'Fuzzy math': CNN fact-checker rips through one 'absurd' Trump claim after another

CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checked Donald Trump's false claims about Ukraine as the president headed to Alaska for a high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump has claimed the U.S. has provided triple the aid to Ukraine that Europe has – saying as recently as Thursday that Europe has given only $100 billion to $350 billion from the U.S. — and Dale told "CNN News Central" that's simply not true.

He ripped through a number of "absurd" claims the president made that were then backed up by the White House.

"That $350 billion figure and that $100 billion figure is not only not accurate, it's a reversal of reality," Dale said. "In reality, it is Europe that has provided more wartime aid to Ukraine than the United States has, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which is a German think tank that has closely tracked the aid quantities.

"The U.S. had allocated $134 billion in wartime aid to Ukraine through June. Europe collectively had allocated $195 billion. Now the gap is even bigger when it comes to aid committed, that is not necessarily actually spent yet. It was $139 billion through June for the United States, and $300 billion through Europe."

"Now it's possible to get different figures using different counting methodologies," Dale conceded. "For example, a U.S. inspector general finds that Congress had made available $185 billion for Ukraine through March, but even those other figures do not come close to corroborating President Trump's claim.

"So how does the White House try to defend this claim? Well, with some very bad math. I reached out to them for comment on the $350 billion figure, and what they did was cited this inspector general figure about $185 billion, they added, in $20 billion in loans the U.S. had made available through a G7 initiative. Okay, fine, but then they added, in things like $93 billion in inflation faced by American households in the wake of the invasion."

However, Dale argued that justification was irrelevant.

"I have no idea how inflation, higher costs for American families, amounts to aid to Ukraine, but I don't think they do either," Dale said. "So just fuzzy math there."

Trump has made a number of claims about Russia's invasion of Ukraine that bear no resemblance to reality, according to Dale.

"That's not the only absurd claim that President Trump has made about the war in recent days," Dale said. "He also claimed at the White House on Monday that Russia would have been in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in four hours, within four hours of invading if they had only taken the highway, he said. Instead, a Russian general made a quote, unquote, 'brilliant decision' to go through farmland instead."

"But military analysts have repeatedly pointed out, since President Trump began making this plan, this claim, that Russia had an invasion plan that prioritized roads and highways, tons of Russian tanks and other armored vehicles were using paved ground," he added. "Some did get stuck in the mud, but they didn't fail to make it to Kyiv because they forgot about the existence of paved ground."

Watch the video below or at this link.

- YouTubeyoutu.be