a recent politico fact-check of the candidates found trump with a rate of one misstatement every 3.25 minutes; clinton had one every 12 minutes. | ap photo by patrick reis 11/06/16 07:40 am est donald trump and hillary clinton both misstate facts about hillary clinton. but it<u+2019>s trump who struggles with the truth about almost everything else. on policy, clinton <u+2014> in her interviews, speeches and debate appearances <u+2014> generally either tells the truth or stretches it in a manner typical of politicians. other than the odd instance where she flubs completely, clinton cherry picks the facts that help her case, ignores the ones that hurt it and frames it all in the best-possible light for herself. it<u+2019>s part of her team<u+2019>s cautious, traditional approach to communications; indeed, one hacked email published by wikileaks revealed a group of people working to craft a single tweet about puerto rico. story continued below but pressed on her own controversies, clinton strays from the truth <u+2014> and nowhere more so than when talking about her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. there, clinton has made claims that readily available evidence reveals as false. it has been among her greatest weaknesses as a campaigner, and the reason she has failed to gain the trust of millions of voters. none of that compares, however, with trump<u+2019>s propensity for spouting fiction. when politico fact-checked trump for just five days, it found 87 separate instances in which the republican offered conclusions that were either mistaken, misleading or plain false <u+2014> a rate of one misstatement every 3.25 minutes. (clinton, by comparison, missed the mark about once every 12 minutes over the same period.) some of trump<u+2019>s misstatements are traditional spin, but others strays into a near-orwellian denial of readily available evidence <u+2014> even when that evidence comes from trump<u+2019>s own statements , tweets or tapes . trump tells falsehoods about clinton<u+2019>s past and about her proposed policies, just as he did about his opponents in the gop primary. he exaggerates his own successes and hides his failures. he denies doing things he did publicly for years. he lies about the statistics that prove he<u+2019>s lying. and he lies about ever have lied to begin with, denying his own statements within days of making them. here are 16 falsehoods that shaped the 2016 campaign. 1. <u+201c>i<u+2019>ve had some of the most secret information that anybody in government could have. <u+2026> i was very careful with classified material<u+201d> <u+2014> hillary clinton. clinton<u+2019>s personal feelings about classified information are known only to her, but her self-assessment is starkly at odds with fbi director james comey, who famously called her handling of the classified material while secretary of state <u+201c> extremely careless .<u+201d> 2. "i never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." clinton, july 2016, referencing her private email server. per politifact , that<u+2019>s simply not true: <u+201c>in total, the investigation found 110 emails in 52 email chains containing information that was classified at the time it was sent or received. eight chains contained top secret information, the highest level of classification, 36 chains contained secret information, and the remaining eight contained confidential information. most of these emails, however, did not contain markings clearly delineating their status.<u+201d> 3. <u+201c>director comey said my answers were truthful, and what i<u+2019>ve said is consistent with what i have told the american people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.<u+201d> clinton, july 2016 comey recommended against indicting clinton with a crime, but in the process he was, as noted above, critical of clinton<u+2019>s practices and did not comment on her answers, as noted by npr , the washington post and others. clinton later acknowledged her statement was inaccurate <u+2014> saying she <u+201c> short circuited <u+201d><u+2014> and said she would attempt to <u+201c>clarify<u+201d> her statement. 4. asked if she had called the trans-pacific partnership the <u+201c>gold standard<u+201d> for trade pacts, clinton said <u+201c>no.<u+201d> september 2016 that<u+2019>s demonstrably untrue : in a speech in australia on nov. 15, 2012, clinton, then secretary of state, said : <u+201c>this tpp sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade <u+2014> the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.<u+201d> 5. <u+201c>hillary clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy<u+2026><u+201d> trump, september 2016 the birther conspiracy dates back to 2004 , when opponents of barack obama, then running for the state legislature, floated several wild rumors about him, including, most notably, that he was actually born in kenya but had both a fake birth certificate and a fake birth announcement. there is no publicly available evidence connecting clinton directly to the birther conspiracy, and trump has not produced any. the closest anyone has come to connecting clinton<u+2019>s campaign to it involve a local staffer who forwarded a birther-tinged email (and was fired for it) and a contested story about clinton ally sydney blumenthal suggesting a reporter vaguely look into obama<u+2019>s <u+201c>connections to kenya.<u+201d> 6. <u+201c>...i ended it.<u+201d> trump, september 2016 the theory existed before trump, but by using his celebrity to relentlessly question obama<u+2019>s citizenship, trump massively increased the smear<u+2019>s adherents. and even after obama produced his long-form birth certificate <u+2014> reinforcing the already demonstrated fact that he was born in hawaii <u+2014>trump continued to question its validity, part of the reason many millions of americans still believe the president is illegally occupying of the oval office. 7. <u+201c>i watched when the world trade center came tumbling down. and i watched in jersey city, new jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. thousands of people were cheering.<u+201d> trump, november 2015 while there were isolated incidents of people cheering during the 2001 terrorist attacks on the world trade center, trump<u+2019>s claim that there were <u+201c>thousands and thousands<u+201d> has been repeatedly debunked . 8. trump said during the presidential debate it was <u+201c>wrong<u+201d> to claim he had mocked a disabled reporter. october 2016 days after reporter serge kovaleski <u+2014> who suffers from a disease that makes it difficult for him to control his movements <u+2014> said his reporting did not back up trump<u+2019>s claim about thousands celebrating 9/11 attacks, trump did this . 9. "i was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war (in iraq), and yes, even before the war ever started." trump, june, 2016 and similar statements other times trump<u+2019>s harshest critics point to a howard stern interview in which, after being asked if the united states should invade iraq, he responds: <u+201c> yeah, i guess so .<u+201d> that reads like tepid support for the war, which trump later spoke out against following the war. but despite trump<u+2019>s vehement insistence he opposed the invasion, there is yet to be any public record of him speaking out against it before it began, 10. <u+201c>[obama] founded isis. and i would say the co-founder would be crooked hillary clinton.<u+201d> trump, august 2016 and similar statements many other times clinton did not start isis. the group<u+2019>s founders include abu musab al-zarqawi, who founded predecessor group al qaeda in iraq and abu bakr al-baghdadi, isis<u+2019>s current leader. clinton<u+2019>s role in the rises of isis is more complicated , and she is neither blameless nor totally responsible for the group<u+2019>s rise. 11. <u+201c>she is raising everybody's taxes massively.<u+201d> trump, october 2016 and similar statements many other times hillary clinton has promised not to raise taxes on americans earning less than $250,000. she has also proposed a series of measures that increase taxes<u+2014>but only on the highest-income earners. in fact, one score of her plan from the nonpartisan tax policy center found that most americans would receive a tax cut under her plan . 12. <u+201c>no, it wasn<u+2019>t <u+2018>check out a sex tape.<u+2019> it was <u+2018>check out this person you built up to be this girl scout.<u+2019><u+201d> trump, speaking about a former pageant queen who he disparaged, october 2016 that<u+2019>s not true . 13. <u+201c>nobody has more respect for women than i do.<u+201d> trump, october 2016 and other similar statements. that<u+2019>s not true either . 14. <u+201c>i mean, what was [ted cruz<u+2019>s father rafael cruz] doing <u+2014> what was he doing with lee harvey oswald shortly before the death? before the shooting?<u+201d> trump, may 2016 and a similar statement in june this is trump suggesting, though not outright accusing, rafael cruz of being somehow involved in the killing of president john f. kennedy. that claim was based on a national enquirer report. it<u+2019>s also nonsense . 15. in san bernardino, "they saw the bombs all over the apartment of the people that wounded many, many people. they will never be the same. muslims have to report the problems when they see them.<u+201d> trump, october 2016 while the killers in the san bernardino attack did have weapons stashed in their apartment, there<u+2019>s no evidence that their neighbors <u+2014> muslim or otherwise <u+2014> knew about them. 16. <u+201c>i would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and i<u+2019>ll build them very inexpensively, i will build a great, great wall on our southern border. and i will have mexico pay for that wall.<u+201d> trump, announcing his campaign in june 2015, and similar statements many times since it<u+2019>s nearly impossible to lie about the future, as, in theory, just about anything can happen. but trump manages to come close here, repeatedly insisting that the mexican government will shell out billions of u.s. dollars (at a minimum) for a wall its citizens don<u+2019>t want. the mexican president says he told trump personally that the country wouldn<u+2019>t pay, and the u.s. has no credible mechanism for making it do so. if trump gets elected, builds a border wall and somehow gets mexico to fully fund it, we<u+2019>ll issue a correction. by thomas wright by bill scher by joshua zeitz by jack shafer
2016 election: 16 falsehoods spewed by trump and clinton - politico
jack shafer