Fact-Checking The ‘Fact-Checking’ New York Times

Authored by Daniel Oliver via American Greatness,

“They” just can’t let Donald Trump go. For them, Donald Trump is Evil personified.

But not for the rest of the world.

Here are some of the New York Times’s fact-check charges against Trump; here is why people no longer trust the New York Times.

Social Security

Trump said: “But Social Security, he’s [Biden’s] destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security.”

The Times: “Mr. Trump has this backward. Undocumented workers often pay taxes that help fund Social Security. But, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office once noted, ‘Most unauthorized immigrants are prohibited from receiving many of the benefits that the federal government provides through Social Security and such need-based programs as food stamps, Medicaid (other than emergency services) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.’

The facts: Biden has repeatedly pushed for giving illegal immigrants pathways to citizenship, including a plan and proposed legislation to provide up to 11 million illegal immigrants with U.S. citizenship and an executive order providing a pathway to citizenship for more than half a million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. Biden has specifically claimed that illegal immigrants have “increased the life span of Social Security because they have a job, they’re paying a Social Security tax.”

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “Illegal immigration unambiguously benefits the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. However, amnesty (legalization) would reverse those gains and add extra costs.”

They note that “illegal immigrants tend to earn less and work fewer years in the U.S. than the average participant” and “if 10 million illegal immigrants receive amnesty, the total cost to Social Security and Medicare would be roughly $1.3 trillion, equivalent to a one-time transfer of 6 percent of GDP.”

In addition, a November 2023 report from the House Committee on Homeland Security found that “the annual cost just to care for and house the known gotaways and illegal aliens who have been released into the country under Mayorkas’ leadership could cost as much as an astounding $451 billion.”

How should Trump be graded on his assertion? Surely a B-, perhaps even a B. He raised the obvious issue, which is that the Biden administration, or any successor Democrat administration, will surely grant citizenship to all the illegals if it has the votes. The cost will be huge.

Nancy Pelosi’s responsibility for January 6

Trump: “Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago on tape to her daughter, who’s a documentary filmmaker, or they say—what she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this.’ Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers who are National Guard. And she turned them down.”

The Times: “Mr. Trump is distorting what Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, said. Ms. Pelosi did not admit to turning down National Guard troops. She does not have such authority.”

The facts: In a video filmed by Pelosi’s daughter, Pelosi, responding to someone who said “they (the Capitol Police) thought they had sufficient resources,” says, “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them prepare for me, because it’s stupid because we’re in a situation like this.”

The former Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has claimed that Pelosi was influential in rejecting a proposal to send National Guardsmen to the Capitol. And what evidence there is suggests that Pelosi seems to hold herself responsible for the National Guard’s not being present to deal with the rioters sooner.

What grade should Trump receive? At least a B. Perhaps even an A.

The Paris Climate Accord

Trump: “The Paris Accord was going to cost us $1 trillion, and China nothing, and Russia nothing, and India nothing.”

The Times: “This is misleading. . . . Under President Biden, the United States has pledged $11.4 billion annually by 2024 to assist vulnerable countries in developing clean energy and preparing for the consequences of climate change.”

The facts: The Heritage Foundation has estimated that staying in the Paris agreement would cost the U.S. over $2.5 trillion in aggregate GDP loss by 2035.

An analysis by McKinsey looking into the cost of reaching “net zero” emissions found that global spending by governments, businesses, and individuals would need to rise by $3.5 trillion a year, every year, in order to get to net zero by 2050.

China is no longer accepting international pressure through the Paris Climate Accord with respect to its own carbon emissions. And Putin has joked that 2 to 3 degrees of global warming would be “not so bad in such a cold country as ours.”

Trump’s grade? Obviously, a B. His basic point is correct: the costs are staggering, whether that cost is a trillion dollars or only half a trillion (and of course it depends on the length of time under discussion). He was also obviously correct about China and Russia—the point being that in the end, it would be the U.S. sacrificing economic progress to benefit the rest of the world, which has no plans whatsoever to sacrifice a penny of progress to appease the climate lobby’s dire predictions.

Iran

Trump: “Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke, they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything, no money for terror.”

The Times: “Even under sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration, Iran’s economy plugged along. It wasn’t strong, but it wasn’t broke, and it kept trading with many nations. Mr. Trump made no mention of the fact that his withdrawal from an Obama-era nuclear deal freed Iran to resume nuclear production.”

The facts: Trump is obviously exaggerating slightly here, but it is entirely factual that his actions to leave the Iranian nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions crippled the Iranian economy. Iran’s GDP contracted sharply in 2018 and 2019 (after Trump reimposed sanctions). Iranian oil exports dropped from 3.8 million barrels per day (early 2018) to 2.1 million barrels per day (October 2019). The Iranian currency, the rial, lost 50 percent of its value between early 2018 and December 2019. And inflation rose to an estimated 30.5 percent in Iran in 2018.

Trump’s grade. Probably a B. Definitely better than the grade of Iran’s economy.

Inflation

Trump: “He [Biden] caused this inflation.” (Fact: For 42 consecutive months of Biden’s presidency, inflation has remained above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent.)

The Times: “This is misleading. Independent economic research has found that government stimulus spending approved by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden contributed to the soaring inflation the nation experienced in the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency. But no evidence blames government spending, by Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, for the majority of the inflation the country experienced.”

The Facts: Even Democrat-friendly economists blasted Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” before he signed it. Jason Furman (chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors) said: “It’s definitely too big for the moment. I don’t know any economist that was recommending something the size of what was done.”

Larry Summers, Obama’s National Economic Council director, said: “We’re taking very substantial risks on the inflation side. . . . We are printing money, we are creating government bonds, we are borrowing on unprecedented scales. Those are things that surely create more of a risk of a sharp dollar decline than we had before. And sharp dollar declines are much more likely to translate themselves into inflation than they were historically.”

Reading Trump’s blue book as a whole, we’d have to give him a grade of B. That’s about as good as it gets for a campaigning politician. Scored on a curve for politicking, he probably gets an A.

Be embarrassed New York Times. You flunked. If you were working for Trump, you’d be fired!