The Republican Presidential nominee’s lies revealed

THE FOLLOWING IS AN OPINION ARTICLE AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE EATON SCHOOL DISTRICT, ADMINISTRATION OR ITS STAFF.

By Isaiah Cordova

The 2016 Presidential Election has not been without scandal, and both sides have given a good number, but the Republican candidate has given more than the other and has even gone on to claim that some of his scandals have never happened. Despite a nearly endless stream of controversy, a recent poll shows that Donald Trump maintains about 43 percent of American support. People claim that Trump is the ultimate expert on everything required by a president, but apparently that ignores honesty and truthfulness. To attempt to pull back this veil of ignorance, here are several of Trump’s recent lies.

Trump has a habit of lying to the press when it comes to his scandals. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning and independent investigative website Politifact, Trump has lied in approximately 70 percent of the 274 statements the organization lists. Compare that number to the 27 percent of 263 of Hillary Clinton’s statements that Politifact has found to be lies.

For specifics, on Oct. 3, the Donald J. Trump Foundation was ordered by the New York Attorney General’s office to stop fundraising because the foundation had not cleared the right to fundraise in the state of New York. And despite Trump’s claims, five major charities never received any money that the foundation claimed to send their way. Even after promising millions of dollars to many charities, investigators found that the Foundation has only donated around $10,000 in the last seven years. Trump promised to donate some much-needed money to charities for wounded veterans (after implying that veterans with PTSD were weak at a Republican Town Hall Oct. 3, proliferating an idea that simply isn’t true). Independent military news organizations are saying that Trump money went, instead, to bad charities.

Another example of Trump’s questionable authority is on taxes and economy. Trump claims that he is the most informed person on taxes and economy in the electoral race. However, the New York Times has found that Trump lost enough money in 1995 to avoid paying taxes for up to 18 years. So much loss, in fact, that the computerized tax program used by Trump’s accountants could not fully print out the true value of nearly $1 billion. This all comes to light after the first presidential debate where Trump said that not paying taxes makes him smart. The Trump campaign; however, claims that this loss of $915 million is negligible because the Times released the story without Trump campaign approval, and the information was acquired illegally. The fact is, the sum and their reasoning simply do not correlate. The Trump campaign maintains its position while they continue to slam Clinton on her e-mail scandal, even though that information was also leaked illegally.

And in light of all of this, Trump can’t even keep his own lies straight even though they have been recorded on either television or social media. The most prominent is Trump’s claims about climate change. At the first presidential debate, Trump denied ever saying that Climate Change was a hoax.

But the fact remains that Trump has tweeted nine separate times about climate change, and in each and every one of them he referred to the very real threat as an “expensive hoax.” promoted by China. He referred to climate change as “a kind of tax” at a rally in Hilton Head, S.C. He later claimed that his saying that climate change is a hoax crafted by the Chinese was a joke. Despite the obvious lack of humor, climate change is nothing to laugh at, we can’t disprove if he was joking. However, Trump has, on the record, said that Climate change is a hoax. There is no denying that.

Trump has also recently refused to release his tax returns, even though every presidential candidate in the last 40 years has done so. Trump claims that he can not release them because he is currently under audit, a statement he followed up by saying, “[Being audited] has become a way of life for me.” Every time his tax returns have come up, Trump returns to the audit excuse. It’s clear that Trump is hiding something because even Richard Nixon released his tax returns while under audit in 1973.

There are clearly more lies that Donald Trump has said in the course of the 18-month long campaign, but these are the most recent. If Trump is heralded for “saying what he means,” then I’m not even sure if Trump, or Trump supporters, know what he means. Even more appalling is that Trump’s followers continue to support him even after countless news stories on nearly every reputable news source have proved him to be a liar. It is a mystery as to why nearly half of America supports this serial liar, but they do. That is the issue.

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