Trump lied about everything from crime and civil unrest, to Russia, Ukraine and NATO, to the economy, to job creation, to the 2020 election, to war and peace and the Afghanistan withdrawal, to immigration and the situation at our southern border, and as Dale noted in his article, there were far more than the 23 lies he took the time to fact check.
ACOSTA: Turning to Donald Trump’s speech last night at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and as often the case with the former president, the speech was full of half-truths, lies, and some absolute whoppers. CNN’s Daniel Dale joins me now.
And Daniel, the speech lasted almost two hours and you’ve been sifting through it. We won’t be able to get through all of the falsehoods in this segment. But let’s play some clips and then have you fact-check Trump’s claims. Here’s the first on job creation.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: We had the greatest job history of any president ever.
ACOSTA: Daniel, fact or fiction?
DANIEL DALE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolute fiction, Jim. Mr. Trump has the single worst net jobs record of a presidential term, those four years, losing 2.7 million jobs. Now I think you can fairly say, well, we had a COVID-19 pandemic. But even if you just go to the three and a bit years before the pandemic, Mr. Trump’s record is middling, middle of the pack. There were about 6.7 million jobs gained. That’s nowhere even close to the actual record for a term, which is 11.5 million jobs in Democratic President Bill Clinton’s first term.
ACOSTA: And Trump covered a lot of ground, as he often does, including this claim about the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Germany. Let’s listen to that.
TRUMP: I got along very well with Putin, even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. Remember, they said, Trump is giving a lot to Russia. Really?
Putin actually said to me, if you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy. Because I ended the pipeline. Do you remember? Nord Stream 2. But I ended it. It was dead.
ACOSTA: Daniel, what’s your fact check on that one?
DALE: He didn’t end it. It was not dead. He did impose sanctions on companies working on this pipeline, but that didn’t come until nearly three years, Jim, into his presidency. Now, those sanctions did slow down the project, but still under President Trump, Russia, the Russian state-owned company that is behind this pipeline said, fine, you sanction those companies, we’re going to do it ourselves.
And they announced with about a month and a half left in Trump’s presidency that they were going to resume construction, and with a few days left in Trump’s presidency, Germany announced that it was granting another permit for constructions in its waters. So Trump may have slowed down Nord Stream 2, but did not kill it.
ACOSTA: And Daniel, let’s turn to Mexico and the wall. Always guaranteed to fire up the MAGA base, sort of MAGA catnip for his supporters. Let’s listen to what Trump told the crowd last night.
TRUMP: As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task, as promised, and then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in.
ACOSTA: Daniel, I think I know the answer to this because the wall was not finished.
DALE: The wall, Jim, was not finished. The president basically or the former president basically did the fact check for me. He said, we finished it, and then we built some more. Doesn’t make sense and we know from an official report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, they said, 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump, but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not been completed.
So, Jim, nowhere even close to done.
ACOSTA: And Trump also mocked a movement for social justice, especially some of the unrest that occurred in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020. Let’s listen to that.
TRUMP: But we saved Minneapolis. The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind — it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.
ACOSTA: Daniel, I’m going to take a wild guess where this one falls in your fact checking.
DALE: Trump has been saying this since 2020. And it is a reversal of reality, Jim. He says the Democratic governor didn’t do anything, so he had to take action. In fact it was Democratic Governor Tim Walls who himself activated the Minnesota National Guard amid this unrest. And he told CNN back in 2020 that he did so at the request of the Democratic mayors of Minneapolis in St. Paul.
Now Trump did demand that Minnesota activate the National Guard, but in fact Walls had already done so seven hours earlier, Jim.
ACOSTA: All right. Daniel Dale, we knew you would be busy last night. I suspect you’ll be busy in the days and weeks and months to come.
