CNN’s Daniel Dale has all the fact-checking as Trump repeats more lies. Trump has soft-pedaled some of the same topics avoided in his last pseudo-address in Pennsylvania. Tonight is an actual campaign rally.
Tonight features more of his false ramblings repeated in some cases more than 80 times since the inaugural because he thinks this is his real job, doing these digressive monologues to a WWE crowd.
- Trump is spending an unusually long time soaking in the adulation before speaking.
- Trump said he saw some "fake polls" from the "fake news media" - there are boos - "and it said that I'm tied, I'm tied, with three of the other candidates, the Democrats, I'm tied in New Hampshire. I don't think so."
- Trump says his is the greatest movement in the history of America, then makes it the greatest political movement. He says he is turning around the "big beautiful ship" of state even though he had to deal with a "fake witch hunt."
- Trump: "We are doing very well with China despite the fact that they want to have you believe to the contrary." He falsely says "there's no price increase," then says people should "talk to these people, the fake news."
- Trump says the "biggest beneficiary" of the tariff battle with China is "the farmers." Many farmers have been vocal about how they're being badly hurt by the tariff battle with China.
- Trump is doing the thing where he polls the crowd at length on whether he should keep using Make America Great Again or adopt Keep America Great. He asks, "Is there anything better than a Trump rally?" The crowd shouts "nooo." He begins mocking Joe Biden.
- Trump is now handicapping the Democratic race. He says Warren, whom he demeans again with the usual nickname, is rising, Harris is falling, Beto is "gone," and Biden might be able to limp across the finish line.
- Trump is talking about the demotion of NYT deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman, whom he again wrongly calls "deputy editor," which is how Weisman was identified on Fox News today.
- Trump, touting the economy, says there are now "great farming events" happening in Wisconsin.
- Trump says the LNG plant in Louisiana where he spoke "could never have happened, could never have happened" without him. It got its approvals from the Obama administration in 2014.
- Trump says the Democrats could be "communists," though, in fact, they could not be communists. He says he knows the "fake news" will criticize him for this, but they're "not far away."
- Trump warns that he could revive the nickname Pocahontas "very easily" and "very quickly" if necessary.
- Trump also said the Pennsylvania plant where he spoke Tuesday wouldn't have happened without him. His administration did have a small role in that one, but Shell announced under Obama in June 2016 that it had made a "final" decision to build.
- "I never said China was gonna be easy," says Donald Trump, who famously said "trade wars are good and easy to win."
- Trump, talking about the closing of factories prior to his presidency, tells the New Hampshire crowd that they know this, since they are "central casting for the closing of factories."
- Trump falsely says that NATO members' military spending was going downward until he came along. It rose in both 2015 and 2016, after NATO countries recommitted in 2014 to their 2%-of-GDP guideline.
- Trump repeats his usual claim that the US paid Iran $150 billion. The nuclear deal allowed Iran to access some of its own assets that were stuck in international financial institutions; experts say the total was less than $100 billion.
- Trump is telling his story about how it's a good thing that a poll showed he's less popular in Germany than Obama was, since it means he's doing his job and sticking up for America.
- Trump, warning of a stock market crash if he loses, tells the crowd: "You have no choice but to vote for me, because your 401(k)s down the tubes, everything's gonna be down the tubes. So whether you love me or hate me, you gotta vote for me."
- Trump is telling another version of his story about the unnamed businessman who doesn't like him and who he doesn't like but who's still working to get him re-elected because he has "no choice." This version of the story is situated "the other day" and "in the White House."
- Trump says that it's only in "fixed polls" that he could be losing to Elizabeth Warren.
- Trump says that you used to not be allowed to call people Nazis but now Democrats keep calling people that, complaining, "'He's a Nazi.' Think of that. 'He's a Nazi.'"
- There's a protester. The president says, "That guy's got a serious weight problem. Go home, start exercising."
- Trump added a few seconds later, "Got a bigger problem than I do. Got a bigger problem than all of us." (Not sure if he was saying he also has a weight problem, but just noting for fairness.)
- Trump repeats one of my favorite lies of his, saying that, years before his campaign, "They named me Man of the Year in Michigan. I said, 'How come?' I didn't even understand it myself."
- There is no Man of the Year in Michigan. Lots of us have looked into it.
- Trump is telling a multi-sir story about the 2016 election.
- Trump is repeating his usual gross exaggeration of the number of people ("32,000" who showed up for his rally in Michigan...in November 2016. His capacity was 4,200; there were thousands outside, but local journalists said no way even close to 30,000.
- Trump says New Hampshire was "taken away from us." He doesn't elaborate. (Before the rally, he repeated parts of the usual conspiracy theory about illegal voting.)
- Trump passingly repeats his claim that 17 car companies are coming back into Michigan. It is not clear where he came up with that number.
- Trump talks about Hillary Clinton some more. There are loud "lock her up" chants. Trump says she did lots of bad things. He is talking about her emails.
- Trump is talking at some length about how tall his campaign manager is. "It's nice when you don't have to look for anybody, you just look over and you see a guy who's twice as tall as everyone," he concludes.
- Trump calls Lewandowski "tough" and "smart," and an early Trump believer, and mentions he might run for Senate. There are cheers.
- Earlier, Trump said twice that Clinton got 223 electoral votes. I'm not sure he has ever correctly said 232; he's wrongly said 223 at least 26 times.
- Trump boasts that Iran is not seizing American ships in the Strait of Hormuz: "They're not touching our ships...they're takin 'em from this country, that country."
- Trump again suggests that the US has only "now" become the top oil and natural gas producer in the world. That happened in 2012, per the US government's Energy Information Administration. It's crude oil in particular in which US became #1 under Trump.
- Trump boasts of how many small donors he has. "We have big donors," he concedes a week after doing a fundraiser where people paid up to $250,000, but he says it's mostly small donors.
- Trump says countries have been "changing and charging tariffs on us for years." He almost never concedes that he has misspoken, instead just saying "and (correct word)."
- Trump, talking about mining in Minnesota, brings up Ilhan Omar, who is booed.
- You may have heard this from me before: the US has never had a $500 billion trade deficit with China.
- Trump says the WSJ editorial board and other people who advocate a quick deal with China and removal of the tariffs "understand nothing about trade or business."
- The crowd went quiet as Trump mused about tariffs and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. It perked back up when he denounced "globalism" and said, "I'm the president of the United States of America. I'm not the president of the world."
- There are big cheers for Trump saying "it's not the gun that pulls the trigger, it's the person holding the gun." He says, as he did before the rally, that he will give "major consideration" to building new "institutions" for "deranged" and dangerous people with mental illnesses.
- "By the way, the wall is being built," Trump says to big cheers and a "build that wall" chant. As of last month, zero new miles had been built; there were about 50 miles of replacement fencing built. Trump criticizes the "fake news" for not counting this.
- Trump is touting progress against the opioid epidemic, citing declines in opioid prescriptions, overdose deaths and other data I think is accurate. "We're doing ads, beautiful ads," he says, "and I think they're having a big impact. You'll see."
- Trump is criticizing Democrats over immigration and sanctuary cities, as usual wrongly saying they want "open borders." He sometimes uses this as non-literal rhetoric and sometimes, like tonight, as if they want literally open borders.
- Trump says that he's still going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you watch, and it's going to work out better than if he'd done it the time it was done but John McCain (whom he doesn't name this time) stopped them.
- Trump with this usual very false claim: "Republicans, and I speak for every one of 'em: we will always protect pre-existing conditions." I don't usually fact-check promises, but this has already been belied by their actions during the Trump presidency.
- Trump touts "the only decline in 51 years" in prescription drug prices. By one legit measure that has its critics, the Consumer Price Index, last year was the first calendar-year decline in 46 years. www.cnn.com/...
- Trump adds 30+ to the number of judge vacancies he inherited, then mocks the media for saying Obama was "a great president": "If he was a great president, how come he left me 138 judges to appoint?" Not saying Obama was great, but the answer is McConnell: www.politico.com/…
- Trump falsely says people had tried to get a Right to Try law passed for 44 years before he did it. A libertarian think tank started pushing this concept in 2014.
- For more than the 80th time in office, Trump falsely says that people were trying to get Veterans Choice passed for "five decades" until him. It was a John McCain-Bernie Sanders bill. Obama signed it into law in 2014.
- Trump says that NASA facilities had lots of weeds and cracks in the ground when he took office but are now beautiful.
- Trump wrongly says Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world "15 years ago." It was true more than 50 years ago, but not 15.
- Trump pledges again to find "new cures for childhood cancer." He promises, "Within one decade, the AIDS epidemic in the United States will be gone." He says, "It breaks your heart what's happened," but it'll be "eradicated" soon.
- Trump concludes with his regular "great again" finale.
Whew… note the empty seats