With everything going on in the country he leads, from the ongoing pandemic to the entire West Coast being incinerated by runaway wildfires, President Trump has plenty on his plate.
But those issues took a back burner for the President on Saturday, when he instead turned his attention once again to Hillary Clinton. Trump fired off a bizarre tweet Saturday morning about Clinton's supposed ties to former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe--one so riddled with inaccuracies that CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale took to Twitter to point out the four lies Trump told in a single sentence.
President Trump posted the fallacious tweet about supposedly illegal financial ties between Clinton and the McCabes on Saturday morning.
Dale posted a fact check this afternoon that revealed that none of Trump's claims were accurate.
Dale elaborated upon his fact-check of the tweet in an article for CNN, and the discrepancies are huge.
Firstly, the donations Trump references were not given to Andrew McCabe at all, but to his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Virginia in 2015.
The donations, which totaled $675,288, not $700,000 as the President claimed, were not illegal and publicly recorded in Dr. Jill McCabe's campaign finance disclosures.
More importantly, Hillary Clinton is not linked to the donations in any way, a fact Trump's own Justice Department acknowledged in a 2018 report. Rather, they came from the Virginia state Democratic Party and Common Good Virginia, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe's PAC. Both organizations donated similar amounts of money to other Democratic candidates at the time.
And McCabe was not "the head of the FBI" until 2017, when he served as acting head for less than three months in the wake of Trump's firing of James Comey. As for investigations into Hillary Clinton, McCabe did not have a supervisory role in any such investigations until February of 2016, long after his wife's campaign defeat.
On Twitter, people were astonished by the level of inaccuracy of Trump's tweet.
Is this a new record for @realDonaldTrump? https://t.co/gxf6QHnogB
— Arden Messing @ Home (@arden_messing) September 14, 2020
At what point does one @GOP representative or senator have the decency to speak up.
— TheNeighborhoodCharacter™ (@markgelband) September 14, 2020
pic.twitter.com/Vu0oOaB3zn
— Cherylnn Patterson (@CherylnnPatter1) September 14, 2020
In one sentence? How is that even possible??? https://t.co/nwJYeVExP2
— Was That A Nerve??? ✊🏿 (@MyNameIs_LEO) September 14, 2020
Though some pointed out that lying to this degree is par for the course for Trump.
4 lies
40 words
Hmm, a lie density of 10% seems *low* for him...
I have confidence he can — and WILL — top it.
— Splenetic Badger (@KvetcherNtheRye) September 14, 2020
And the beat goes on and on and on and... https://t.co/YrQJyaFOeZ
— I beg to differ 🌊🍑🏳️🌈🇸🇪 (@donnahofberg) September 14, 2020
Symptomatic of this man. #UNFIT https://t.co/QNQ3ZR07Eh
— Ingrid Sylvia Virgona (@IngridVirgona) September 14, 2020
Others couldn't help but chuckle at the nonsense of it all.
At more than three falsehoods, does it become a Liefecta?
— Marc Goldstein (@marcgoldstein_) September 14, 2020
Okay, but if it's a grammatically complete sentence, that's a triumph right there.
— George Felton (@feltongeorge) September 14, 2020
Good to see Trump is working on his lie game. Gotta stay focused and shoot for 5...maybe even 6 in one sentence.
— WhatIfBarackOrHillarySaidIt 🌊😷🗳️🏴☠️ (@IfBarack) September 14, 2020
Trump has had a years-long obsession with Andrew McCabe, whom he accused of treason for his role in the FBI's Russia probe.
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