Washington
Act Daily News
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The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former authorities officers and conservative personalities who spoke on the convention on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a wide range of matters.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked declare about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the nation. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his common lie concerning the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.
Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly stated a former Obama administration official had inspired individuals to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mom and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two different audio system, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the variety of deaths from fentanyl.
And that’s not all. Here is a reality test of 13 false claims from the convention, which continues on Saturday.
Marjorie Taylor Greene stated the Republican Party has an obligation to guard kids. Listing supposed threats to kids, she stated, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she stated, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”
Facts First: Greene’s declare is fake. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he needs American little kids to combat or die for Ukraine. The false declare, which was debunked by Act Daily News and others earlier within the week, is predicated on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s feedback out of context.
![zelensky fact check daniel dale orig thumbnail](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230302105151-zelensky-fact-check-daniel-dale-orig-thumbnail.jpg?c=16x9&q=w_850,c_fill)
19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out
In actuality, Zelensky predicted at a press convention in late February that if Ukraine loses the warfare in opposition to Russia as a result of it doesn’t obtain ample help from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member international locations within the Baltics (a area made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will likely be obligated to ship troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an assault on one member is taken into account an assault on all. Ukraine just isn’t a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans ought to combat there.
Greene is without doubt one of the individuals who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can learn a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s full quote, right here.
Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at size for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign. Among different issues, Bannon claimed that, on the evening of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he stated Trump is operating once more after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”
Facts First: This is nonsense. On election evening in 2020, Fox precisely projected that Biden had received the state of Arizona. This projection didn’t change the result of the election; all the votes are counted no matter what media shops have projected, and the counting confirmed that Biden received Arizona, and the election, truthful and sq.. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.
![NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230303201920-steve-bannon-vpx.jpg?c=16x9&q=w_850,c_fill)
Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC
Fox, like different main media shops, didn’t venture that Biden had received the presidency till 4 days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – whilst they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, in accordance with court docket filings from a voting expertise firm that’s suing Fox for defamation.
Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration coverage. Jordan stated a kind of adjustments was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that individuals understanding “we’re not going to get deported” was a motive they determined emigrate to the US beneath Biden.
Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden tried to impose instantly after he took workplace on January 20, 2021. The coverage didn’t say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly didn’t apply to anybody who arrived within the nation after the top of October 2020, which means individuals who arrived beneath the Biden administration or within the final months of the Trump administration might nonetheless be deported.
Biden did say in the course of the 2020 Democratic main that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the coverage Biden really carried out on his first day in workplace; Biden’s precise first-day coverage was significantly narrower.
Biden’s tried 100-day pause additionally didn’t apply to individuals who engaged in or have been suspected of terrorism or espionage, have been seen to pose a nationwide safety danger, had waived their proper to stay within the US, or whom the appearing director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided the regulation required to be eliminated.
The pause was speculated to be in impact whereas the Department of Homeland Security performed a evaluation of immigration enforcement practices, but it surely was blocked by a federal decide shortly after it was introduced.
Rep. Ralph Norman strongly steered the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago house and resort in Florida for presidency paperwork within the former president’s possession – whereas concealing its subsequent doc searches of properties linked to Biden.
Norman stated: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”
Facts First: Norman’s narrative is fake. The FBI didn’t tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; Act Daily News reported the following day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media shops belatedly despatched cameras to Mar-a-Lago as a result of Peter Schorsch, writer of the web site Florida Politics, realized of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it both after it was over or because it was simply concluding, and since Trump himself made a public assertion lower than 20 minutes later confirming {that a} search had occurred. Schorsch advised Act Daily News on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”
Brian Stelter, then Act Daily News’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”
It’s true that the general public didn’t discover out till late January concerning the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former suppose tank workplace in Washington, which was performed with the consent of Biden’s authorized group. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August just isn’t proof of a double normal.
And it’s value noting that media cameras have been on the scene when Biden’s seaside house in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News shops had arrange a media “pool” to verify any search there was recorded.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former school and highschool soccer coach, stated, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”
Facts First: Tuberville’s declare that half of American kids don’t have two dad and mom is wrong. Official figures from the Census Bureau present that, in 2021, about 70% of US kids beneath the age of 18 lived with two dad and mom and about 65% lived with two married dad and mom.
About 22% of youngsters lived with solely a mom, about 5% with solely a father, and about 3% with no dad or mum. But the Census Bureau has defined that even kids who’re listed as residing with just one dad or mum might have a second dad or mum; kids are listed as residing with just one dad or mum if, for instance, one dad or mum is deployed abroad with the army or if their divorced dad and mom share custody of them.
It is true that the proportion of US kids residing in households with two dad and mom has been declining for many years. Still, Tuberville’s statistic considerably exaggerated the present scenario. His spokesperson advised Act Daily News on Thursday that the senator was talking “anecdotally” from his private expertise assembly with households as a soccer coach.
Tuberville claimed that right this moment’s kids are being “indoctrinated” in faculties by “woke” ideology and important race concept. He then stated, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”
Facts First: This is fake. While many Americans do wrestle with studying, there isn’t any foundation for the declare that “half” of highschool graduates can’t learn a fundamental doc like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” stated Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who’s a previous president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards stated there’s “no evidence” to help Tuberville’s declare. She additionally stated that individuals who can’t learn in any respect are extremely unlikely to complete highschool and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”
Tuberville might have precisely stated {that a} vital variety of American youngsters and adults have studying hassle, although there isn’t any obvious foundation for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The group ProfessionalLiteracy pointed Act Daily News to 2017 knowledge that discovered 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy abilities in English. That’s not “half,” as ProfessionalLiteracy identified, and it consists of individuals who didn’t graduate from highschool and people who find themselves in a position to learn fundamental textual content however wrestle with extra advanced literacy duties.
The Tuberville spokesperson stated the senator was talking informally after having been briefed on different statistics about Americans’ struggles with studying, like a report that half of adults can’t learn a guide written at an eighth-grade stage.
Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”
Facts First: This just isn’t true. Biden didn’t denounce even near “half the country” on this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was talking a few minority of Republicans.
In the speech, by which he by no means used the phrase “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he additionally emphasised that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In different phrases, he made clear that he was speaking about far lower than half of Americans.
Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a rustic of greater than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of each single Trump voter wouldn’t quantity to criticism of “half the country.”
Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry stated moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”
Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal authorities has not advised those who they’ll’t purchase a fuel range or should purchase an electrical automobile.
The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electrical autos, but it surely has not tried to forbid the manufacture or buy of conventional autos with inner combustion engines. Biden has set a aim of electrical autos making up half of all new autos offered within the US by 2030.
There was a January controversy a few Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that fuel stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollution, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the fee as an entire has not proven help for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”
Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had simply laughed at a mom who misplaced two sons to fentanyl.
“I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman stated.
Facts First: Norman’s declare is fake. Biden didn’t chuckle on the mom who misplaced her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he known as her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to chuckle about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the younger males’s deaths although the tragedy occurred in mid-2020, in the course of the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks right here.
Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – however the video clearly reveals Norman was flawed when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”
Rep. Kat Cammack advised a narrative concerning the first listening to of the brand new Republican-led House choose subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal authorities. Cammack claimed she had requested a Democratic witness at this February listening to about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed by which, she claimed, he not solely repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh however even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”
Facts First: This story is fake. The witness Cammack questioned on this February trade on the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant legal professional common Elliot Williams, didn’t encourage individuals to harass Kavanaugh. In reality, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him on the February listening to of getting inspired individuals to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, on the listening to, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted quite a few crucial tweets about Kavanaugh however had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination try in opposition to the justice. Clearly, not tweeting concerning the incident just isn’t the identical factor as encouraging harassment.
Williams, now a Act Daily News authorized analyst (he appeared on the subcommittee listening to in his private capability), stated in a Thursday electronic mail that he had “no idea” what Cammack was on his innocuous Twitter feed. He stated: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”
Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to Act Daily News’s preliminary queries concerning the story Cammack advised at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February trade with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after Act Daily News requested if Cammack was precisely describing this trade with Williams and if they’d any proof of Williams really having inspired the harassment of Kavanaugh.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted concerning the state of the nation “when Republicans were in charge.” Among different claims about Trump’s tenure, he stated that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”
Facts First: This is inaccurate in two methods. First, the financial numbers for the complete “four years” of Trump’s tenure are a lot worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was really referring to Trump’s first three years whereas ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.
Kennedy might have appropriately stated there was a 3.5% unemployment charge after three years of the Trump administration, however not after 4. The unemployment charge skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth 12 months, on account of the pandemic, earlier than coming down once more, and it was 6.3% when Trump left workplace in early 2021. (It fell to three.4% this January beneath Biden, higher than in any month beneath Trump.)
And whereas the economic system added about 6.7 million jobs beneath Trump earlier than the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economic system ended up shedding thousands and thousands of jobs in Trump’s fourth 12 months. Over the complete 4 years of Trump’s tenure, the economic system netted a lack of about 2.7 million jobs.
Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 marketing campaign, claimed that the final time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making different boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she stated, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”
Facts First: Lara Trump’s declare about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is fake. The unemployment charge was 3.5% on the time – tied for the bottom since 1969, however not the all-time lowest on report, which was 2.5% in 1953. And whereas Lara Trump didn’t make an express declare about unemployment beneath Biden, it’s not true that issues are worse right this moment on this measure; once more, the latest unemployment charge, 3.4% for January 2023, is best than the speed on the time of CPAC’s 2020 convention or at some other time throughout Donald Trump’s presidency.
Multiple audio system at CPAC decried the excessive variety of fentanyl overdose deaths. But a number of the audio system inflated that quantity whereas attacking Biden’s immigration coverage.
Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.
Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”
Facts First: It’s not true that there are greater than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per 12 months. That is the total variety of deaths from all drug overdoses within the US; there have been 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the variety of overdose deaths involving artificial opioids aside from methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.
Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a significant downside for the nation and by far the most important single contributor to the broader overdose downside. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per 12 months are vital exaggerations. And whereas the variety of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths elevated beneath Biden in 2021, it was additionally troubling beneath Trump in 2020 – 91,799 complete overdose deaths and 56,516 for artificial opioids aside from methadone.
It’s additionally value noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US residents by authorized ports of entry relatively than by migrants sneaking previous different components of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border just isn’t “open”; border officers have seized hundreds of kilos of fentanyl beneath Biden.
Source: www.cnn.com