All posts tagged "daniel dale"

'Grossly exaggerated': CNN smacks down Trump's latest Cabinet claims

CNN's Daniel Dale dissected President Donald Trump's Cabinet meeting Wednesday, during which his secretaries took turns lavishing praise and even touting Trump's presidency as one of the best "ever."

Trump's exaggerations were par for the course, Dale said.

"Well, he kind of vaguely repeated his frequent claim that the U.S. had a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China under President Biden," Dale began. "It did have a big trade deficit, but he's grossly exaggerating it — it was about $263 billion last year — so, he's about quadrupling it."

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Dale continued, "And, while he blames Biden for letting it get out of control, that was actually a lower figure than the trade deficit with China in each and every year of Trump's first presidency, so it did not 'explode' under President Biden."

Dale then commented on something he claimed was "subjective," but something he, as a Canadian, felt the need to speak up about.

"He said, in the Canadian election, he said it was the one who 'hated Trump the least' who won. I don't know how to measure hate," Dale said, "but certainly Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney was much harsher in his public rhetoric than his main opponent, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. So, I don't know about the one who hated Trump the least."

Dale said it was interesting that Trump did "a kind of self-fact-check of his previous rhetoric."

"He made a comment about imported dolls, and he said, 'Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30. Maybe those two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.' So that acknowledgment that imported products like dolls might cost a couple of bucks more is sharply at odds with what we heard him say over and over — certainly on the campaign trail, even more recently — when he said, 'It's foreign countries who pay those tariffs, consumers aren't going to pay them at all.' So here, at least briefly, he acknowledged that, yeah, stuff might cost more money here for Americans."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

CNN fact-checker 'begged and pleaded' for info on key Trump claim — didn't get 'a smidgen'

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale had his hands full Thursday after President Donald Trump held a lengthy cabinet meeting to discuss everything from the trade deficit with China to his repeated claims about immigrants coming from "mental institutions and insane asylums."

Dale intimated that there was so much information to verify that he would "stick mostly to the big news of the day" during his appearance with Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar.

"President Trump keeps saying that the U.S. has $1 trillion trade deficit with China — that's about quadruple the actual figure, which was $263 billion last year," Dale began. "If you only count trade and goods, and don't count trade and services, it's about $295 billion. So, still, nowhere close."

Dale added that Trump repeated his claim that the U.S. "took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China" thanks to his first-term tariffs.

"As many of our colleagues keep pointing out — because we have to — all that revenue was paid by U.S. importers, and we know from study after study and just from talking to people in this country, most of those costs were passed on to U.S. consumers," Dale said.

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Dale continued, saying Trump "repeated a bit of alternative history" saying that "the European Union was formed for the purpose of taking advantage of the United States. I spoke this week to an expert on European integration. He said, not only is that wrong, it is completely detached from the actual history."

Dale said Trump kept "kind of flirting" with the debunked conspiracy theory around childhood vaccines and autism, with Trump claiming, "something artificial had to have caused the increase in diagnoses over recent decades," adding that "maybe it's a shot."

"That is debunked," Dale said. "It is not a shot. Experts tend to attribute this increase in diagnoses to increase awareness, increased screening."

And finally, Dale discussed Trump's fixation on "mental institutions and insane asylums."

Dale said that Trump repeated his claim that "other countries around the world were emptying jails and mental institutions under President Biden to somehow send criminals and people with mental health issues to the United States as migrants. I have begged and pleaded with Trump's team for any evidence, any corroboration of those claims. they haven't provided any smidgen of it whatsoever."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'Doozy': CNN fact check catches Trump tall tale getting wilder by the day

CNN's Dana Bash and Daniel Dale had their hands full as they fact-checked some of President Donald Trump's remarks during the first Cabinet meeting of his second term Wednesday.

"There was just so much in this Cabinet meeting," Dale said. "So, let me run through some of the big ones."

Dale went on to debunk Trump's assertion that the U.S. has given Ukraine $350 billion worth of aid, claiming it was three times what Europe has given.

"The $350 billion number is not true," Dale said, "nor is the idea that the U.S. has provided way more than Europe."

Dale continued, "The president also repeated this claim he's been saying over and over, that the U.S. ranks 40th out of 40 in some education rankings. I specifically asked the White House what those rankings were. They were not able to point to any of them. It appears not to exist."

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Trump next made the claim that the U.S. took in hundreds of billions of dollars from his first-term tariffs on China.

"In fact, Americans made those tariff payments, and it's not true that Trump was the first president to impose tariffs on China."

Trump also spun a yarn over the European Union, according to Dale.

"He said the European Union doesn't take American farm products. In fact, it is the 4th biggest market for U.S. agricultural exports of $13B per year."

Dale continued, "He offered another alternative history of the European Union's formation, saying it was formed to screw, take advantage of the U.S. In fact, it was formed with U.S. support, so not even close to correct. And, so, I don't even know where to go from here!"

He concluded with, "And I'll give you one more. He said that, you know, the million people who didn't respond to this email, this 'five things that you did last week,' email from Elon Musk's team, 'may not exist.' I guess it's possible that the U.S. government is paying some people who don't exist, but I think it's important to note that we had numerous agency heads or department heads telling their employees not to respond. So, the simpler explanation is that people were instructed not to do this, rather than them being, you know, fictional, non-existent human beings."

Bash interjected, "There was one other doozy, which was the allegation that there were Social Security checks going to people who are 150 years old. Those people got older during the Cabinet meeting today. Apparently they're 200 years old. So, there is that."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'Never heard anyone question that': CNN hosts dumbstruck as Trump doubts McConnell's polio

CNN anchors Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez were dumbstruck when President Donald Trump questioned whether Sen. Mitch McConnell ever really had polio during an Oval Office press gaggle Thursday.

Keilar introduced fact-checker Daniel Dale, asking, "Where would you like to start?"

"Well, Mitch McConnell had polio," Dale stated. "I've never heard anyone question that until President Trump did today. Like, is that a conspiracy theory that even existed before today? I don't know. That was something," Dale said.

"Before you go on, Daniel, let's provide some context for our viewers," Boris Sanchez said, rolling tape of Trump's bizarre assertion as he talked about McConnell voting against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination for Health and Human Services secretary. Thursday's vote, in which Kennedy was confirmed, marked the third time McConnell voted against a Trump nominee.

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"I was the one that got him to drop out of the leadership position," Trump said of McConnell. "So, he can't love me. But he's not voting against Bobby; he's voting against me. But that's all right. He endorsed me. You know that Mitch endorsed me, right? Do you think that was easy?"

CNN correspondent Kaitlyn Collins interjected, "He had polio, obviously," alluding to the fact that McConnell spoke out against RFK Jr. due to his anti-vaccine stance.

"I don't know anything about 'he had polio.' He had polio," Trump repeated.

"Are you doubting that he had polio?" Collins asked.

"I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn't have been leader. He knows that. He voted against Bobby. He votes against almost everything now. He's a, you know, very bitter guy."

When Keilar came back on screen, she confirmed that Trump did, in fact, appear to "cast doubts" on whether McConnell ever had polio.

"He did!" she exclaimed about the validity of McConnell's illness, before tossing back to Dale, who concluded, "Yeah, he did. He talked about it for decades."

Watch the clip below or at this link via CNN.

'Classic spinmeister tactic': CNN's Daniel Dale slams Trump spokeswoman's first appearance

CNN's Daniel Dale declared that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt employed a "classic spinmeister tactic" when she failed to directly answer questions about Trump's sudden freeze on all federal grants and loans.

At issue was whether Americans who rely on federal assistance for things like food and medicine would lose their benefits.

The confusion began after "The Office of Management and Budget sent a vaguely worded two-page memo to all federal agencies Monday night directing them to 'temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.'"

Anchor Brianna Keilar addressed Dale after Tuesday's White House press conference.

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"I want to talk about a very big issue that is going to affect a lot of Americans, and that is the recent pause by the White House on these federal grants and loans," Keilar said.

"Karoline Leavitt tried to say repeatedly that she had answered this question — that direct assistance like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps — if you're getting that direct assistance or that direct check from the government, it's not going to be affected. But there's a lot of groups that you would expect — the nonprofits — [like] Meals On Wheels, Head Start. She wouldn't answer that question. And there's also so much other federal funding that goes to nonprofits that goes to local and state entities. So, not directly to individuals, but to entities that provide that essential aid, then to individuals that's held up. What did you think about what you heard?"

Dale responded, "Yeah, I think it's a classic spinmeister tactic saying, 'I answered that,' when you haven't answered it and apparently can't answer it right away. There's considerable uncertainty around the country among nonprofits of various kinds, organizations of various kinds, and the people who get help from those organizations."

Dale continued, "So, they may not get direct, individual payments straight from the federal government, but their lives, their situations, their living situations, in some cases their food and transportation situations, are very much dependent on the aid that comes through an intermediary organization. And we still do not have clarity on what is happening with the funding that usually goes to those entities."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

Trump's rally rant ranged from 'uncheckable' to 'flat-out false': CNN fact-checker

Former President Donald Trump spoke to a small group in North Carolina on Tuesday alongside far-right gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, in a return to the campaign trail after a period of relative inactivity — but the claims he made at that rally are classic Trumpian falsehoods, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale told anchor Phil Mattingly.

"There was definitely policy," said Mattingly. "There was also stuff about laughing. What stood out to you, Daniel?"

"There are a bunch of claims that I think a lot of people would question, but that are subjective or uncheckable," said Dale. "He claimed California, where a whole lot of people happily live, is 'unlivable.' He claimed that we're a banana republic, third-world country; I think a lot of people would dispute that."

Many of his other assertions, Dale continued, are "flat-out false."

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"He again said that Kamala Harris was made the 'border czar,' put by President Biden in charge of the border. That didn't happen," said Dale. "In reality, she was given a much more limited immigration-related assignment tasked with dealing with the so-called root causes of migration in certain Central American countries. He repeated his claim that she's allowed 20 million people into the country ... the total number of border so-called encounters under Biden and Harris is 10 million, and far from all of those people were actually allowed in; that includes the people who are expelled from the country upon arriving at the border. He boasted of how good African-American poverty, the poverty level, was during his administration. He didn't mention, it's actually fallen to a lower level, a new record, beating the Trump-era record, under Biden and Harris."

Additionally, he continued, "he called switching candidates in the Democratic primary, a 'minor form of cheating.' It's not a form of cheating at all. It's allowed completely within the law and the rules. And he spoke of how the Inflation Reduction Act, he said 'gave us record inflation.' The U.S. has never had record inflation under Biden and Harris, even the Biden/Harris peak of 9.1 percent was about a 40-year high, nowhere near the all-time high of about 23.7 percent. And that 9.1 percent number has come way down since then, it's now 2.9 percent."

"And finally, he spoke of so-called 'very good polls' for him coming out right now and claimed were leading," Dale added. "He might be seeing private numbers we're not seeing, but in the national averages of public polling, he is not leading. He's now trailing."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

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