Former president Donald Trump tells so many tall tales that it\u2019s hard to keep track. Sometimes, one of his invented stories blows up into an actual news story, such as when he related a dramatic but fake tale of a helicopter ride he said he shared with Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco, that involved a near-death experience and Brown, who once dated Kamala Harris, saying \u201cterrible things\u201d about her. Brown has said the ride never took place. Trump\u2019s nonsensical story involving a sinking electric boat, a potential electrocution and a ferocious shark attack also earned news coverage \u2014 and mockery. (We won\u2019t even begin to fact check whether his claim that Arnold Palmer was \u201call man\u201d is true.)<\/p>\n
But most of the time, Trump rambles on, in rally after rally, interview after interview, virtually unchecked in the friendly media environs he favors. We fact check when we can, but the overwhelming nature of his onslaught of falsehoods \u2014 and the trivial nature of many of them \u2014 makes it difficult to keep up. He has a standard repertory that he used often during his presidency, which he has augmented with updated or new false claims.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a list of some of his latest made-up stories, all of which would earn Four Pinocchios.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want a gasoline-propelled car, if you want to have a hybrid, you should have it. You should be able to have it. The new thing is hydrogen. They have hydrogen cars. They have one problem \u2014 on occasion it will blow up and when it blows up, you are not recognizable. No, you\u2019re not even recognizable. This is like a massive bomb being dropped. When it blows up, you are no longer \u2014 your wife cannot identify you. Let me put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Rally in Erie, Penn., Sept. 29<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. A riff along these lines \u2014 warning of the dangers of exploding hydrogen-powered cars \u2014 has popped up in a number of Trump\u2019s recent speeches when he trashes the Biden administration efforts to promote electric vehicles. Usually, the former president will recount that the person in the exploded car was obliterated beyond recognition.<\/p>\n
When asked for an explanation, a Trump campaign official provided a link to an article about a 2023 explosion at a hydrogen fueling station for buses in California. No one was hurt. That\u2019s not the scenario portrayed by Trump. We couldn\u2019t find any news report that came close to Trump\u2019s description.<\/p>\n
As is usual with Trump, there are tiny threads of factual information that he appears to have twisted into a fantastic story. For instance, Ukrainian forces recently turned a fully loaded hydrogen fuel cell from a Toyota Mirai into a bomb that was used against Russian troops. In 2019, Toyota and Hyundai suspended car sales in Norway after a refueling station exploded \u2014 but again, no one was hurt.<\/p>\n
Hydrogen Fuel News, an industry publication, says that fears of exploding cars is based on a misunderstanding about the nature of the gas. Safety regulations ensure that the tanks can survive a crash \u2014 confirmed in crash testing \u2014 and so \u201cfuel cell vehicles are often considered to be even safer than conventional gasoline-powered internal combustion engines.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago, they\u2019re going to build big plants outside of the United States. They\u2019re going to build them in Mexico \u2026 I said, \u2018If John Deere builds those plants, they\u2019re not selling anything into the United States.\u2019 They just announced yesterday they\u2019re probably not going to build the plants. I kept the jobs here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Remarks at the Economic Club of Chicago, Oct. 15<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. Farm equipment maker Deere & Co. issued a statement after Trump\u2019s remarks saying it has not changed plans to move some manufacturing from plants in Iowa to Mexico. The company has said the move would free up space for employees at U.S. plants for additional types of farm equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of the [electric] truck is used. The capacity for batteries. The batteries are very heavy and very big. Very, very big. Many times the size of a tank that carries lots of gallons of diesel. You have to stop six times and you have to get charges \u2026. The truck is so heavy because batteries are very heavy. The truck weighs more than twice as much as a gasoline truck. So what happens to diesel? So what happens is they have to fix every bridge all over the United States to handle the weight. Every bridge has to be rebuilt because the weight is double and triple that of a gasoline or diesel tank truck.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 campaign rally in Las Vegas, June 9<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. Batteries for electric trucks can be heavy, making most electric trucks heavier than diesel trucks, though Trump is wrong to say they weigh twice as much. The additional weight cuts into profit margins because less material can be carried. Why\u2019s that? Because a semi-truck, even an electric one like the Freightliner eCascadia or Tesla Semi, can legally weigh a maximum of 80,000 pounds. So electric trucks would not weigh any more than diesel trucks unless the law is changed. Trump\u2019s fears about bridges collapsing are misplaced. The bridges are designed to handle weight of 80,000 pounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cPushing transgender ideology on minor children, how about that one? Your child goes to school and they take your child. It was a he and comes back a she. And they do this and they do it \u2026 and often without parental consent. Can you even believe we\u2019re saying this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 campaign rally in Reading, Penn., Oct. 9<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. Trump keeps saying this in his rallies, but the Trump campaign has never produced evidence to back it up \u2014 not of such a procedure being done at a school or of a school sending a student for such surgery with or without parental consent. A Harvard study based on insurance claims in 2019 and published in July found that no transgender surgeries were performed on youth ages 12 and younger. For teens ages 15 to 17, the rate was 2.1 per 100,000, making it a rare procedure. The majority of the surgeries were for breast reduction \u2014 and they did not involve schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cI own Doral [golf course] right next door, and we did that in a very environment \u2026 I get awards, environmental awards for the way I built it, for the water, the way I use the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand and the water \u2026. I\u2019ve had many awards over the years for environmental, the way I\u2019ve built. Because you know about building, that\u2019s what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Remarks at Univision town hall, Oct. 16<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. There is no record of the Doral winning environmental awards, let alone for the \u201cmixing of the sand and the water.\u201d (The Trump campaign did not respond to a message requesting evidence.) Trump has long claimed to have won environmental awards, but our exhaustive review in 2017 showed the evidence was slim.<\/p>\n
We found one award: The 2007 Metropolitan Golf Association Club Environmental Award was given to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. But in 2011, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection cited the golf course for a series of environmental violations. Other golf courses owned by Trump earned the ire of environmentalists; for example, the one in Loudoun County, Va., where more than 400 trees along the Potomac River were felled during a renovation.<\/p>\n
We found only one personal award given to Trump. The Friends of Westchester County Parks Inc., gave him a \u201cGreen Space Award\u201d in 2007 for donating 436 acres of land to the state of New York. Trump had purchased the land in the 1990s to build a golf course but withdrew plans after facing opposition from local residents and environmental restrictions. Trump donated the land to be built into the Donald Trump State Park. But the land was never developed; the state of New York closed it after budget cuts in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love cows but if we go with Kamala, you won\u2019t have any cows anymore \u2026. According to Kamala, who\u2019s a radical left lunatic, you will not have any cows anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Trump, appearing on \u201cFox & Friends,\u201d Oct. 18<\/p>\n
This is nonsense. This line is a staple at his rallies, twisted from a comment Harris made in 2019 on whether dietary guidelines should be changed to encourage less consumption of meat. In essence, she said she would support a change in the guidelines, as there had to be incentives to encourage less consumption of meat \u2014 even though she loved a cheeseburger from time to time. But there is no requirement for Americans to follow dietary guidelines \u2014 and she certainly never called for the elimination of cows.<\/p>\n
At a roundtable for Hispanic voters in Las Vegas on Oct. 12, Trump not only mentioned cows but claimed windows would be banned, too: \u201cThey want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings. They have some wonderful plans for this country. Uh, honestly, they\u2019re crazy and they\u2019re really hurting our country badly.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s also nonsense.<\/p>\n
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Former president Donald Trump tells so many tall tales that it\u2019s hard to keep track. Sometimes, one of his invented stories blows up into an actual news story, such as when he related a dramatic but fake tale of a helicopter ride he said he shared with Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}