MORT'S MUSINGS

FACT CHECKS This series will focus upon fact checks done by recognized and reputable sourcesAP WP Fact Check “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, under these critical asylum cooperation agreements, the burden of illegal immigration is now shared all across the region. Now, when an illegal immigrant is arrested at our border, they can be sent to a neighboring country instead of into a U.S. community. Before my getting here, countries wouldn’t accept them. They would say, no, no, no. … They said they won’t take them back. They came. They may be murderers, they may be cartel heads. They may be some really vicious people. The countries didn’t want them back. And I stopped all payments to those countries. I stopped everything going to those countries. And after we stopped for about a month, you remember after we stopped for about a month, they called. They said we’d love to have them back.” - Trump Trump often fabricates conversations in which he stuns various heads of state with his

FACT CHECKS This series will focus upon fact checks done by recognized and reputable sourcesAP WP Fact Check “We also have, and we had, but we have them all the time, we have terrorists from the Middle East coming into our country through the southern border. That was before what you see right here [gestures at border wall], because it was easier to come into our country through the southern border than it was through airports or any other means. … These are people from some very seriously dangerous places in the Middle East. And the numbers are far greater than anybody would understand.” - Trump The Trump administration first asserted this in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, offering a range of misleading statistics to buttress the claim that terrorists from the Middle East were filtering through the U.S.-Mexico border. But administration officials never offered any proof or identified a single terrorist. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/14/guide-understa

FACT CHECKS This series will focus upon fact checks done by recognized and reputable sources AP Fact Check AP Fact Check TRUMP: “We have anywhere from 250 (thousand) to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls, much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked.” THE FACTS: There’s nothing mysterious or suspect about it. He is describing a legitimate vote counting process, not a sudden surge of malfeasance. Trump appears to be referring to large numbers of votes that were tabulated in the early hours of Wednesday morning after Election Day and later. The arrival of those votes was not mysterious, but expected, because many of Georgia’s 159 counties had large stacks of mail-in ballots that had to be tabulated after polls closed and in-person ballots were counted. Indeed, news organizations and officials had warned in the days leading up to the election that the results would likely come in just as they did: In-person votes, which tend to be counted

FACT CHECKS This series will focus upon fact checks done by recognized and reputable sources AP Fact Check TRUMP: “People should be happy to have an accurate count... We have other states I believe will be flipping to us shortly.” THE FACTS: No reversal of the election outcome is in the offing, in Georgia or other states. Biden defeated Trump by some 7 million popular votes nationwide and by a tally of 306-232 in the Electoral College, achieving victory in other key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-donald-trump-georgia-elections-electoral-college-407d934b6649a4e4059ec28c4cb70512?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=e

FACT CHECKS This series will focus upon fact checks done by recognized and reputable sources AP Fact Check TRUMP: “If we can go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear we won, we won very substantially in Georgia.” THE FACTS: No, Trump lost Georgia in an election the state has certified for Democrat Joe Biden. Republican election officials have affirmed the election was conducted and counted fairly. With ballots counted three times, including once by hand, Georgia’s certified totals show Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Raffensperger certified the totals with officials saying they’ve found no evidence that Trump won. No credible claims of fraud or systemic errors have been sustained. Judges have turned away legal challenges to the results, although at least one is still pending in state court. https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-donald-trump-georgia-elections-electoral-college-407d934b6649a4e4059ec28c4cb70512?utm_source=Sailthru&a