Facebook wanted responsible fact-checking organizations to partner with, and several such organizations exist. But all of these organizations are constantly attacked by the right as having a left-wing bias – so it added The Weekly Standard, even though it clearly failed to meet internationally accepted standards for that role.
No, Hillary Clinton did not “give Russia 20 percent of the uranium” in the US
Trump is referring to Russia’s nuclear power agency purchasing a majority stake in a Toronto-based energy company between 2009 and 2013. The company had mines and land in a number of US states with huge uranium production capacity — a move the US State Department signed off on.
- The mines, mills, and land the company holds in the US account for 20 percent of the US’s uranium production capacity, not actual produced uranium.
- The State Department was one of nine federal agencies and a number of additional independent federal and state regulators that signed off on the deal.
- President Obama, not Secretary Clinton, was the only person who could’ve vetoed the deal.
- Since Russia doesn’t have the legal right to export uranium out of the US, its main goal was likely to gain access to the company’s uranium assets in Kazakhstan.
.. the US only makes about 20 percent of the uranium it needs. An advantage in making nuclear weapons wasn’t the main issue because, as PolitiFact notes, “the United States and Russia had for years cooperated on that front, with Russia sending enriched fuel from decommissioned warheads to be used in American nuclear power plants in return for raw uranium.”
.. Trump has constantly pushed back against the intelligence community’s claims about Russia’s interference with the US election, and said that even if they’re true, he doesn’t understand all the fuss about it
How to manage the White House cancer
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller can take to the Sunday shows to assert that “the powers of the president to protect our country . . . will not be questioned” or that “there’s no such thing as judicial supremacy.” But the evidence suggests that ultimately Trump will comply with court rulings even as he denounces them as “disgraceful” and “political.”
.. Trump is different, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the amount, venom and public nature of his attack.
.. When Trump, repeating false claims of an electoral landslide, said his had been “the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan,” NBC News’s Peter Alexander fact-checked him in real time — and Trump, confronted with irrefutable numbers, seemed to crumble: “Well I don’t know. I was given that information. I was given — actually, I’ve seen that information around. But it was a very substantial victory. Do you agree with that?”
Fact-checking President Trump’s inaugural address
Among the 25 most populous metropolitan areas, the D.C. metro area has the highest median income in the nation — $93,294 versus a U.S. median of $55,775 — though growth has slowed in recent years, in part because of reductions in defense spending. Indeed, income in the D.C. area has grown essentially at the same rate as the rest of the nation since 2006, including a dip in median income during the Great Recession.
.. Trump had narrow victories in three key states (and narrow losses in two others). He won Michigan by 10,704 votes, Wisconsin by 22,177 votes and Pennsylvania by 46,435 votes. So if 39,659 voters in those states had switched their votes, 46 electoral votes would have flipped to Clinton — and she would have won 278-260.
.. Trump repeats a problematic talking point about crime and poverty in “inner cities.” It’s unclear what he means by “inner cities,” which is not a category by which crime or poverty is measured... In 2015, 13 percent of people lived below poverty level inside metropolitan statistical areas, according to census data. That is on par with the national poverty rate in 2015, which was 13.5 percent. Overall, the poverty rate has remained relatively flat under Obama... violent and property crimes overall have been declining for about two decades, and are far below rates seen one or two decades ago... A 2013 Senate report found that the United States spent $10 billion a year on bases abroad, with 70 percent focused on three countries — Germany, South Korea and Japan... Given a defense budget of more than $500 billion, the cost of maintaining these bases is a mere pittance... Foreign aid amounts to less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget, with about $18 billion going to economic and development aid and $8 billion for security assistance. Even the Marshall Plan advanced by President Harry S. Truman, designed to stabilize Europe after World War II, was only a little over $100 billion in today’s dollars... The Iraq war is estimated to have cost $1.7 trillion through 2013, though one estimate says that the cost will rise to $6 trillion through 2053, primarily from paying the interest on the debt..Some analysts calculate that between 1 million and 2 million U.S. jobs were lost after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2000. But economists believe the biggest factor in the decline in manufacturing is automation, not jobs going overseas. Another factor is decreased consumer spending on manufactured goods... Trump continues to attack companies that ship jobs overseas, and has promised to keep jobs in the United States. But Trump has had a long history of outsourcing a variety of his products as a businessman, and he has acknowledged doing so.We know of at least 12 countries where Trump products were manufactured... “Welfare” is a broad term and can apply to people who are working but receiving some government assistance. If someone is receiving means-tested assistance, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are not working.
.. out 23 percent of U.S. households with at least one person with a job received means-tested benefits.