Fact Checking Donald Trump's Speech on Hillary Clinton

Why do I suspect that Trump Decongestants will be on the market any day now?

If, as I did, you listened to his thwacking–and largely unencumbered by truth–attack on Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday morning, it was hard to track the lies through the monumental sniffling that made it sound like He, Trump was campaigning as Darth Vader cosplay. But we paddle on, up against the implacable current of Mucus River, and we judge the speech as you judge the speeches of the presumptive presidential candidate of one of the two major political parties that we, as a people, have allowed ourselves.

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There were many interesting things about the speech. There were some lines of attack that, were they not being delivered by a self-evident public charlatan, might have proven effective. Like most politicians of the past 30 years, and like most people operating within the current financial elite, HRC really has been cozy with some unsavory people and regimes around the world. In fact, one of them was Donald Trump. 

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He flirted with pointing out that gay people in the Muslim world have it quite rough and that many of them have it quite rough under governments that the United States supports and arms. (Of course, he's been running on a platform that we should keep these unfortunates out of the country until we "know what's going on.") He even made a run at the Jack Kemp Republicanism, although he didn't go all the way to talking about The Democrat Plantation. Some speechwriter will get there for him sooner or later, I'm sure. He did some two-stepping towards populism, especially on trade.

Some speechwriter will get there for him sooner or later, I'm sure.

There was some evidence of softening to his positions. Instead of accusing HRC of wanting to abolish the Second Amendment, he charged that she would appoint justices who would "virtually abolish" it. That's nonsense, too, but it's nonsense within some sort of logical bounds. And it was a fairly well-crafted address, even though, every time he delivers a scripted speech or reads from a TelePrompter, he appears very surprised by what's written down for him.

OK, now for the customary bullshit.

There is no record of his opposing the Iraq War, "Yes, even before the war ever started."

HRC did not "singlehandedly destabilize the entire Middle East." She had a lot of help in the years between 2001 and 2009, when somebody nobody mentions anymore was running things.

He grabbed onto two extended exercises in ratfcking–Peter Schweitzer's Clinton Cash and Gary Byrne's Crisis In Character–and held them close to his heart. Gary Aldrich must be off somewhere weeping because he was born too soon.

In fact, Hillary Clinton supports a radical 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees coming into the United States, and that's an increase over President Obama's already very high number. Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth–with no way to screen who they are or what they believe. 

This is a barefaced non-fact. The vetting process generally takes two years. If you can't vet some poor sod with everything he owns in a backpack within two years, you should find other work immediately.

The United States is not the "highest taxed nation in the world." This is something that has been fact-checked on him somewhere between three and 18 gazillion times.

HRC was not sleeping when the phone call came in regarding the attack on the embassy in Benghazi. It happened at 3:45 a.m. Washington time, and she went right to work. Again, this is a canard that Trump has been peddling for almost six months, and it's no truer now than it was the first time he said it.

But, I was struck most heavily by the end of the speech, when He, Trump began to pine for the lost glory that once was America.

Americans are the people that tamed the West, that dug out the Panama Canal, that sent satellites across the solar system, that built the great dams, and so much more. Then we started thinking small. We stopped believing in what America could do, and became reliant on other countries, other people, and other institutions. We lost our sense of purpose, and daring.

I wonder how that possibly could have happened in this country. How did we abandon our dreams of greatness that we demanded of our self-governing Republic. We didn't dig the Panama Canal. Our government did, after it stole the land from Colombia. We, as individuals, didn't tame the West. Our government did, with railroads and homesteading and the U.S. Cavalry. We didn't ourselves build the Hoover Dam. Our government did. We didn't create our own private space exploration. Our government did. 

How could the country have come to such a sorry pass? Perhaps a clue can be found in a speech given from the U.S. Capitol by a newly elected president on a cold, clear January morning in 1981.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. 

Sad.

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