or, WhoWhatWhy Awards Trump Infinite Pinocchios for Most Ridiculous Thing Ever Said
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Donald Trump has been a nightmare for fact checkers because of how frequently he lies and because they are constrained by journalistic norms that require them to be “fair.” They have gotten it all wrong. In reality, they should be a nightmare for him, and treating Trump fairly means pointing out just how ridiculous he is.
To show what this should look like (and it’s embarrassing that the corporate media hasn’t figured this out after eight years of covering a pathological liar), we took it upon ourselves to fact check something Trump said this weekend in a way that should be a model for all other fact checks.
Here we go:
WhoWhatWhy Awards Trump Infinite Pinocchios for Most Ridiculous Thing Ever Said
In an interview with right-wing propaganda network Fox News, Donald Trump said the following: “We are under siege. No country has ever suffered like we have for the last three-and-a-half, almost four years.”
Is he right?
Claim: “No country has ever suffered like [the United States] for the last three-and-a-half, almost four years.”
The facts: The United States of America is by far the world’s richest country by total wealth (which adds up to about $150,000,000,000,000). It has by far the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at $28,780,000,000,000, which is $10 trillion more than China, a country with four times as many people. The US is also the only large country that ranks in the top 10 in terms of GDP per capita.
While a lot of that wealth is not equally distributed, 91.7 percent of US households own at least one car. All in all, Americans, who make up less than 5 percent of the global population, own about one-fifth of the world’s cars.
Almost universally, American households own TVs, cell phones, and refrigerators, while “only” 90 percent own a computer.
The unemployment rate hovers just above 4 percent.
Of course, there are other measures to determine a country’s suffering.
Currently, while America’s military, which is the most powerful in the history of the world, is present in many countries, nobody is shooting missiles at US schools. The country is also not the target of carpet bombing. It is not in need of child soldiers, and no minefields pose a danger to Americans on home soil.
No murdering Mongol hordes are pillaging American cities at present. In fact, nobody has invaded the United States for some time.
Considering the country’s awesome wealth, far too many households face food insecurity. However, the US is not experiencing a mass famine right at this moment.
In spite of Trump’s own efforts to reduce that figure, 92 percent of Americans have some form of health insurance, and there are no major outbreaks of diseases like cholera, malaria, or tuberculosis. That being said, Trump is doing his best to bring back some classic childhood diseases.
No insane foreign dictator has built death camps on its soil to exterminate large swaths of its population.
Even though Trump’s party is trying to curtail access to knowledge, American children can attend schools. In fact, they are required to.
No religious fanatics are telling young girls that they are not allowed to learn (although they are trying to dictate what they can and cannot read).
While the US continues to have a racism problem, slavery has been illegal in the country for more than 150 years.
Of course, most of the above only compares the US’s suffering as a country with its contemporaries.
If we were to go back in time (and Trump’s statement is not restricted to current countries), what he says gets more ridiculous by the century.
For example, the Black Death wiped out half of Europe’s population in less than a decade in the mid-1300s. At that time few people owned a donkey cart, carrier pigeons, or an abacus. In addition, any talk of universal health care or education would probably have gotten you beheaded or burned at the stake as a witch (something which no longer happens in the US).
Our verdict: The person who said this must either be the least educated person currently alive, mentally ill, or a complete moron (and perhaps all three). The statement is so ridiculously and patently false that it is offensive to even bother us with a request for a fact check.
Anybody who believes that no country has suffered like the US in the past years should be locked up in an institution to ensure their words do no further harm. In no case should they be elected to any public office.
We award this absurd claim infinite Pinocchios.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often funny analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
