President Donald Trump’s back and forth with reporters during a signing ceremony on his first day back in the Oval Office was littered with falsehoods, according to CNN’s Daniel Dale who delivered a stinging fact check just moments later.
“There were a lot of big lies there,” Dale, a senior reporter, said Monday night during the network’s extended coverage of Trump’s inauguration.
He first started with Trump’s claim that the United States is the only country that offers birthright citizenship: “That's not close to true.”
“At least a couple dozen countries have it, including U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico,” Dale said.
He next went after Trump’s repeated claim “that the U.S. took hundreds of billions of dollars in from China, thanks to the tariffs he imposed in his first term.” In actuality, Dale noted, “that revenue came from U.S. citizens” because “U.S. importers pay those tariffs and often pass off the costs to U.S. consumers.”
CNN’s in-house fact checker continued down a litany of other fabrications he said Trump made as he signed executive orders on live TV in the White House’s Oval Office, including pardons for roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters.
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“He spoke again about how NATO, European members of NATO, have contributed $200 billion less to Ukraine than the U.S. has,” Dale told viewers. “In fact, data shows that the European members have provided tens of billions more aid than the U.S. has. So he has that reversed again. He repeated his assertion that China controls the Panama Canal. China has influence in the area and China-linked companies operate two ports on the canal, but that canal is operated by the Panamanian Canal Authority, staffed by Panamanian board members, Panamanian employees."
Dale proclaimed that statement an “exaggeration at least.” He closed his fact-checking spree with Trump’s assertions related to the 2020 election.
“He said the Democrats cheated like dogs. I think he was referring to the 2020 election regardless, not true, no basis for it,” Dale said. “He repeated something he said earlier today, he said the January 6 committee deleted all of the evidence, all of the records, just did not happen.”
Finally, Dale pointed out that Trump “repeated his false claim that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supposedly rejected his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6.” That claim is false, according to Dale as he noted “There's no evidence he made an offer to her and he, not the House Speaker, had the power to deploy or not deploy the D.C national guard.”
Watch the clip below or at this link:
