He always lies and when caught just doubles down:
After Donald Trump was asked in a Monday interview about the future prospects of Gaza, the former president made a curious claim: “You know, I’ve been there, and it’s rough.”
There is no public evidence of Trump ever having been to Gaza, which has been governed by militant group Hamas since 2007. He certainly didn’t go to Gaza as president, and CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have all found no proof he made a prior visit. Perhaps he merely meant he has been to Palestinian territory, since he did visit the West Bank in 2017? Or maybe he was just talking about having been to the broader region?
Nope.
Trump’s campaign said Monday night that he meant what he said about having been to Gaza in particular – and the campaign insisted the claim is true. “President Trump has been to Gaza previously and has always worked to ensure peace in the Middle East,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNN. Leavitt, though, did not provide a single detail about Trump’s supposed trip to Gaza. And she did not respond when we repeatedly asked for even the most basic information, like the year of the supposed visit.
So we were highly skeptical – because Trump has a long history of making things up, because of the lack of public evidence, because the Times of Israel has reported that Trump had never even visited Israel before his presidency, and because the Trump campaign had offered a substantively different comment to The New York Times earlier Monday. That earlier comment, which a campaign official provided only on condition of anonymity, did not say Trump had actually been to Gaza. Instead, the anonymous campaign official tried some spin, correctly saying that Trump has been to Israel but wrongly saying, “Gaza is in Israel.”
We asked three former Trump officials who worked on Middle East policy whether they know of any proof for the former president’s claim, and the campaign’s claim to CNN, that Trump has been to Gaza itself. The only one who has responded, Trump-appointed former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker, said in an email: “As far as I know, he’s never traveled there. He did not go in 2017 when he visited Israel. I think this story is probably already over.” […]
They could not find any former staffers who could verify Trump’s claim. And guess what? He’s doubling down:
Trump aides told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday that the former president privately said he did.
Of course he did.
Here are some more lies from that one interview with Hugh Hewitt:
Terrorist attacks: Trump repeated his false claim that “we didn’t have one terrorist attack” during his presidency. There were multiple terrorist attacks during his presidency, including some he has spoken about himself.
The defeat of ISIS: Trump repeated his false claim that although others said it would take years to “get rid of” the ISIS terror group, “I got rid of it in a month.” Leaving aside the fact that Trump certainly doesn’t deserve sole credit, the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.
Iran and funding for terror groups: Trump repeated his false claim that Iran did not fund terror groups during his presidency: “They weren’t giving any money, because they had no money.” Iran’s funding for entities designated by the US government as terror groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas, did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped – as Trump’s own administration acknowledged in 2020.
China’s oil purchases from Iran: Trump repeated his false claim that he successfully pressured Chinese leader Xi Jinping into ending oil purchases from Iran; Trump claimed, “He said, ‘I’ll pass.’ He passed. Everybody passed. They did no business.” China’s oil purchases from Iran briefly plummeted in 2019, but they never stopped, and they quickly rebounded while Trump was still president – back up to hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.
Nuclear weapons: Repeating a false claim he made during his presidency, Trump said, “I rebuilt our entire nuclear force.” He simply did not do so, though he did undertake efforts to modernize the US arsenal. “Long story short: then, as now, Trump’s nuclear braggadocio is utter fantasy, wholly divorced from reality,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent expert on US nuclear weapons policy. “And not only did he not rebuild ‘our entire nuclear force,’ on his watch the total operational nuclear stockpile of warheads and bombs actually decreased by about 100 weapons!”
Global warming and sea levels: Trump delivered another version of his usual false claim about global warming, minimizing the threat by saying it will cause the ocean to rise merely “1/8th of an inch in the next 500 years.” Sea levels are currently rising more than an eighth of an inch per year.
Harris, immigrants and crime: Trump repeated his false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the presidential election, let in 13,000 murderers and 425,000 criminals over the border. The statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration; rather, they cover numerous presidential administrations, including his own, over the span of decades – “over the past 40 years or more,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a September statement to CNN. You can read more here.
Pelosi and a stock sale: Trump falsely claimed that the former speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, sold stock in Visa “the day before the lawsuit” that was filed against the company by the Justice Department in September. An official disclosure shows the stock was actually sold by Pelosi’s husband more than two and a half months before the Justice Department filed the lawsuit.
Biden and foreign income: Trump repeated his false claim that President Joe Biden “gets a lot of money from China, or he got a lot of money from China, tremendous amount of money.” After years of investigation by House Republicans, there is still no evidence Biden has received any payments from China.
Chris Wallace in 2020: Trump repeated his false claim that journalist Chris Wallace, now of CNN and formerly of Fox News, tried to stop him, during a presidential debate Wallace moderated in 2020, from asking Biden about a supposed payment from the mayor of Moscow’s wife (which actually went to a company connected to Biden’s son Hunter Biden, not to the president); Trump claimed, “And Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me ask. (Biden) couldn’t answer the question. Chris Wallace stepped in and said, ‘Well, we’re not going to be talking about that.’”
Wallace never said anything like that. As the transcript shows, Wallace interjected during this debate exchange to try to get Trump to allow Biden to answer Trump’s question about the money, not to stop Trump from talking about the subject.
Military equipment surrendered to the Taliban: Trump repeated his false claim that $85 billion in US military equipment was left to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden and Harris. Trump’s figure is a massive exaggeration; the Pentagon has estimated that this equipment was worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021.