Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is becoming well known for his tall tales in press circles. In a fact checking summit held this week by the American Press Institute, people were actually making jokes about putting a limit on the number of times you could bring up the GOPer's name. At the forefront of these fact checking investigations were the Washington Post and the Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFacts.
In a statement he made on July 6, 2015, about his comments regarding immigration that were said during his presidential bid announcement, CNN reports Trump declared, "What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc."
After much statistical analysis from reputable sources, including The Center for Immigration Studies, the Congressional Research Service and an analysis report from the American Immigration Council of 2010 Census data, The Washington Post awarded Trump four Pinnochios. Their official conclusion is, "Trump's repeated statements about immigrants and crime underscore a common public perception that crime is correlated with immigration, especially illegal immigration. But that is a misperception; no solid data support it, and the data that do exist negate it."
In the month of November, the Republican candidate stated, "I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down, and I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down." When he was confronted about the statement the following day by George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC's This Week, Trump dug in and averred even more fervently, "It was on television. I saw it," quotes Media Matters.
Politifact also had their doubts. After some digging around to see if they could find any evidence to support Trump's claims, they eventually determined that Trump was off base. "Trump's recollection of events in New Jersey in the hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks flies in the face of all the evidence we could find."
