CNN reporters torpedoed President Donald Trump’s “absurd” claims minutes after he made them at an Oval Office scrum with reporters as he met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Trump took questions after he and Carney gave remarks at the top of the meeting, much of which aired during Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s Inside Politics.
At the end of approximately 32 quotable minutes of Trump, Carney, and the press pool, guest anchor Manu Raju turned to CNN senior reporters Edward-Isaac Dovere and Daniel Dale for a reality check on some of what Trump said.
Dovere slammed Trump’s “invented reality” and Dale knocked down a series of claims, including an “absurd” one about saving over 100,000 lives by blowing up several motorboats:
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE: He said, ICE officers have to street battle against Antifa hand-to-hand comet every night to come and go from their building in Portland, we’ve got Shimon Prokupecz from CNN on the ground in Portland, that’s not what’s happening.The White House is inventing a version of reality and then reacting to that invented reality.MANU RAJU: And the courts have just stopped it so far. We’ll see how they decide to ultimately respond.I do want to bring in CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale.So, Daniel, there is a lot from President Trump to impact there. What stood out to you?DANIEL
DALE: I counted at least five false claims in those remarks, there was probably more.The president repeated this imaginary figure he keeps using, saying that he secured more than $17 trillion worth of investment in the U.S. In just eight months.The White House itself on its website uses the figure $8.8 trillion, so just over half of the one the president keeps citing, and even that $8 trillion is a wild exaggeration. It includes a bunch of vague promises, a bunch vague statements from foreign countries and companies that I wouldn’t say even rise to the level of promises, accounts hundreds of billions in promised trade expansion as investment.So even the much smaller figure is not right.The president also said that under his leadership with his guard deployment and takeover of DC law enforcement, nobody is being shot now in Washington, DC.It is true that crime is down in DC, but it hasn’t vanished, as he keeps claiming. In fact, just this morning, the Washington Post ran a headline that said, three people found fatally shot in D.C. in three days. Some shootings do continue.The president also made just an absurd claim that he saved at least 100,000 lives with a smattering of military strikes on alleged drug boats on Venezuela in the Caribbean.Now, aside from the fact that we don’t have firm evidence of what was on these boats, aside from thatfact that fentanyl, the most deadly of these synthetic opioids that is killing Americans, is generally brought over the border by Americans, the land border rather than on boats from Venezuela, it is just absurd to say 100,000 lives because there were well under 100,00 total overdose deaths in the U.S. last year.So the notion that 100, 000 lives were saved by striking four or five boats is simply not credible.And the president also talking about his trade deal with the European Union repeated claim that before this deal. The U.S. couldn’t sell any agriculture to the EU. Of more than $12 billion worth of farm products to the EU last year before the trade deal.The EU was the fourth biggest buyer in the world of these products.
Watch above via CNN’s Inside Politics.