Obama Administration told states to stop testing. They said, we don’t want any tests ’cause they don’t want to show the things that tests show. By the way, we’re setting a record on testing.” [Editor’s Note: Trump seems to think that 270,000 people hospitalized is worse than 190,000 (and rising) people dead. Since April 1, 2020, an average of 40,000 people per day are hospitalized with coronavirus.]
- After bragging that the US has done 50 million more coronavirus tests than India, Trump said, “They ordered the CDD [sic] to stop doing tests and stop counting cases and then left us a depleted stockpile which is what I inherited.” [Fact Check: Trump had been in office since January 2017; since then, he’s been in charge of making sure the stockpile was sufficient.]
- Trump claimed that Hunter Biden’s company sold a Michigan auto parts manufacturer to a Chinese company. [Fact Check: There’s nothing illegal about that.]
- Trump claims he spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia–“we just started the dialogue,” Trump said– and that the Saudis will “come in” the peace process. [Fact Check: there’s no evidence that the Saudis have any interest in a peace deal recognizing Israel.]
- Trump claimed that Iran will approach the United States for a deal “very rapidly, I would say within the first week, but let’s give ourselves a month”–only if he’s reelected. [Fact Check: he literally just pulled this from his backside.] Trump said it’s because Iran’s GDP went down 25%, which Trump claims “is an unheard-of number.” [Fact Check: US GDP dropped 32.9% (annualized) in the 2nd Quarter of 2020 under Trump.]
- First question: “Why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you say now?” Trump: “Such a terrible question and the phraseology. I didn’t lie.” [Fact Check: He lied. He did not tell the truth. He was dishonest. He was full of BS. He distorted reality. This is an ex-parrot!]
- Trump claimed that US flu deaths rivaled coronavirus deaths. He turned to “Steve” (possible Steven Mnuchin) off-stage and asked how many people died of the flu last year; Steve responded, “About 30,000.” After stammering, and seeing Trump dumbfounded, “Steve” added “… but, but that was with vaccines and everything.”
- Asked why he did not tell the American people that he knew the coronavirus could be transmitted in the air, Trump actually said this: “If Bob Woodward thought that was bad–’cause this is stuff that everyone knew. There’s a report that I have here someplace where China said it was airborne earlier than the statements I made. People knew it was airborne. This was nothing, this was no big, when I say it was airborne, everyone knew it was airborne. This is no big thing.” {Editor’s Note: Trump is now telling us that we *should have believed China* about the virus.]
- Trump: “If Bob Woodward thought what I said was bad, then he should have immediately, right after I said it, gone out to the authorities so they could prepare and let them know.” [Fact Check: Bob Woodward is not responsible for distributing information about a pandemic to civil authorities; the President of the United States is.]
- On the Bob Woodward interview: “I did it out of curiosity because I do have respect and I wanna see, I wonder whether or not somebody like that can write good. I don’t think he can.” [Editor’s Note: The guy wants to see if someone “can write good.” ‘Nuff said.]
- The final questions was from the OANN plant about the Durham investigation.
- “I watch some of the shows. I watch Liz McDonald. She’s fantastic. Fox Business. I watched Lou Dobbs last night. Sean Hannity last night. Tucker last night. Laura. I watched, uhhh, Fox & Friends in the morning. You watch these shows, you don’t have to go too far into the details. They cover things that are, it’s really an amazing thing.” [Editor’s Note: I think we found the problem.]
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