This Week’s Lies Featuring Donald Trump

Developments in the Trumpiverse, Feb. 8-14.

(Lovatto)

• New U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who last year said, "Good people don't smoke marijuana," cited a "dangerous and permanent" increase in the national crime rate, when crime has in fact declined for the past 25 years.

• Intel CEO Brian Krzanich allowed President Donald Trump to take credit for a new semiconductor factory in Arizona, although construction actually began in 2012.

• White House national security adviser Mike Flynn lied about discussing U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador prior to Trump's election. On Feb. 13, Flynn resigned.

• Trump said his immigration crackdown was removing "the criminals, the drug lords, the gang members"—but, in a change from past practice, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began conducting sweeps that targeted people without criminal records for deportation.

• White House press secretary Sean Spicer made up a terrorist attack in Atlanta. Previously, his counterpart Kellyanne Conway referenced a "massacre" that never happened, and Trump himself claimed the news media failed to report terrorism cases.

• Trump again claimed he lost the nationwide popular vote due to a nonexistent wave of voter fraud. Incidentally, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University counted "at least 46 [pending] bills to restrict access to registration and voting" in 21 states—although not yet in Oregon (see page 11).

• White House senior adviser Stephen Miller called the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Trump's Muslim ban a "judicial usurpation of power," when it was Trump's lawyers who took the unconstitutional position that the courts could not review executive decisions. Miller also said, "Powers of the president…will not be questioned." The next day, Trump held a press conference.

• Trump posted a fake Abraham Lincoln quote to Instagram.

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