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TRUMP LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING!
Refute the Republican Rhetoric
By Bill Peifer
On Thursday, Trump delivered a 25-minute speech in prime time that most of the major networks declined to air live. FOX News aired it with a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen saying that they were not responsible for the lies that viewers were being told, and CBS aired it with extensive fact checking before and immediately after the speech. ABC, NBC and CNN all opted to stream it live from their websites and provided post-speech commentary.
The first 5 minutes of the speech were nothing more than the usual claims by Trump that he’s the greatest president in the history of the country and that he’s made America far greater than anybody ever dreamed it could be. All lies, of course, about how terrible the economy was when he took office and how great it is now, how we had “transgender for everyone” and all of the other usual lies. Far too many lies to go into here.
But after 691 words of self-promotion, he shifted into his latest topic of choice, election integrity. Surprisingly, he did NOT directly claim that he won the 2020 election, with is probably his favorite and most-often-told lie. He did reference that election, but only in the context of information that he claimed was in four documents that were being posted on the White House website to support claims that China was trying to interfere in our elections.
Foreign countries attempting to influence our elections is hardly anything new, but Trump’s claims of it being “the largest compromise of election data in history” is new. So, what did the Chinese do, and what can they do with it? That’s where this week’s featured lie resides.
First, since he knows nothing about databases, Trump railed about “China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files” Sorry Donald. They may have obtained 220 million RECORDS in 50 US voter files, but anyone with enough money can do that much. Every state sells their publicly available voter data to anybody willing to pay the price. Usually that’s political parties, campaigns and marketing firms, but there’s no law against foreign governments buying it, as well. Then Trump went on to claim:
That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project.
It’s true that every voter file that the RNC, DNC, marketing companies and foreign governments can all obtain includes the name, addresses, some phone numbers and party affiliations, but that’s not “sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote”. What can be purchased from the Secretary of State from any state by anyone does NOT include specific pieces of information that would be needed to steal someone’s identity or register to vote, namely Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and date of birth. Those required fields exist in the voter file database but are NOT a portion of the subset that can be purchased. So, Trump’s lie is where he claims that this is “an unprecedented election security nightmare”. It’s not unprecedented and it’s not a security nightmare. It’s not even a security problem. If you start getting junk mail from China, just throw it away!
Ironically, if you dig into the contents of the four documents that Trump had posted on the White House’s website, there is an interesting tidbit contained in them. Remember the old 2016 Russian election interference controversy? The claims were that Putin was trying to help Trump win, and Trump has now spent years calling it the “Russia-Russia-Russia Hoax”. Well, it’s actually documented in those posted documents. What we all knew was true, despite Trump claiming it was a hoax, turned out to be true. How surprised are you?
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