Trump Orlando Rally Gets Fact Checked & Results Are Pathetic

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Going into the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump is continuing to base his run on lies, lies, and more lies. At his re-election campaign’s official kick-off rally this past Tuesday in Orlando, Florida, CNN caught him with more than 15 blatant misrepresentations of the truth in his speech, which ran a little over an hour. Many of his lies have popped up in his rhetoric elsewhere — and in general, he’s certainly established his attachment to lying in the first place. The Washington Post concluded that in his first 2.3 years or so as president, Trump said 10,796 things that were either misleading or outright lies, which works out to about a dozen lies a day.

In Orlando on Tuesday, he ran through some of his greatest hits, so to speak. He baselessly claimed that the Russia investigation is “illegal,” despite the fact that its proved its judicial relevance through the criminal charges that a full six of his former associates have faced in its wake. Roger Stone hasn’t even gone to trial yet, and two of those who were formerly in his orbit — including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former fixer Michael Cohen — are currently in jail for crimes the Russia prove uncovered. Trump still wants us to think the Russia probe was a money-losing waste of time anyway.

That’s another piece of fantasy he pulled out on Tuesday — the supposed cost of the Mueller probe. There are no actual confirmed numbers available yet covering the cost of the full undertaking, but Trump freely claimed that investigators spent $40 million and “probably a hell of a lot more than that” anyway. The numbers are an estimate; the only confirmed figures that are available put the cost of about a year and a half of the probe at $25 million, there are eight more months of investigation beyond what’s been detailed in expense reports. Additionally, it’s important to note that the government is still expected to recoup $11 million as a result of asset forfeitures from Paul Manafort, lowering the probe’s net cost dramatically.

Besides these runs around the truth of the Russia scandal, Trump had another lie too, claiming that President Barack Obama did “nothing” when confronted with the facts of their 2016 election interference shortly before the general election. That’s a lie — he “authorized an extraordinary public statement in October 2016 blaming the hacking on ‘Russia’s senior-most officials,'” CNN notes, and after the election, as more evidence piled up, the Obama administration imposed harsh sanctions on Russia that the Trump team then turned around to try and undercut, saying they’d remove them. This is in addition to the bipartisan warning to the public the Obama administration attempted but, according to former Vice President Joe Biden, were stopped in unveiling thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refusing to get on board.

Tuesday night in Orlando, Trump lied about other topics too. He claimed that the U.S. became the number one energy producer under his leadership, but the country claimed that title years before he came around, although crude oil production in particular did hit a globally leading point under his watch.

He also claimed that Democrats used to support a wall like he has long wanted to put up blocking off Mexico, but in reality, they’ve supported fencing, which he’s made clear at times he didn’t think of as fulfilling his wall proposal.

These lies are no doubt a sign of many more to come.

Featured Image via screenshot