christiefan915 (05-25-2018), domer76 (05-25-2018), mak2 (05-26-2018), ThatOwlWoman (05-25-2018)
"President Trump made six false statements in the span of two minutes during his commencement speech at the Naval Academy on Friday, according to defense expert Todd Harrison."
"Error #1: The $700B defense budget for [fiscal year] FY18 is not the largest ever. It was larger under the Obama administration: $710B in FY11 and $714B in FY10. And that's without adjusting for inflation!"
"Error #2: The number of ships in the Navy today is not the smallest since the end of WWI. We have 283 ships today, and in 2007 (Bush administration) we had 279."
"Error #3: The Navy will not get to 355 ships "very soon." The Navy's 30-year plan says it will not get to that level until after 2050"
"Error #4: Getting to 355 ships is not an increase of "a couple of hundred" ships. Here's the math: 355 - 283 = 72"
"Error #5: The 355-ship fleet has not yet been "approved." The ships have not all been authorized yet, and Congress appropriates the money one year at a time."
"Error #6: This year's military pay raise is not the first in ten years. There were pay raises in each of the past ten years, & some were higher than this year's raise."
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/38...y-speech-inbox
You don't know if you should laugh or just shake your head and sigh, six fabrications in two minutes, has to be some kind of record, even for Trump.
It really has gotten to the point where you have to assume that probably anything that comes out of the guy's mouth is a lie, and this is the President of the United States addressing recent graduates, hardly the Norman Rockwell America conservatives idolize. It does explain though the environment that allows the Martin Shkrelis of the Nation to thrive
christiefan915 (05-25-2018), domer76 (05-25-2018), mak2 (05-26-2018), ThatOwlWoman (05-25-2018)
Does he write his dreck himself or have someone else do it? If it's someone else, he needs to tell them "You're fired."
Why, he don't care, the importance of qualities such as principle, truth, honesty, or even just facts aren't even on his radar, he pretty much admitted such when he described his own followers as being so playable that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they wouldn't care
kudzu (05-26-2018), ThatOwlWoman (05-25-2018)
He spits out lies which are easy enough to disprove and his base doesn't care at all.
kudzu (05-26-2018), mak2 (05-26-2018), ThatOwlWoman (05-25-2018)
No, cleverly, working with the right wing media, he has created an alternative reality, we laughed when Conway came up with the "alternative" line but it was there from the beginning as a defined strategdy, he, they know exactly what they are doing, and the base has fallen for it completely
You know there is a reason radio demogogues have made millions playing conservatives for decades, Trump just saw the potential in the game, he is a TV reality star
mak2 (05-26-2018), ThatOwlWoman (05-25-2018)
Trump told Lesley Stahl when asked why he lies "I do it to discredit you and demean you all. And then when you write something negative about me, nobody will believe you". It certainly works on low information voters". There is a legion of Trumplestilskins here that are in his control.
Exactly as I noted above, "working with the right wing media, he has created an alternative reality, we laughed when Conway came up with the "alternative" line but it was there from the beginning as a defined strategdy"
And it is working proven by your accurate comment that "there is a legion of Trumplestilskins here that are in his control."
the defense expert is dumb.
If your going to get from 283 to 355 active ships by 2050 you will absolutely need to build more than 72 ships. If you only build 72 ships then you would not get to 355 by 2050 as you would have had active ships get retired.
I think the average lifespan of a US ship is 25-30 yearsish.
cancel2 2022 (05-26-2018)
kudzu (05-26-2018)
Holy fuck, stop the presses, a politician has been found to be exaggerating. How could he do this, it is unprecedented?
Rune (05-26-2018)
cancel2 2022 (05-26-2018)
Rune (05-26-2018)
from a fellow centipede
Error #1: It's effectively the largest ever when you consider our active conflict military theaters in FY10 and FY11 compared to now. Active conflict theaters create a drain on military expenditure which is not 1-to-1 comparable with peacetime. In fact, since our active conflict theaters are now significantly lesser in degree, we effectively have a higher budget now than FY10 and FY11.
Error #2: This depends on your interpretation. I suspect Trump was throwing shade at Obama, in which case he would be correct under your raw numbers metric, according to Politifact, that the US Navy was at it smallest size just before Trump's Presidency. But of course, we could also go into composition and effective deployability.
Error #3: To the contrary, 2030s is a short time viewed from the lens of relatively peacetime military acquisitions.
Error #4: You suggest that the buildup to 355 ships will take until the 2030s to 2050s. Given that assumption, Trump is absolutely correct that we will need to build a couple hundred of ships. The notional life span of the average US Navy warship (this of course varies by class) is about 35 years. This would, in the extreme case of the buildup timeline, take us into the 2050s. Thus we would decommission 200+ ships currently active by then. Of course, the buildup may occur faster, but it is obvious how even 100+ currently active decommissioned by time of force accrual completion is reasonable. Given that, as you have pointed out, we also need an absolute value increase of 72, a lower bound of 100 + 72 = 172 seems appropriate. This is, roughly, "a couple hundred ships".
Error #5: Perhaps he's confident that he will get it out of Congress. One could interpret this as a Trump promise and hold him to it.
Error #6: In FY11, FY12, FY13, FY14, FY15 the pay increase was either less than inflation or within 0.5%, which could plausibly result in not an effective pay increase after considering real CPI changes for soldiers. But yes, I'll take your point for the overall, absolute truthiness of this statement. Still, the point that soldier pay was not properly tracking inflation/CPI was true more years than not in the previous Presidency.
I understand that Trump regularly speaks in hyperbole, but how do you feel when he engages in blatant, readily verifiable untruths? Does it erode his credibility and general trustworthiness?
Well, often it is effective politicking, but I take your point that it erodes his general trustworthiness to nonsupporters who are not the focus audience of his actions. That said, the untruths you pointed out are not as egregious as you pointed out, and in fact often either a truth or a qualified one.
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