A Showcase of Lies and Hyperbole

Good morning from my office between the two stadiums in Seattle. It is a Friday morning and the start of another day at the zoo. I’ve got work to do, but first…

A month ago, everyone was talking about how Joe Biden had pretty much lost his mind, following his bad debate showing against Donald J. Trump. When I say “bad” — I mean just that “BAD”. After thirteen minutes, I had to turn it off, because it was more than obvious that Joe Biden was DONE.

Not just done, but Put-a-fork-in-it done.

Age and mental acuity has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential election cycle, when the two major candidates had or were close to entering their NINTH DECADE on this planet. Democrats were starting to demand that Joe Biden step away and let someone else pick up the mantle and run with it. After a lot of behind the scenes wrangling and cajoling, the people who Biden listens to managed to convince him that he was through, and to step aside for Kamala Harris.

Democrats then went from a certain loss to a more-than-likely win this November — as long as Donald Trump stays in the race.

Getting Joe Biden out of the way only solved half the election equation. Donald Trump is only a thousand days younger than Joe Biden, and from all signs, Trump is about three years ahead of Joe when it comes to losing his fucking mind. Last night’s press conference pointed that out vividly.

So here are a few lies that Trump spoke about last night:

“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech. And you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more.”

I swear, Trump is a Size Queen.

But instead of comparing dick sizes, he’s more into crowd sizes. HIS crowds have to be much larger than anyone else’s. Of course, as usual, he is demonstrably wrong:

King’s speech: 250,000
Trump’s Insurrection: 53,000

“She wants to take your guns”

She once supported a gun buyback program for ‘assault weapons’, but not all guns. Apparently, she’s even backed away from that.

Then there is the virtual impossibility of actually confiscating every gun, let alone only the “assault-styled” weapons. (‘styled’ being the key word here)

“They take the strategic national reserves.  They’re virtually empty now.  We have never had it this low.”

It’s currently at 60 percent of its capacity, with 375 million barrels. It is at the lowest level since the 1980s but not at it’s “lowest level ever”.

It has also been dipped into on a regular basis — especially any gasoline reserves — because gasoline goes bad after a few months or so.

“The vast majority of the country does support me.”

He has a 43 percent approval rating, which is about the same as Kamala Harris. He lost the popular vote on both elections by more than a little, and at no point during his presidency did he ever have the approval of more than 46 percent of the registered voter population — and that was for a fleeting moment. His average approval rating was hovering around the 40 percent level.

There is a LARGE segment of the country who either doesn’t give a shit, or cannot stand either one of them.

“They’re going to destroy Social Security.”

Says the guy who wants to cut benefits for the ‘Entitlements’. He also wants to lower the maximum contribution level to somewhere around $100k. The bigger picture is that it is the wet dream of Republicans to do away with Social Security altogether in favor of some sort of individual investment program.

Democrats, on the other hand want to INCREASE benefits, INCREASE the contribution cap on income, and strengthen the program going forward.

Social Security and Medicare are probably the easiest programs to fix. They were designed to be adjusted for current and future needs. It’s just that Congressional Republicans have always drug their feet on doing anything to fix the program that they themselves cannot stand.

So the idea that Donald Trump or any other Republican are looking out after our Social Security interests is about as realistic as you or I becoming president.

“Everybody is going to be forced to by an electric car.”

Forced? When was the last time the government was able to ‘force’ anyone to purchase a specific item?

Could there come a day when the internal combustion engine becomes obsolete? Sure, just as we no longer use steam engines as a power source. Technology will always make things we rely on obsolete. When that time comes, it will be time.

But yes, Biden and now Harris ARE trying to make it easier to buy electric vehicles over gas powered by the use of incentives like tax breaks and possible buy-backs.

“Our tax cuts, which are the biggest in history.”

Ronald Reagan had the largest tax break as a percentage of the economy, but Barack Obama’s 2012 tax cut was the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars amounting to $321 billion a year.

There were six (SIX) other tax cuts that were larger than Trump’s. And Trump’s tax cut is coming back to bite the middle class on the ass starting this year.

So nice try…

“They’re drilling now because they had to go back because gasoline was going up to seven, eight, nine dollars a barrel.  The day after the election, if they won, you’re going to have fuel prices go through the roof.”

I love how Trumpublicans LOVE to point out how low gas was at the time of Trump’s departure from office. (around $1.98 a gallon). What they fail to mention is the fact that in April of 2020, the pandemic shut shit down, so the demand for fuel was almost nil.

While gasoline rose to a high of around $5.00 per gallon in June 2022 (before federal and state road and sales taxes) it is down to an average of around $3.50. Some states are back down to about two bucks a gallon.

Biden didn’t start increasing oil production here in the US — both Obama and Trump started that over the past decade, and both Trump and Biden have presided over the United States being the largest crude oil producer in the world since 2018 and that status still holds.

“If you go back and check your records for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul.  Abdul was the leader of the Taliban still is, but had a strong talk with him.  For 18 months, not one American soldier was shot at or killed, but not even shot at 18 months.”

After you try to decipher the word salad here…

Trump spoke with A leader of the Taliban in March 2020, when he made the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan. In the 18 months that followed, 13 soldiers died from hostile fire in Afghanistan.

Also, is Trump on a first-name basis with the leader of the Taliban?

“Me and my bud, Abdul went out for a couple of brewskies the other day …”

“Democrats are really the radical ones on this, because they’re allowed to do an abortion on the eighth, and ninth month, and even after birth.”

Less than one percent of abortions happened after 21 weeks of gestation, and only in cases where the fetus was dead or non-viable and/or was threatening the health of the mother. More than ninety percent of all abortions happened within thirteen weeks of gestation.

There are times in some women’s pregnancies where something goes horribly wrong and either the fetus is dead and/or non-viable, and/or it is threatening the life and health of the mother. Shit does happen and the idea that a mother cannot abort the fetus just because a group of mostly old white men have decided she can’t because of THEIR religious beliefs is insane.

Lastly, there are absolutely ZERO states or jurisdictions in the United States of America that has ever legalized infanticide, which is what happens if you kill a baby after birth, as Trump has insanely claimed.

“Nobody was killed on January 6th.”

There were at least seven people who directly or indirectly lost their lives due solely to Trump’s insurrection on January 6, 2021. Including one Trumpublican who got her silly ass shot trying to break in to where Congresscritters were hiding to avoid being hung by the rioters.

Yes, I said HUNG by the rioters, because that is exactly what they were shouting. They were literally looking for both Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi to ‘hang them’.

“Inflation was caused by their bad energy problems.”

Jesus Fucking Christ on a flaming Pogostick. Trump is stuck on stupid.

Yes, high energy costs WERE a contributing factor to inflation, but not being the main driver.

Not even close to being the main driver.

There were MANY factors that contributed to the rising prices and the leading cause of the inflation was the lack of goods available due to the COVID pandemic shutting down manufacturing WORLD WIDE. Couple that with those pandemic checks and unemployment checks that paid more than what a lot of workers usually got paid, causing the DEMAND for goods to exceed the SUPPLY of those goods — which ended up causing an inflationary period — WORLD WIDE.

Economists have also called many of Trump’s tariffs to be inflationary.

“She couldn’t pass her bar exam.”

Hmmm. I’ve got news for you: most people don’t pass the bar exam on the first time around. California’s bar exam is probably one of the toughest in the country. The Pass rate of the California bar exam is around 45 percent.

Here is a short list of famous people who failed the bar exam at least once:

1. Hillary Clinton
2. Michelle Obama
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4. Jerry Brown
5. Kathleen Sullivan
6. Richard Daly
7. JFK, JR.
8. Benjamin Cardozo
9. David Patterson
10. Kamala Harris
11. Paulina Bandy
12. Anthony Scaramucci
13. Charlie Crist
14. Pete Wilson
15. Jerry Brown
16. Deval Patrick
17. Antonio Villaraigosa
18. Ed Koch
19. David Paterson
20. Harold Ford Jr.
21. Pat Robertson
22. Kevin D. Callahan
23. Paulina Bandy (failed thirteen times)
24. Kei Komuro
25. Kim Kardashian

This took me all of about thirty seconds to look up.

For the record, I failed the bar exam the first time too.

“All over the world, prisons are being emptied out into our country.”

This is yet another ‘fact’ pulled from the ample ass of Donald J. Trump.

Immigration officials cannot corroborate Trump’s claims that “millions” of prisoners and patients at mental hospitals are entering illegally through the southern border.

Where did Trump get this idea? Forty years ago, Fidel Castro “emptied” his prisons and sent the prisoners to Floriduh. So yeah, we did get those kind of people here from Cuba.

“She was the border czar 100 percent.  And all of a sudden, for the last few weeks, she’s not the border czar anymore.  Like nobody ever said it.”

Mainly because nobody actually ever said it. Kamala Harris was never the “border czar”. That was the label Trumpublicans gave her.

“Twenty million people came over the border in the last – during the Biden-Harris administration, 20 million people, and it could be very much higher than that.”

This is purely hyperbolic bullshit on Trump’s part. There is no accurate way to determine the exact number who have entered into the US.

Could there have been a million or two cross the border? Sure. Most of them crossing end up getting sent back though. I think that’s the part of the equation that doesn’t get reported enough.

“I know Willie Brown very well, Trump said.  “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him.  We thought this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together and there as an emergency landing.”

If this had really happened, it would have been the subject of wall-to-wall news reports for DAYS.

Willie Brown told local news station KRON4 that the story was “what Donald does best,” which was “his creativity — fictional,” adding that he had never done business with the former president and wouldn’t want to be in a helicopter with him.

During the news conference Trump also claimed that Brown, an influential Democrat who was also the longtime speaker of the California State Assembly, said “terrible things” about Vice President Kamala Harris. He did not say when the helicopter ride occurred. Harris and Brown dated more than 25 years ago, which has been highlighted by opponents suggesting she improperly benefited from his influence on her career (he appointed her to two state boards) — a claim Brown has rejected and that has been criticized as sexist.

When asked about the vice president, Brown told KRON4 he “could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way” and that she was a good friend.

Could the Demented Trump be thinking about his ride in a helicopter with California Governor Jerry Brown in 2018 while viewing the fire damage caused to the town of Paradise?

Apparently not. Jerry Brown was asked:

“It was a lively ride, but an utterly safe landing,” he said in an email through his spokesperson, adding that “the subject of Harris never came up.”

Doesn’t Donald ever think that after saying something like this, that people wouldn’t try to look it up? I mean, that’s the first fucking thing I did when I read this: I looked it up.

IT NEVER HAPPENED. Trump is hallucinating again.

“You have a lot of misinformation spread about China, and you have a lot of misinformation spread about a lot of different places.  I think I am going to get along great with China.  President Xi of China and I are very good friends, we met right here, right there.

We had a beautiful sofa there.  As opposed to what we have right now.  Right now we have you.”

Says the guy who spreads the most misinformation and disinformation around.

Somehow I don’t see that President Xi has anything nice to say about Donald Trump.

So the press conference was a bust…

From my Memebox:

I think the LAST subject Trump should bring up are criminals. Not with 34 felony convictions so far under his belt.

Republicans seem to have an obsession with genitalia these days. The Olympics are no exception.

I hear the guy with the sofa fetish is now calling Tim Walz, “Tampon Tim”, because Walz advocates for free women’s hygiene products available in public restrooms.

Trumpublicans are losing their tiny little minds over it.

Let’s not leave Cori Bush out of it

They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!

Remember when you ran away
And I got on my knees
And begged you not to leave
Because I’d go beserk

Well you left me anyhow
And then the days got worse and worse
And now you see I’ve gone
Completely out of my mind

And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa
They’re coming to take me away ho-ho hee-hee ha-haaa
To the funny farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And I’ll be happy to see those nice young men
In their clean white coats
And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa

You thought it was a joke
And so you laughed
You laughed when I said
That losing you would make me flip my lid

Right?
You know you laughed
I heard you laugh, you laughed
You laughed and laughed and then you left
But now you know I’m utterly mad

And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa
They’re coming to take me away ho-ho hee-hee ha-haaa
To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds
And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes
And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa

I cooked your food
I cleaned your house
And this is how you pay me back
For all my kind unselfish, loving deeds
Ha! Well you just wait
They’ll find you yet and when they do
They’ll put you in the A.S.P.C.A.
You mangy mutt

And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa
They’re coming to take me away ha-haaa ho-ho hee-hee
To the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time
And I’ll be happy to see those nice young men
In their clean white coats

And they’re coming to take me away
To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds
And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes
And they’re coming to take me away ha-haaa!

I hope y’all have a wonderful day. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. (the list is a very short one)

See ya later.

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republicans-call-harris-failed-border-czar-truth-is-more-complicated-2024-07-30/ ↩︎