He is definately not a match fir me. I could enthusiastically vote for Oprah with a couple of reservations: who would she select as her cabinet and would she be influenced too much by the far Left.
What's wrong with him? He is a smart, moderate vet from a red state. Oprah is not going to run, Jerry Brown would have been great if he wasn't retiring.
I’m at odds with his positions on gun laws an the ACA. Additionally, I have a preference for politicians who do not have a legal background.
The false things Trump said last week APR 1, 2018 "Mexico has got to help us at the border. And a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA, and we're going to have to really see." Source: Remarks before Easter church service in fact: No unauthorized immigrants entering the country this year can "take advantage of DACA." The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is being terminated by Trump, only accepted people who had lived in the country continuously since 2007. Trump was complaining this same morning of a caravan of Central American migrants seeking to enter the U.S.; there was no evidence at the time that any of the people in the caravan even believed wrongly that they could make use of DACA. "I asked some of the migrants on the caravan what they thought about Trump saying they were going to the US for DACA. Some laughed and others said they thought (correctly) they wouldn't qualify," Adolfo Flores, a BuzzFeed reporter who is reporting on the caravan, said on Twitter. "For whatever reason Trump is conflating two different issues, DACA and reasons these people are on the caravan. I've spoken with dozens of people who cite violence, instability, and poverty as reasons for leaving. Not one has mentioned DACA." "These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!" Source: Twitter in fact: No unauthorized immigrants entering the country this year can "take advantage of DACA." The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is being terminated by Trump, only accepted people who had lived in the country continuously since 2007. Trump was complaining this same morning of a caravan of Central American migrants seeking to enter the U.S.; there was no evidence at the time he spoke that any of the people in the caravan even believed wrongly that they could make use of DACA. "I asked some of the migrants on the caravan what they thought about Trump saying they were going to the US for DACA. Some laughed and others said they thought (correctly) they wouldn't qualify," Adolfo Flores, a BuzzFeed reporter who is reporting on the caravan, said on Twitter. "For whatever reason Trump is conflating two different issues, DACA and reasons these people are on the caravan. I've spoken with dozens of people who cite violence, instability, and poverty as reasons for leaving. Not one has mentioned DACA." MAR 31, 2018 "While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars." Source: Twitter in fact: This figure appears to be based on a 2017 analysis by Citigroup that found the Postal Service is charging too little for packages, effectively providing a subsidy of $1.46 per package. But that analysis is about packages in general, not Amazon in particular; Amazon has its own deal with the Postal Service, and its terms have not been made public. Kevin Kosar, vice-president of policy for the R Street Institute, a conservative think tank, says "it's just misusing the data and the analysis" to apply the $1.46 figure to Amazon specifically. "The Failing N.Y. Times reports that 'the size of the company's (Amazon's) lobbying staff has ballooned,' and that does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a 'lobbyist' and should so REGISTER." Source: Twitter in fact: This is simple nonsense. There is no evidence that the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, is being used as a federal or state lobbyist in any way that would require official registration. Trump seems to mean that the Post is being used to defend Amazon's interests. Even if that is true, it is not "lobbying." MAR 29, 2018 "I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments..." Source: Twitter in fact: Amazon now pays sales taxes in every state that has one. It paid $957 million in income taxes in 2017, the New York Times noted. (That total is not broken down by level of government.) In most states, Amazon does not collect and remit sales taxes on sales by its third-party "marketplace" sellers, instead leaving those sellers to do it themselves. But Trump did not specify that he was talking about this practice. "When I looked at the (SpaceX) rocket that went up three weeks ago, where the tanks came back -- nobody has ever seen; it looks like Star Wars. But I looked at it and I heard the cost -- I think they said $85 million. If the government did that, you're talking about billions of dollars, and maybe it wouldn't work so well." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: This SpaceX launch, of the Falcon Heavy rocket, occurred seven weeks prior to Trump's speech, not three weeks. Trump periodically moves up the date of good news to make it seem more recent. (Trump's other number was roughly accurate, though not exactly: SpaceX said the cost of each Falcon Heavy launch is $90 million. Finally, while we can't fact check predictions, it is not clear that it would cost the government "billions" to execute such a launch; Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told a conference that NASA's rough equivalent of the Falcon Heavy would cost about $1 billion per launch, the publication Space News reported in 2017.) "We must recapture the excitement of creation, the spirit of innovation, and the spark of invention. We're starting. You saw the rocket the other day. You see what's going on with cars. You see what's going on with so much. NASA, space agency, all of a sudden, it's back. You notice? It was dormant for many, many years. Now it's back, and we're trying to have the private sector invest the money." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump was speaking vaguely, and it's not exactly clear what he meant, but it appeared he was saying that NASA was "dormant for many, many years" before his presidency. That is false. In 2016, the last year of Obama's presidency, NASA's Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter's orbit; NASA astronaut Scott Kelly completed his International Space Station mission; NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams went to the International Space Station; NASA launched OSIRIS-REx, the first American sample-return mission to an asteroid; NASA's Kepler space telescope mission verified 1,284 new planets; and NASA did a variety of other significant things. "America built the Empire State Building in one year. Think of it: one year. It was actually like nine months. Can you believe that?" Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: We'd let Trump with getting away with saying the Empire State Building was built in "one year," even though that ignores the pre-construction planning process. But "actually like nine months," Trump's ad-libbed exaggeration, is objectively false: the construction took 13 months. "A word that you don't hear much, but when I was growing up, we had what was called vocational schools. They weren't called community colleges, because I don't know what that means -- a community college. To me, it means a two-year college. I don't know what it means. But I know what vocational -- and I tell people, call it vocational from now on. It's a great word. It's a great word." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Vocational schools and community colleges both existed when Trump was growing up. (American community colleges date back at least to the early 1900s, depending on how you define them.) Contrary to Trump's suggestion, they are different things. Vocational schools offer practical, technical education to prepare students for a particular occupation; community colleges offer broader two-year courses of study, associate degrees, and a pathway to traditional four-year degree program. "We are going to be repairing roads, delivering clean water, and we're going to have crystal, clean water. We're going to have clean, beautiful air. But we're not going to pay a trillion dollars to be in the Paris Accord, where it puts us way back, way back where we are put at such a tremendous disadvantage. That was a disaster for this country. We couldn't use the kind of assets that we have. We would have had to close up factories and companies in order to qualify." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: As always, Trump described the Paris Accord as far more punitive than it is. In reality, the climate agreement would not prohibit or limit the U.S. from using any of its natural resources, including oil and coal, nor would it mean the U.S. "would have had" to "close up factories and companies." The agreement allows each participating country to set its own voluntary targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. If Trump thought Obama's targets would have required too big an economic sacrifice, he could have unilaterally revised those targets. "You know, when I got in, we had over 100 federal judges that weren't appointed. Now, I don't know why Obama left that. It was like a big, beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave that? Maybe he got complacent." And: "Thank you very much, President Obama. We all appreciate it. Thank you. What happened? How did he do that? How did he do that?" Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: We usually don't fact check Trump's speculation on Obama's motives, since those are generally fair game for political opinion, but his claim that he might have been left so many judicial vacancies because Obama "got complacent" is egregiously inaccurate. What actually happened was that Senate Republicans executed what Politico in 2016 called a "historic judge blockade" against Obama's nominees. Under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's leadership, the Republicans used a variety of procedural tactics in 2015 and 2016 to grind the nomination process to a near-halt -- confirming the fewest judges of any Congress since the 1950s. Politico reported in 2016: "In 2015, the Republican Senate majority ushered through confirmations for 11 circuit and district court judges. So far in 2016, nine have been confirmed. That's 20 confirmed this Congress -- the lowest number since the 82nd Congress in 1951-52, which confirmed just 18 judges, according to the Congressional Research Service. Harry S. Truman was president at the time. The CRS retains data on judicial confirmations dating to 1945." "But just think of it: We spent, as of three months ago, $7 trillion -- not billion, not million -- $7 trillion, with a "T" -- nobody ever heard of the word 'trillion' until 10 years ago. We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East." And: "We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing." And: "But we spent $7 trillion, but we barely have money for the infrastructure." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Obviously, the word "trillion" was known to people more than 10 years ago. More importantly, there is no basis for the "$7 trillion" figure. During the 2016 campaign, Trump cited a $6 trillion estimate that appeared to be taken from a 2013 report from Brown University's Costs of War Project. (That report estimated $2 trillion in costs up to that point but said the total could rise an additional $4 trillion by 2053.) Trump, however, used the $6 trillion as if it was a current 2016 figure. He later explained that since additional time has elapsed since the campaign, he believes the total is now $7 trillion. That is incorrect. The latest Brown report, issued in late 2017, put the current total at $4.3 trillion, and the total including estimated future costs at $5.6 trillion. "We spent -- and I was against it from the beginning. They try and say, 'Well, maybe not.' I was against it from the beginning. And, by the way, we're knocking the hell out of ISIS." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump did not name the war he was claiming to be against from the beginning, but it was clear, from the context and from previous remarks, that he was referring to the Iraq War. The public record shows that he was either a lukewarm supporter of the war or undecided, certainly not a declared opponent. When radio host Howard Stern asked him in 2002 if he would support the war, Trump was tentatively supportive, saying: "Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly." In 2003, two months before the invasion, he told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto, "Either do it or don't do it," adding, "Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn't be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know." The day after the invasion, he said, "It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint." He started vaguely criticizing the war later in 2003, and he emerged as an explicit opponent in an Esquire article 17 months after the invasion. "Think of it. We spend billions and billions of dollars. Look, North and South Korea -- 32,000 soldiers, the finest equipment, barbed wire all over the place. We protect that whole thing. Nobody comes through." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: The U.S. does not have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea, let alone at the border between the two Koreas. According to the most recent statistics from the military's Defense Manpower Data Center, issued in Sept. 2017, the U.S. has 23,635 active duty personnel in South Korea, 27,123 military personnel in total. The vast majority are stationed at the massive Camp Humphreys base that is located more than 90 kilometres from the border. "So anyway -- so that (Keystone XL) was dead for a couple of years, and no chance. I get elected, I approve it almost, like, in the first day. Right at the very beginning. And I just say to myself, can you imagine the boss of whatever the hell company it is -- who never actually called me to say thank you, but that's okay. We'll remember." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump did not approve the Keystone XL pipeline "almost, like, in the first day" in office. He issued an executive order in his first week to advance the pipeline, but that order did not grant final approval; he gave final approval two months into his time in office. In addition, while it might be true that TransCanada Corp. chief executive Russ Girling did not "call" him to say thank you, Girling said "thank you" twice to Trump in person -- as he stood beside Trump during the March 2017 Oval Office ceremony in which Trump announced the approval. "I approved that Keystone XL Pipeline, and I approved the Dakota Access Pipeline; both of them...You know the amazing thing? I approved them. I thought we would have, like, some commotion. Right? Some commotion. Like, some protest. Nobody. I approved it. The pickets, they picked up their stuff and they left. That was the end of it." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump could perhaps have said that there was little protest in response to his final orders to approve the two pipelines. He is wrong, though, in saying "nobody" protested, and he is misleading at best in saying Dakota Access Pipeline protesters simply "picked up their stuff and they left." In fact, dozens of people continued protesting in North Dakota after he issued his approval in February; the main protest site was only cleared of protesters two weeks later, after the state governor announced a final deadline and police arrested and removed dozens of refusers -- 46 people on the final day, the New York Times reported. Then, in March, thousands of people participated in a Washington protest march led in part by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which led the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. While the marchers were broadly demanding respect for Native American peoples, the pipeline was one of their top expressed concerns; the march began at the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers, the entity that granted the final permit for the pipeline. "We got rid of the bump stocks. The bump stocks, now, are under very strict control, which I think everybody agrees is fine. And we really did a job. Nobody reported it. Doesn't get reported. If somebody else does it, it's like a big story, but it didn't." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump could have accurately said he was moving toward getting rid of bump stocks. It is false, however, to say "the bump stocks, now, are under very strict control." Trump's proposed ban had not yet been implemented at the time he spoke. The government had just begun the mandatory 90-day comment period in which the public can submit opinions on the proposal. "And wages are rising at the fastest level in more than a decade. Finally -- 19 years, 21 years. People were making -- last year, were making less money than they made 20 years ago." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Trump would have been more correct a month prior, but still not actually correct: as of the official jobs report for January, released in early February, year-over-year wage growth, 2.9 per cent, was fastest since June 2009 -- so the fastest in nine years, which is less than a decade. (It was later revised downward to 2.8 per cent.) The most recent numbers aren't even that good. The last report before Trump spoke, the February report released in early March, put year-over-year wage growth at 2.6 per cent -- lower than the 2.7 per cent year-over-year growth as of Obama's last month in office, Dec. 2016. "Just this week, we secured a wonderful deal with South Korea. We were in a deal that was a horror show. It was going to produce 200,000 jobs, and it did -- for them. That was a Hillary Clinton special, I hate to say. 'This will produce 200,000 jobs.' She was right, but it was for them. It wasn't for us." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Clinton did not claim that the trade deal with South Korea would "produce 200,000 jobs." Neither did anyone else in the Obama administration. Obama said that deal would "support at least 70,000 American jobs." (It is also probably a stretch to say the deal was "a Hillary Clinton special." George W. Bush's administration negotiated the original version of the deal. When Congress refused to ratify it, it was revised by the Obama administration when Clinton was secretary of state.) "We need walls. We started building our wall. I'm so proud of it. We started. We started. We have $1.6 billion, and we've already started. You saw the pictures yesterday. I said, 'What a thing of beauty.' And on September 28th, we go further and we're getting that sucker built. And you think that's easy? People said, 'Oh, has he given up on the wall?' No, I never give up. I never -- we have $1.6 billion toward the wall, and we've done the planning. And you saw those beautiful pictures, and the wall looks good. It's properly designed. That's what I do, is I build. I was always very good at building. It was always my best thing." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: We've let Trump get away with various dubious recent claims about the border wall, since he is usually vague when he is making misleading claims about it, but this claim is false. The California border project Trump tweeted photos of was not his own "wall" project and has nothing to do with any building skills he may have. It was first proposed in 2009, and it is a project to replace an existing 2.25-mile section of wall, not to build the hundreds of miles of new wall he has proposed. (Also, it is worth noting that the $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall he has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. The Washington Post reported: "Of the total, $251 million is earmarked specifically for 'secondary fencing' near San Diego, where fencing is already in place; $445 million is for no more than 25 miles of 'levee fencing'; $196 million is for 'primary pedestrian fencing' in the Rio Grande Valley; $445 million is for the replacement of existing fencing in that area; and the rest is for planning, design and technology -- not for wall construction.") "Even if you look -- Apple, going to invest $350 billion. When I heard $350 billion, I said, 'You must mean $350 million.' That's still a big plant. But they're going to be investing $350 billion. So many others coming back with massive amounts of money." Source: Speech on infrastructure in fact: Apple did not announce a $350 billion investment. While it did announce a "$350 billion" figure in January, the company, unlike Trump, made a point of separating its new investment from its pre-existing spending. Its press release made clear that the investment is only a fraction of the $350 billion total. It said: "Combining new investments and Apple's current pace of spending with domestic suppliers and manufacturers -- an estimated $55 billion for 2018 -- Apple's direct contribution to the US economy will be more than $350 billion over the next five years." In other words, Apple's pre-existing 2018 spending would have put it on track for $275 billion in spending over five years if maintained. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/...s-in-that-dizzying-infrastructure-speech.html
I just want to comment that the Iran deal was one of the most impressive diplomatic achievements of the past 50 years. But it can be screwed up by ignoramuses in Congress and the present Administration. It's amazing how demagogues can take something very positive and try to make it a negative, but even more amazing is how gullible people will play so easily into a demagogues hands without ever seriously questioning what they are being told. . .
"You look at the kind of money that was paid. Probably some went to Russia. You look at Podesta having a company in Russia where nothing happened and people don't talk about it." Source: Joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in fact: Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta did not and does not have a company in Russia. http://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/ It's too big a list to post, the guy lies at a rate of 10 times an hour, hard to keep up.