Trump tells tall tales even without Twitter

[wvit1001]

TRUMP: "But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years." — remarks to NATO on Thursday

THE FACTS: This is a misleading depiction of NATO military spending. Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending.

The issue is this: NATO members agreed in 2014 on a goal of spending 2 percent of their economy on their own military budgets by 2014, a development that would lighten the burden on the U.S. Most member nations are short of 2 percent. But the agreement was merely to move toward that goal over a decade.

Trump speaks as if NATO partners are failing to meet a current standard, and they're not. They are not in debt to the United States, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president's contention that they "owe massive amounts of money from past years. "


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[wvit1001]

TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: "I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that." — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.

THE FACTS: Trump's own State Department's human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.

The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says "authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings."