Oh, Shooter thinks we can count on Fani Willis to spot any inconsistencies in anything Hutchinson has to say.
Think about it. Willis is an officer of the court and immune to political posturing.

 

Archives pushes back on Trump claims that other presidents mishandled records
by Rebecca Beitsch - 10/11/22 4:19 PM ET

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The National Archives, without naming former President Trump, pushed back Tuesday on claims he made over the weekend that other past presidents had mishandled their White House records with the help of the agency.

Trump had previously claimed his predecessor, former President Obama, had mishandled his own records but expanded that claim during rallies in Arizona and New Mexico to include several prior presidents, including Republicans.


At one point Trump even claimed, without evidence, that records from President George H.W. Bush’s administration were stored in a Chinese restaurant and a bowling alley “with no security and a broken front door.”


The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said Tuesday that while records are transported to presidents’ libraries, any temporary storage has “met strict archival and security standards, and have been managed and staffed exclusively by NARA employees.” It added that any insinuations that records were stored in substandard conditions “are false and misleading.”

At another point during the rallies, Trump also accused former President Clinton of losing nuclear codes and keeping classified recordings in his sock. While Clinton did store some tapes in his sock drawer while serving as president, he did not leave office with the recordings in tow.

The statement from the Archives is the second in less than a month to address how it handles records as Trump makes a number of false claims about other presidents’ handling of records amid legal trouble of his own.

During an Aug. 8 search of his Mar-a-Lago home, the FBI seized more than 100 classified records stored there along with more than 10,000 government records.

The Archives noted that other presidents have not taken records but rather coordinated with the agency to have relevant materials transported to their presidential libraries.



“The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in accordance with the Presidential Records Act, assumed physical and legal custody of the Presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, when those Presidents left office,” the agency said Tuesday.


“NARA securely moved these records to temporary facilities that NARA leased from the General Services Administration (GSA), near the locations of the future Presidential Libraries that former Presidents built for NARA,” it added.

The Archives in September similarly explained the process for transporting Obama’s records following accusations from Trump that they were mishandled.



https://thehill.com/policy/national...ims-that-other-presidents-mishandled-records/

 

We would expect the archives to say anything different?

 

This was the first sign to me that conservative/Republicans were turning into treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans and it started before Trump was even elected. Trump is a pathological liar and they not only accepted that they made up excuses for it and tried to deny it. So much for their claim conservative/Republicans hold the moral and ethical high ground.



Fact-checking Trump’s 2024 announcement speech

By Daniel Dale and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 4:10 AM EST, Wed November 16, 2022




Washington CNN —
Former President Donald Trump began his 2024 presidential campaign just as he ended his presidency in 2021: with a whole lot of inaccuracy.

Like many of Trump’s speeches as president, his announcement speech in Florida on Tuesday was filled with false and misleading claims about a variety of topics – from his record in office to his Democratic opponents to the economy, the environment and foreign policy.

Here is a fact check of some of the things he said at Mar-a-Lago. This article will be updated with additional claims.




Afghanistan withdrawal
Trump claimed Tuesday evening that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan upon its military withdrawal in 2021.

“Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, where we lost lives, left Americans behind and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world,” Trump said, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Facts First: Trump’s figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion — a chunk of about $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

There is not any basis for Trump’s claim that $85 billion worth of equipment was left behind. As other fact-checkers have previously explained, that was a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. Only part of this funding was for equipment.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Trump claimed his administration “filled up” the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but it has now been “virtually drained” by the Biden administration.

Facts First: Both parts of Trump’s claim are false. He didn’t fill up the reserve, and the reserve is not “virtually drained.”

Though Trump has repeatedly boasted of supposedly having filled up the reserve, it actually contained fewer barrels of crude when he left office in early 2021 than when he took office in 2017. That’s not all because of him – the law requires some mandatory sales from the reserve for budget reasons, and Democrats in Congress blocked the funding needed to execute Trump’s 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels and fill the reserve to its maximum capacity – but nonetheless, it didn’t get filled.

As CNN’s Matt Egan and Phil Mattingly reported in mid-October, the US reserve remains the largest in the world even though it was at a 38-year low after President Joe Biden released a major chunk of it to help keep oil prices down in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and, coincidentally or not, prior to the midterm elections). The reserve had more than 396 million barrels of crude oil as of the week ending November 4.

Tariffs on China
Trump also boasted about his tariffs on China, claiming, “no president had ever sought or received $1 for our country from China until I came along.”

Facts First: As we have written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president before Trump had generated any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. In reality, the US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.”

Also, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments – and study after study during Trump’s presidency found that Americans were bearing the cost of the tariffs.

Sea level rise
Trump claimed that unnamed people aren’t talking about the threat of nuclear weapons because they are obsessed with environmental issues, which he said, “they say may affect us in 300 years.” He added, “They say the ocean will rise 1/8 of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years. But don’t worry about nuclear weapons that can take out entire countries with one shot.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are false – even if you ignore the absurd contention that people aren’t paying attention to nuclear threats because they’re focused on the environment. Sea levels are expected to rise much faster than Trump said. The US government’s National Ocean Service said on its website that “sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise, on average, 10 - 12 inches (0.25 - 0.30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020 - 2050), which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920 - 2020).”

And though Trump didn’t use the words “climate change” in this claim, he strongly suggested that people say climate change may only affect us in 300 years. That is grossly inaccurate; it is affecting the US today. The Department of Defense said in a 2021 report: “Increasing temperatures; changing precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and unpredictable extreme weather conditions caused by climate change are exacerbating existing risks and creating new security challenges for U.S. interests.”

Drug use and punishment in China
Trump claimed that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had told him that China has no “drug problem” at all because of its harsh treatment of drug traffickers. Trump then repeated the claim himself, saying, “if you get caught dealing drugs in China you have an immediate and quick trial, and by the end of the day, you are executed. That’s a terrible thing, but they have no drug problem.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is not true, just as it was when he made similar claims as president. Joe Amon, director of global health at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health, said that “yes, China has a drug problem” and that “China, like the US, has a large number of people who use (a wide range of) drugs.” The Chinese government has itself reported that “there were 1.49 million registered drug users nationwide” as of the end of 2021; in the past, officials in China have acknowledged that the number of registered drug users are a significant undercount of actual drug use there.

And while Trump solely credits harsh punishments for what he claims is China’s success in handling drugs, the Chinese government also touts its rehabilitation, education and anti-poverty efforts.

Presidential records
Complaining about how he is under criminal investigation for taking presidential documents to his Florida home and resort, Trump repeated a debunked claim about former President Barack Obama’s handling of presidential documents.

“Obama took a lot of things with him,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false – as the National Archives and Records Administration pointed out in August when Trump previously made this claim. Though Trump claimed that Obama had taken millions of records to Chicago, NARA explained in a public statement that it had itself taken these records to a NARA-managed facility in the Chicago area – which is near where Obama’s presidential library will be located. It said that, as per federal law, “former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.”

NARA has also debunked Trump’s recent claims about various other presidents having supposedly taken documents to their own home states; in those cases, too, it was NARA that moved the documents, not the former presidents. It is standard for NARA to set up temporary facilities near where former presidents’ permanent libraries will eventually be located.

Gas prices
As he has on other occasions during Biden’s tenure, Trump used misleading figures when discussing the price of gas. He said: “We were $1.87 a gallon for gasoline, and now it’s sitting five, six, seven and even eight dollars, and it’s gonna go really bad.”

Facts First: This is misleading. While the price of a gallon of regular gas did briefly fall to $1.87 (and lower) during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the national average for regular gas on Trump’s last day in office, January 20, 2021, was much higher than that – $2.393 per gallon, according to data provided to CNN by the American Automobile Association. And while there are some remote gas stations where prices are always much higher than the national average, the national average Tuesday is $3.759, per AAA data, not $5, $6, $7 or $8. California, the state with the highest prices as usual, has an average of $5.423.

Deportations under Obama
Trump claimed Tuesday evening that his administration, unlike Obama’s administration, had convinced countries like Guatemala and Honduras to take back their gang members that had come to America.

“The worst gangs are MS-13. And under the Barack Hussein Obama administration, they were unable to take them out. Because their countries where they came from wouldn’t take them,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago.

Facts First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take back their citizens during Obama’s administration, though there were some individual exceptions.

In 2016, just prior to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.

For the 2016 fiscal year, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind only Mexico, in terms of the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. You can read a longer fact check, from 2019, here.

Missile landing in Poland
Trump claimed Tuesday that a missile that was “sent in probably by Russia” landed 50 miles into Poland. “People are going absolutely wild and crazy and they’re not happy,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago.

Facts First: This claim is false. While Poland said a Russian-made missile did land in their territory Tuesday, killing two Polish citizens, the explosion happened about four miles west from the Ukrainian border.

Additionally, it remains unclear where the missile was fired from, and why it fell in Poland.

Finishing the border wall
Trump made a false claim about one of his signature policies, a wall at the border with Mexico.

“We built the wall, and now we will add to it. Now, we built the wall – we completed the wall – and then we said let’s do more, and we did a lot more. And we did a lot more. And as we were doing it, we had an election that came up. And when they came in, they had three more weeks to complete the additions to the wall, which would’ve been great, and they said no, no, we’re not going to do that,” he said.

Facts First: It’s not even close to true that Trump “completed” the border wall.

According to an official “Border Wall Status” report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump – but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not completed. The report, provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, said that, of those 280, about 74 miles of barriers were “in the pre-construction phase and have not yet been awarded, in locations where no barriers currently exist,” and that 206 miles were “currently under contract, in place of dilapidated and outdated designs and in locations where no barriers previously existed.”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/politics/fact-check-trump-announcement-speech-2024

 

When the GOP realized they were a minority party and were going to continue to shrink, it was not a matter of "the rules changed", it became "rules are for other people."

Trumpettes care about one thing only and that is gaining power by winning elections. Truth, facts, loyalty, and least of all the law, have no value for them. They knew Trump was a pathological liar, but they thought that was what was needed. Republicans weren't going to vote for an honest candidate because he/she would sound too much like a Democrat.

"Winning no matter what" is how they got Dr. Oz and Hershel Walker as candidates. Dr. Oz is a snake oil salesman, which is to be expected in the GOP, but Walker takes the cake. If Walker had been put forward as a Democratic candidate, the knives would come out and Republicans would slash him to shreds as a adulterous baby killing absentee father who embodied all that was holding the black race down. All he has to do is put on a MAGA hat and none of that matters.

What does matter is winning elections and Trump's circus of stars fell short. There simply aren't enough of Trump's base left to push Oz or Lake over the 50% mark. The House can be gerrymandered by districts, but that doesn't work for the Senate. GOP Senators will be the first to say the Emperor is naked. It will take GOP Representatives a little longer, but of all the sins a candidate might have in his past, losing is unforgivable. Of the jettisoned virtues, loyalty is the critical factor. Kari Lake actually spent time campaigning against a dead man because for some reason she thought that would appeal to Arizonans who had voted for John McCain six times. Why not trash Teddy Roosevelt while we're at it.

Now all that has changed. Trump is a loser and whatever value he had as a candidate has evaporated like bear spray on the face of a Capitol policeman. Nobody wants to remember that and they are all preparing their "Bye Donald" speech, followed by practicing "Donald who?" in the mirror until they can say it with a straight face.

 

This is incredibly well said and an accurate and honest analysis. Especially since you point out the actual facts. Decades ago the GOP number crunchers met with Republican leaders and operatives and broke the bad news to them that due to changing demographics they could no longer win free and fair elections on the lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation alone. And so they had to come up with a new plan. First and foremost gerrymandering to insure minority rule in as many states and districts as possible. Next, voter suppression from coast to coast because with minority rule they could write laws specifically aimed at keeping potential Democratic voters from voting at all. Undermine confidence in government and democratic institutions. And then simply lie lie and lie some more with the help of a massive well funded and well organized right wing false propaganda noise machine designed to our shout reality itself. And it has worked for them so far to stave off the inevitable. They are a shrinking minority while the rest of the country passes them by demanding change.

And that is not hyperbole. Those are document3ed facts revealed by Mike Lofgren who was a GOP operative for 30 years. He revealed the entire plan and strategy when he finally got fed up enough to leave the Republican cult. Mostly because he could no longer stomach the strategy of just lie lie and lie some more. And this is actually a very detailed account.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
By
Mike Lofgren,
Truthout
Published
September 3, 2011


https://truthout.org/articles/goodbye-to-all-that-reflections-of-a-gop-operative-who-left-the-cult/

 

Wonder how long after Trump ends his campaign the despicables will continue to pillory Trump?
Tax free
Rent free

 

It would be nice if everyone quit bringing up what an embarrassment Trump has become to the people who voted for him and supported him for as long as it was convenient.

The reality of it is Trump was just the guy in the right place at the right time. It takes a lot of people to nominate and elect a man who promised to be an embarrassment. That may be the only promise he kept.

Those who punched Trump's ticket and enabled him are still with us. The difference now is, the sane normal people can recognize them.

If that means continuing embarrassment for those who have moved on from Trump, seeking a new cheating liar, that's just the way shit happens.

 

Just fucking ROFLCOPTERS!!!!

 

I can remember when George W. Bush was Public Enemy #1 and a few years later there he is hugging with Michelle Obama and going to ballgames with Ellen.

 

So, here it is:

You can print facts.

Then you can print things that come out of Trump's warped imagination.

40% of the American people will accept the facts as presented (which is not necessarily a good thing).

17% of the American people will question those facts until they check them out for themselves.

43% of the American people will listen to the garbage that spews forth from Donald Trump's mouth, no matter how bizarre, how unprovable, and ignore the facts.

That is where we are today.

Sad.

 

G.W. was not the brightest light bulb in the pack and most of the crap that occurred during his administration was because the reins were actually held by Dick Cheney, but he was 97% more honest and 100% less nuts than Donald Trump.

 

So Cheney made GWB start the war with Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein who tried killing Bush Sr?

 

Cheney made GWB start the war in Iraq because he did not give a rat's ass whether or not Hussein tried to have GHWB assassinated, but rather he drooled over the multi-billion dollar profits he would make with Halliburton getting all the military contracts.

 

Incredibly evil that GWB allowed himself to be manipulated like that and sent service members to die over there so someone could make billions.

 

I am glad that you agree.

 

Your new darling Desantis. Is just another acorn that fell from Trump's tree. Trump stench is all over Desantis and the repuke party. It can't be washed away either. So you'll have to live with that smell for a while.

 

On the other hand, Biden can stink it up as well for the Democrat Party.

 

The stink has to do with Trump and his attempts to overthrow an election. So every repuke who openly supports and enables Trump in this. Are all guilty of being accessories to trump's attempts to illegally stay in power.

If Biden is lawfully defeated, well that's why we have elections every 4 years. Trump lost and didn't accept it. There's no comparison.