Professor Jeffrey Sachs on Donald Trump’s 60 Minutes Interview — Every Lie Explained
By: Jeffrey Sachs
How does one support a PotUS who has no respect for truth and willingly, perpetually spreads lies amplified by the power of the presidency?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Transcript (formatted by ChatGPT)
Every politician spins a story, but what happens when that story is built entirely on lies? On Policy Explained, we dig into the truth behind the headlines. In this video, we’re joined by someone fearless, Professor Jeffrey Saxs. He dissected a revealing interview from Donald Trump’s appearance on 60 Minutes. Let’s dive straight in to what Professor Saxs had to say.
Actually, it was 73 minutes, the full interview of his lying about 18 provable falsehoods, which means about three per minute. And considering he wasn’t even talking all those minutes, the host was talking for part of the time, it’s still a pretty impressive rate of lies per minute. And I’m just going to go through Donald Trump’s top 10 lies from 60 Minutes.
So, number one, here’s Donald Trump saying that grocery prices are going down.
“They’ve seen their grocery prices go up. Inflation.”
“No, you’re wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now, they’re going down.”
This is false. Grocery prices are up. They’re up in all six categories measured by the Consumer Price Index. And if Donald Trump were spending less time in his golden Great Gatsby ballroom and more time in a grocery store, he would know that prices are going up.
Number two, Trump claimed that Biden gave him the worst inflation rate in all of US history. That is another lie.
“Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country. We had the worst inflation. We had the worst.”
In fact, the inflation rate in January when Trump took over was 3%. The inflation rate today is 3%. And just in case you’re curious what the worst inflation rate was, it was 27% in 1920.
Another big provable falsehood by Donald Trump. And here is Donald Trump on tariffs, claiming once again that countries like China are paying instead of consumers like you.
“With China, they were, you know, very strongly threatening us, frankly, with the rarers. And then I said, well, if you’re going to play that card, I’m going to put a 100% tariff on over and above what you’re already paying, which was 55%.”
But that is again just another lie. In fact, tariffs are paid by the importer. Those costs are passed on to consumers. We are paying the cost of tariffs. It is part of the reason why inflation keeps going up. This on-again, off-again tariff war by the president has made the cost of living more expensive for all of us.
And coming in at number four, Donald Trump talking about artificial intelligence and the energy demands of artificial intelligence and how he came up with the idea to locate a new data center with a power plant generating the power for that facility. Here he is.
“Producing electricity like never before by allowing the companies to make their own electricity, which was my idea, which nobody, frankly, had thought of. These massive plants that are being built.”
So, Donald Trump claims this was his idea, which nobody ever thought of. Well, this idea was discussed at length during the Biden administration. It’s not a unique idea. I suppose this is Donald Trump’s equivalent of saying that he invented the internet.
And coming in at number five, Donald Trump claiming that each time he attacks a ship in the Caribbean, that effectively saves 25,000 American lives. Here he is.
“But every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country.”
That’s just absurd. First of all, he has been claiming falsely that these ships carry fentanyl. This is not a fentanyl trafficking route. Precursor chemicals generally come from China. Fentanyl is smuggled into the United States from Mexico. Uh, it is more cocaine that is being trafficked in the Caribbean. And if you add up all of the loss of lives from all of the sources of drug overdoses, it would amount to about 80 or 90,000 deaths, which is a horrible tragedy. But for Donald Trump to claim that every boat he attacks saves essentially 25,000 lives is just made-up nonsense.
Number six, Trump repeated the claim that he’s made in many other places as well, that he ended eight wars.
“But I brought, I mean, just a little list of, of, of, look at this wars. How many did I solve? Cambodia. This is Cambodia, Thailand, Kosovo, Serbia, Congo, the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India. That was going to be a beauty. They shot down seven planes. Israel and Iran. You’ve heard about that one. Egypt and Ethiopia.”
There’s been no war between Egypt and Ethiopia. That’s been a long-running dispute over a major Ethiopian dam project. Trump includes on the list another war, the war in Kosovo, that didn’t even take place during his 10 years in office, and he claims to have prevented other wars from taking place without any factual basis. So that, again, wrong, false, exaggerated, you name it.
Number seven, Trump claimed that Joe Biden provided $350 billion to Ukraine. That figure is also not remotely accurate.
“I mean, even if you got your degree from Trump University, the numbers don’t add up.”
In fact, the US contribution to Ukraine has been about 94 billion has gone out the door. Another equivalent amount has been appropriated, but not yet fully dispersed. So, we’re talking about less than half of the money that Trump claims Joe Biden has already spent on Ukraine.
Number eight, Donald Trump and the shutdown. Donald Trump falsely claimed that what Democrats are seeking is $1.5 trillion for health care and other services for undocumented people.
“I can’t give them a trillion half dollars so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.”
This is completely bogus. What Democrats are seeking is to end the vast increases in health care costs on the Affordable Care Act that are occasioned by Trump’s doing away with tax credits for people getting their health care through the ACA. We’re trying to at least bring down the cost of health care for Americans. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for that funding. So, this is just another palpable Donald Trump lie.
And number nine, Trump has deployed the National Guard and even active duty troops to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, a lawless attempt to use the military for domestic law enforcement. It’s part of his effort to project strength, to treat the military like his personal palace guard. Courts have blocked many of these actions, but Trump has responded by threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act. In his defense, he claimed that other presidents have used it as many as 28 times.
That’s simply false. No president has invoked the Insurrection Act more than Ulysses S. Grant, who did so only six times in the 1800s. And more importantly, there’s no legitimate basis for invoking the act now. There is no insurrection, no rebellion, nothing that justifies deploying American troops against Americans. That too is false.
And finally, rounding out the top 10, Trump was asked whether he had directed the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. Here’s he on that subject.
“Did you instruct the Department of Justice to go after?”
“Not in any way, shape, or form.”
“Not in any way, shape, or form,” he says. “Well, take a look at this form.”
That was Donald Trump instructing Pam Bondi in a tweet that was supposed to be private direct message, but was sent improperly, so the public got to see it, instructing him to go after three of his enemies. All are included.
So, those are just 10 of Donald Trump’s falsehoods from his 60 Minutes interview. There are many more we could list, but the real issue is this. We cannot normalize constant lying by the president of the United States. Of all the attacks on our democracy, none has been more corrosive than Trump’s relentless assault on the truth.
If we can’t agree on basic facts, how can we decide what policies to pursue or who should govern? Without truth, politics collapses into tribalism or worse, violence. So, it’s on all of us to keep calling out these lies and to keep insisting on the truth.
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His approval rating should be 0%.
the daily barrage of bullshit by a mentally defective narcissist with no concept of ethics or boundaries seems to be wearing thin ...
... there's definitely no shortage of professional medical diagnoses of POS/POTUS on youtube.
That would indeed be true if.....
If...our country's voters were 100% Democrats!
If our voters were all thinking critically.
It's not like the word salads weren't there during his first term. But they've become much worse.
If he were an ordinary citizen, Trump likely would be advised to turn over control of his finances and give up his car keys (if he even drives, other than for photo ops). Instead, we've put him in charge of the nation.
it's fun to remember that just 18 months ago trump supporters were sounding all the alarms on biden's allegedly dangerous and diminished mental state, and now they struggle to recognize their fearless leader's descent into dementia. in light of his family's past traditions, I wonder which one of trump's kids will abscond with his fortune after he starts his mc nugget and oatmeal diet, if he lives that long ...
Obviously the former is not a healthy diet.
But why the criticism of Oatmeal?
... jello then. I anxiously await your next 3 replies ... /s
It's frightening to listen to him. Blithering old man.
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Excellent video!
It really explains a lot about him-- at great depth!
About the speaker:
“We're in a hell of a lot of trouble. Us, America, but the world is in a lot of trouble because the most powerful man in the world is both evil and demented.”
Psychologist Dr John Gartner lays out the signs and symptoms he sees of “dementia and malignant narcissism” in Donald Trump, and explains why he thinks the president won’t make it to the end of his term “compos mentis”.
Dr John Gartner is founder of Duty To Warn and former assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
Thanks a lot MAGA! You wanted him. Now we got him. And he's going to get much much worse. Thanks again!
It does seem that a fair number of Republican voters are having a case of "buyer's remorse".
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This is false. Grocery prices are up. They’re up in all six categories measured by the Consumer Price Index. And if Donald Trump were spending less time in his golden Great Gatsby ballroom and more time in a grocery store, he would know that prices are going up.
IMO the "Affordability Crisis" may well be the issue that most effects the outcome of the next mid-term election.
Carville's famous "It's the economy, stupid" mantra is spot on because the way the ordinary voter views the economy is local. If they feel squeezed, they will deem the economy bad. I do not see this changing.
In other words 'the economy' for most voters is measured in emotional/personal terms rather than in economic terms (e.g. GDP, unemployment).
To wit, even though our current economy is mostly in good shape (for now), prices and interest rates (as with Biden) translate into 'economy = bad'.
It is what all the current polling suggests as well. Everything else Trump is trying to use to distract the masses is polling poorly. Now we have Trump's "Affordability" rallies.
more like trump's assignment of blame for his own incompetence rallies ...