AP FACT CHECK: A week's supply of baloney
SATURDAY, FEB 4, 2017 11:45 AM EST
Reality took a beating from the Washington blame game this past week. Americans heard about a Kentucky massacre that never happened, a travel ban that was a ban despite it being called something else, and a dark plot to help Russian intelligence that was nothing of the sort. A look at some of the ways political figures strayed into fiction:
___
SEAN SPICER, White House press secretary: “Well, first of all, it’s not a travel ban.” — On President Donald Trump’s executive order halting travel to the U.S. for people from seven majority-Muslim countries.
JOHN KELLY, secretary of homeland security: “This is not a travel ban; this is a temporary pause that allows us to better review the existing refugee and visa-vetting system.”
THE FACTS: That’s not what their boss said the day before. President Donald Trump defended the order and its immediate implementation in a tweet: “If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!”
Spicer himself also had called it a ban Monday at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, saying “the ban deals with seven countries that the Obama administration had previously identified as needing further travel restrictions.”
___
more
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/04/ap-fact-check-a-weeks-supply-of-baloney/