Either Donald Trump is just so used to exaggerating claims of his own greatness or he is truly too ignorant to absorb and try to understand basic facts. Either way, we now have a president whose every word is questionable.
Director of Defense Budget Analysis and the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Todd Harrison caught just two minutes of Trump’s speech to graduates at the Naval Academy on Friday, and what he outraged him so much that he said he just couldn’t “let it go.”
See the speech below. The two minutes to which Harrison refers begin at 21:49.
Below are the inaccuracies and downright blatant lies told by President Trump in just two minutes tweeted by a defense expert who knows his facts.
I watched this portion of @realDonaldTrump's speech at the Naval Academy today, and can't let it go. In just 2 minutes he makes at least 6 factual errors. Watch the clip and then read the rest of this thread: https://t.co/4QrUFktStp
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #1: The $700B defense budget for FY18 is not the largest ever. It was larger under the Obama administration: $710B in FY11 and $714B in FY10. And that's without adjusting for inflation!
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #2: The number of ships in the Navy today is not the smallest since the end of WWI. We have 283 ships today, and in 2007 (Bush administration) we had 279.
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #3: The Navy will not get to 355 ships "very soon." The Navy's 30-year plan says it will not get to that level until after 2050, but it could possibly be accelerated to the 2030s. Either way, it's not very soon.
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #4: Getting to 355 ships is not an increase of "a couple of hundred" ships. Here's the math: 355 – 283 = 72
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #5: The 355-ship fleet has not yet been "approved." The ships have not all been authorized yet, and Congress appropriates the money one year at a time.
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
Error #6: This year's military pay raise is not the first in ten years. There were pay raises in each of the past ten years, & some were higher than this year's raise.
FY09: 3.9%
FY10: 3.4%
FY11: 1.4%
FY12: 1.6%
FY13: 1.7%
FY14: 1.0%
FY15: 1.0%
FY16: 1.3%
FY17: 2.1%
FY18: 2.4%— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) May 25, 2018
To be clear, it’s not as if every president hasn’t said things that are inaccurate, whether intentionally or unintentionally, or told lies to protect themselves from criticism or to mislead voters on partisan issues. The difference between past presidents and Trump are many.
First is simply the sheer volume and frequency of Trump’s falsehoods. In less than one year into his presidential term, Trump made more than 2,000 “false or misleading statements.” That’s an average of 5.63 lies per day.
There also seems to be no other reasoning behind Trump’s endless lies and exaggerations other than stroking his own ego and making himself look more successful than he is. Everything must be “the biggest,” “the best,” and “the most successful” in history for Trump, and he knows his supporters will buy into it every time.
Finally, there are the particular lies that Trump tells that are so odd and which separate him from the norm. Presidents may represent numbers or statistics, but Trump simply throws out statements that are too easily fact-checked to believe anything other than that he assumes his supporters are too ignorant to research or know the difference. From claiming credit for the success of policies he had nothing to do with to claims that the U.S. currently has a large trade deficit with Canada, the lies seem more about propping himself up and justifying useless actions taken in his “America First” plan.
If Americans, especially our military, cannot trust the president to tell the truth about literally anything, how does anyone continue to trust in the future of our country?
Featured image via Getty/Alex Wong
