Daniel Dale of CNN: Trump’s 100 Lies in 100 Days

Daniel Dale is CNN’s fact-checker. To mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, Dale collected 100 Trump lies.

Here are a couple of examples:

73. Falsely claimed the US ranks dead last, 40th out of 40 countries, in international education rankings. The White House couldn’t identify any education rankings where the US ranked 40th out of 40 countries; FactCheck.org and PolitiFact have noted that even among the wealthy, developed countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the US ranks well above average in reading and science and below average but still far from last in math.

74. Falsely claimed that while Democratic governors closed schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, some governors “kept them open 100% of the time,” adding, “South Carolina did. Tennessee did.” The Republican governor of South Carolina ordered school closures in 2020, while the Republican governor of Tennessee recommended school closures that year (and the state’s school districts complied).

I would love to see Daniel Dale of CNN or Glen Kessler of The Washington Post fact-check Trump’s historical references.

A few days ago, I heard Trump say that the greatest period of American growth was 1890-1913. That era came to be known as the Age of the Robber Barons, when the gaps between the very rich and the very poor were huge.

What disaster happened in 1913? Congress introduced the income tax. Trump believes that the federal government paid its expenses solely by charging tariffs on imported goods.

In Trump’s view, the government should once again rely on tariffs.

What he doesn’t acknowledge is that the federal government provided few services in 1913: no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no subsidized housing, management of public lands, no environmental protection, no air traffic control. On and on.

The rich lived in grandeur. The poor lived in squalor.

That’s what Trump considers our best era.

Historical ignorance is dangerous.