They barely even fact checked him in the first place. They called him on a total of, what, three things? As opposed to the probably dozens of other complete untruths he uttered, not even just about policy and so forth but actual empirically verifiable elements of reality?
Hereās just what I spotted:
- Lied about not being involved with Project 2025 and not knowing what it is. We know he is acutely aware of what it is, and in fact some members of his staff were involved in its framing.
- Lied about the number of immigrants coming into the country.
- Further lied stating that other countries were āsending all their criminals and mental patients.ā
- Claimed people were āabortingā babies after birth (called out by moderators).
- Claimed Harris said she would ban fracking in Pennsylvania (called out by Harris).
- Lied about crime rates going āthrough the roofā (called out by moderators).
- Responded to this by claiming FBI crime stats were falsified by āleaving out problem cities.ā
- Lied about migrants eating peopleās pets (called out by moderators).
- Lied about inflation numbers post-pandemic.
- Lied claiming that āBidenā built the Nordstream pipeline.
- Distorted the truth by claiming he won more votes than any sitting president in the last election, failing to mention that Biden still got more.
There were probably others.
He also essentially admitted that his plan for the war in Ukraine was to just let Russia win. That should be pretty damn worrisome for anyone.
I wish they had pushed him harder on the simple yes or no questions.
Also, Harris missed a perfect opportunity to point out that Trump has been the only president that has advocated a gun ban. ātake the guns and figure out due process laterā
The yes/no about āshould Ukraine win the warā he wouldnāt answer anything except that he would end the war. He would just give up Ukraine to Russia to end it, though, and he didnāt want to say that on TV.
You canāt force him to change his answer. Yāall think you could fact check trump better live.
No, I meant when he was asked a yes or no question directly, multiple times, he never gave an actual answer.
Iām sure he was completely truthful when he said he didnāt read Project 2025. It would be very surprising if he read anything besides Mein Kampf.
The only way he actually read Mein Kampf is if it came in picture book format
āEveryone says it, you know Trump really is a genius, they say it. Iāve read all the best books: the Hungry Caterpillar, Green Eggs and Ham, Goodnight Moon. Iām the biggest read person in the country. They say this. The Giving Tree. I hated that book, communist propaganda! Kambala probably wrote it.ā
I learned that what he does actually has a special name. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
The Gish gallop (/ĖÉ”ÉŖŹ ĖɔƦlÉp/) is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloperās arguments at the expense of their quality.
Thatās true on a technicality, but everyone knows what he meant. In the 2020 election, Biden got ~7 million more votes than Trump in addition to winning the electoral college. Trumpās intent was to be intentionally misleading and to twist the qualifications to imply that he should have won last time when, in fact, he didnāt.
Itās a sobering detail of our situation. In 2020, Trump really did receive more votes than any candidate in any previous election. That means a ton of people showed up to vote for him in 2020 that hadnāt in 2016.
He frames it weird (and it sounded weird when he said it) because otherwise it raises the obvious point that Biden also achieved that same record, plus an extra 7 million votes.
