President Donald Trump repeatedly lied during his much-discussed interview with journalist Lesley Stahl for 60 Minutes, which he abruptly walked out of before its scheduled end after petulantly complaining about Stahl’s questioning. A CNN fact-check of the interview that was written up by the network’s fact-checker Daniel Dale includes a full 16 outright false or otherwise misleading claims that Trump made during the talk with Stahl. The topics of Trump’s deception ranged from the Coronavirus pandemic to the health care policy proposals of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
For example, during his 60 Minutes interview, Trump claimed that a Biden election would mean that “180 million people will lose their health care” that they currently have from private insurance companies, but this claim is unequivocally false. Biden loudly rejects the idea of doing away with private health insurance systems and replacing them with Medicare-for-all. Instead, Biden has explained that he wants to impose a so-called public option in order to make government-backed health care easier to access for people who wish to join the program and could benefit from it.
Similarly, although Trump doesn’t seem to have raised the claim in his 60 Minutes interview, the president’s past insistence that a Biden administration would seize firearms or attack the Second Amendment is false. Biden does not support the government seizure of assault weapons that people currently legally own, even if he’s able to pass a ban on new assault weapons sales in the future.
Meanwhile, while on 60 Minutes, Trump claimed that Coronavirus cases are only rising in the U.S. “because we’re doing so much testing,” but this claim is grossly misleading. Hospitalization rates and Coronavirus deaths have also been rising across the country. The virus is clearly spreading among the community at a sharp rate that is not merely accounted for by an increase in testing rates. Similarly, Trump’s claim that the U.S. has “turned the corner” in fighting the Coronavirus is baseless, CNN notes. It’s empty rhetoric that simply does not reflect actual reality.
‘Trump was wrong. Again, US pandemic numbers — newly confirmed cases, hospitalizations, the test positivity rate, deaths — are all getting worse, not better. There is just no basis for his vague claim that we are rounding some sort of corner in a positive direction.’
Trump also lied in characterizing the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina as currently under “lockdowns” that have been imposed by their Democratic governors. Although there are some restrictions in place like limits on restaurant capacity, the idea that these states are “locked down” is a fiction according to any reasonable understanding of the term. On that note, Trump claimed that he “didn’t say lock up the governor of Michigan” — but at a recent rally, as his supporters chanted “lock her up!” targeting that governor, Trump looked on approvingly and commented to “lock ’em all up.”
As the nation starts on its final approach to Election Day, it’s clear — the president has little besides lies and deception to offer to the American people. He has repeatedly failed the nation.