President-elect Donald Trump has been all over the news for not liking the news. He called out CNN’s White House correspondent for being “fake news,” and he has berated anchors and reports. He has created a climate ripe for cynicism, and by default looks to be positioning himself as the arbiter of truth. While Trump may have some validity to his claims with the likes of BuzzFeed and possibly even CNN, shouldn’t he have been this critical on himself over the years? After all, he has pushed quite a few “fake” or false news stories in his day.
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1. Rafael Cruz Helped Lee Harvey Oswald
During the heated Republican primary, Trump was full of surprises. One fascination he has was with a story out of the National Enquirer which tried to connect his rival Sen. Ted Cruz‘s father to the man who shot President Kennedy. The National Enquirer story says that a picture from 1963 shows Rafael Cruz alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot JFK, handing out pro-Castro pamphlets in New Orleans.
Many times during the campaign, Trump could be heard parroting things about the story.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”
Trump went as far as to claim that it was possibly true because Ted never refuted the premise.
The story was given a “pants on fire” from truth-seeking site Politifact.
2. Climate Change is A Chinese Hoax
The idea of climate change is very controversial. The arguments surrounding its validity range from whether or not it is real, to the question of the real “man-made” impact on climate effects. What has never really been argued over in terms of climate change is whether or not it was hoax created by the Chinese. Donald Trump tweeted in November of 2012 that he believed just that.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
In an interview on Fox News, Trump tried to explain that he says this in jest, but then seemed to qualify how it the statement is true:
Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I’d be — received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very — you know, their standards are nothing. But they — in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business.
This story was also rated a “pants on fire” by Politifact.
3. Thousands of New Jersey Muslims Celebrated 9/11
Also stemming from the rancor of what was the Republican presidential primary season came Donald Trump’s claim that he “watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building [World Trade Center] was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”
In other statements Trump made clear that the phrase “those people” referenced Muslims on September 11, 2001.
This was said to be false, not only by the Washington Post‘s fact checker, but also by various officials from the area, including former Governor of New York George Pataki, and Steven Fulop, who was the Mayor of Jersey City.
Not sure what luxury spider-hole @realDonaldTrump was hiding in on Sept11 but I saw Americans come together that day @GStephanopoulos
— George E. Pataki (@GovernorPataki) November 22, 2015
Either @realDonaldTrump has memory issues or willfully distorts the truth, either of which should be concerning for the Republican Party
— Steven Fulop (@StevenFulop) November 22, 2015
4. Birther Movement
That leads us to the biggest and most public of “fake news” pushed by Trump. Starting in 2011 and carrying through to at least 2016, Donald Trump has been a large part of the “birther movement” against President Barack Obama. The premise of this “news” was that Obama had faked his United States birth certificate and was instead born outside the US. Trump regularly accused Obama’s 2008 presidential rival, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, for the start of the movement, but he was never too shy to jump on the bandwagon.
Eventually, Trump himself would admit that he believes that Obama was born in the US, but that didn’t stop him, or his ego, from being proud of pushing the nonsense for nearly a decade.
Well, I’m the one that got him to put up his birth certificate. Hillary Clinton was unable to get there and I will tell you she tried. And you look at her campaign and everybody knows it happened. I would say that pretty much everybody agrees with me, but she tried and she was unable to do it and I tried and I was able to do it, so I’m very proud of that.
