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This is from one of my personal essays, so it obviously would need some reworking for use here. I don't expect everything to be usable. Our job at Wikipedia is to document the sum total of human knowledge, and that includes facts and opinions. Trump's dubious relationship to truth is obviously a very notable subject, and it's arguably his most notable and best documented character trait, going back to long before his dabblings in politics. It's how he rolls. He's a salesman, and we know that they always rate near the bottom for honesty and ethics. No surprise there. I also have a list of several hundred fully formatted RS on the subject. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 15:05, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
"I think this idea that there is no truth
is the thread that will run through the rest of
the Trump presidency, as it has his entire
candidacy and his presidency so far."
-- Nicolle Wallace [1]
As president, Trump has frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] and experience teaches that, quoting David Zurawik, we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards" [7] because he's a "habitual liar". [8] In general, news organizations have been hesitant to label these statements as "lies". [9] [10] [5]
Fact checkers have kept a close tally of his falsehoods, and, according to one study, the rate of false statements has increased, with the percentage of his words that are part of a false claim rising over the course of his presidency. [5] According to The New York Times, Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office, [2] 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post, [11] and 1,628 total in his first 298 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" analysis of The Washington Post, or an average of 5.5 per day. [12] After 558 days in office, the tally was at 4,229 false or misleading claims, and it had risen to an average of 7.6 per day from 4.9 during Trump's first 100 days in office. [13]
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, told Dana Milbank that, in his six years on the job, "'there's no comparison' between Trump and other politicians. Kessler says politicians' statements get his worst rating — four Pinocchios — 15 percent to 20 percent of the time. Clinton is about 15 percent. Trump is 63 percent to 65 percent." [14] Kessler also wrote: "President Trump is the most fact-challenged politician that The Fact Checker has ever encountered ... the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up." [3]
Maria Konnikova, writing in Politico Magazine, wrote: "All Presidents lie.... But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent.... Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true." [15]
Senior administration officials have also regularly given false, misleading or tortured statements to the media. [16] By May 2017, Politico reported that the repeated untruths by senior officials made it difficult for the media to take official statements seriously. [16]
Trump's presidency started out with a series of falsehoods initiated by Trump himself. The day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. Then he proceeded to exaggerate the size, and Sean Spicer backed up his claims. [17] [18] [19] [20] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures, [21] [22] [23] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by stating that he merely presented " alternative facts". [24] Todd responded by saying "alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods." [25]
Author, social scientist, and researcher Bella DePaulo, an expert on the psychology of lying, stated: "I study liars. I've never seen one like President Trump." Trump outpaced "even the biggest liars in our research." [26] She compared the research on lying with his lies, finding that his lies differed from those told by others in several ways: Trump's total rate of lying is higher than for others; He tells 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies, whereas ordinary people tell 2 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies. 50% of Trump's lies are cruel lies, while it's 1-2% for others. 10% of Trump's lies are kind lies, while it's 25% for others. His lies often "served several purposes simultaneously", and he doesn't "seem to care whether he can defend his lies as truthful". [27]
In a Scientific American article, Jeremy Adam Smith sought to answer the question of how Trump could get away with making so many false statements and still maintain support among his followers. He proposed that "Trump is telling 'blue' lies—a psychologist's term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.... From this perspective, lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency." [28]
David Fahrenthold has investigated Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true. [29] [30] Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York. [31] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses. [32] Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump's claimed charitable giving [33] and casting "doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities." [34]
Here are a few of Trump's notable claims which fact checkers have rated false:
A poll in May 2018 found that "just 13 percent of Americans consider Trump honest and trustworthy". [45]
The Editorial Board of The New York Times took this telling sideswipe at Trump when commenting on the unfitness of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court: "A perfect nominee for a president with no clear relation to the truth." [46]
Trump's incessant attacks on the media, reliable sources, and truth have kept an army of fact checkers busy, the latter having never encountered a more deceptive public person. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged — resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting." [52]
Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact checkers:
"Here's the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump's lying is "off the charts." No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on. Every fact checker — Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact — finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or "pants on fire" false." [53]
The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, Daniel Dale, has been following Donald Trump's campaign for months. He has fact checked thousands of statements and found hundreds of falsehoods:
NOTE: Many of the sources above are older. The situation has not improved, but is rapidly getting much worse, as described by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true." [70]
Trump has been involved in the promotion of a number of conspiracy theories which have lacked meaningful substance. These have included promoting Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011 ("birther" theories); claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2016; claiming that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election (in addition to his electoral college win) if there had not been "millions" of illegal voters in that election cycle; [71] [72] and the Spygate conspiracy theory [73] [74] [75] [71] [72] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton win the 2016 US presidential election. [76] [77] It has been widely described as blatantly false. [73] [78] [76] [79]
Trump also made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in 2017, for which the Department of Justice has said evidence has yet to be provided. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but the Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump. [80] [81] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, writing for The Washington Post, found that Trump has made over 3,000 false or misleading claims (including repeats) in the first 466 days of his presidency. [82] [83]
Trump is a friend of "professional conspiracy theorist" [84] Alex Jones, and has appeared on his show. That's a big red flag. Anyone with any regard for truth would stay away from Jones and InfoWars, but Trump cares not for truth and Jones helped his election. [85] When InfoWars and Jones were banned from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson called it "censorship" and used the well-known Trump-Jones friendship as an argument: "Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump." [85]
I found some more useful sources but don't have the time to actually summarize them or add them so figured I'd leave them here for later:
Praxidicae ( talk) 14:18, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
There are many RS which use the words "lie(s)", "lying", and "liar" about Trump. There has been a very high level debate among editors of major RS as to whether they should use those words, and some have just decided to start doing it, and others won't. So it all depends on the source, and we do use the words used by RS. Here's a section I've written about that subject. It's rough and not ready for use, but with some work, some of it could be used here. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 04:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Media's hesitancy to label him a "liar" | ||
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. | ||
Aaron Blake, senior political reporter at The Washington Post explained: "Whether you like Trump or not, it's demonstrably true that he says things that are easily proved false, over and over again. The question the media has regularly confronted is not whether Trump's facts are correct but whether to say he's deliberately lying or not." [1] David Greenberg, an author and a professor at Rutgers, questioned whether one could always know Trump's intent and motives, and he expressed caution about calling Trump a liar, even though he admitted there was a "... barrage of false, duplicitous, dishonest and misleading statements emanating from Donald Trump and the White House in the last week...." [2] Mary Ann Georgantopoulos, reporter at BuzzFeed, explained why BuzzFeed did not take accusing someone of lying lightly:
On NBC's Meet The Press, January 1, 2017, The Wall Street Journal's Editor in Chief Gerard Baker said the journal wouldn't call Trump's false statements "lies": "I'd be careful about using the word 'lie'. 'Lie' implies much more than just saying something that's false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead." [4] Three days later he wrote: Trump, 'Lies' and Honest Journalism, By Gerard Baker, Jan. 4, 2017
Veteran reporter Dan Rather strongly disagreed with Baker's position, calling it "deeply disturbing". [6] He proposed a very different approach: "A lie, is a lie, is a lie." He wrote: "These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures." He directly criticized the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, and also Donald Trump, for lying, and wrote: "The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before." [7] Greg Sargent also responded to Baker, stating that "Donald Trump 'lies.' A lot. And news organizations should say so." He also referred to "the nature of Trump's dishonesty — the volume, ostentatiousness, nonchalance, and imperviousness to correction at the hands of factual reality...." [8] Sargent described how Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times, wrote that Trump's lies should be called lies "because he has shown a willingness to go beyond the 'normal sort of obfuscation that politicians traffic in.'" [8] Adrienne LaFrance: Calling Out a Presidential Lie [9] The New York Times editorial board has used “lie” to describe Trump’s rampant abuse of facts. And Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin has taken the media to task for not using the word. Other outlets ― including MSNBC, New York Magazine and HuffPost ― will use the word when it’s merited. [4]
Don't Call Trump a Liar—He Doesn't Even Care About the Truth, Lauren Griffin, Newsweek, January 29, 2017
"Eric Boehlert, senior fellow at the media watchdog group Media Matters, has a strong message for the media trying to keep up with President Donald Trump: Get ready to call him out, and get ready to call him a liar if you have to.
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I feel that the false statements listed need dates, maybe some extra prose to tie them into the relevant time period and related articles. Without knowing when he made these statements I find it hard to get the full meaning from the section. And checking the sources to find out takes time and is a poor reader experience. — Frayæ ( Talk/ Spjall) 17:39, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
best known ones with the most impactis subjective original research; we should not be political analysts. A summary/overview level would be more encyclopedic and of more value to readers, in my opinion. ― Mandruss ☎ 00:53, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Home from work now. (Even though I'm retired, I keep active.) I agree completely with everything above, so we need to work on it and be more cautious. I see, from a quick glance, that a number of items have been added by User:Soibangla, who happens to be a very productive editor. Kudos for their industriousness. Now let's see that energy channeled and refined (see below)
Thanks also to User:Mandruss for cite cleanup. Together we can all get this article in good shape and "get it right".
Some advice I received was to "define some inclusion criteria and put it at the top of the section in an <!--invisible comment--> before things get out of control with people adding stuff right and left. Something along the lines of "widely reported in reliable sources and one that he states repeatedly after it has been debunked." So stuff like the US having the highest tax rate, but not every little mis-stated statistic." That's good advice.
I see this section as a near certain, and logical, candidate for a SPINOFF list article, with a shorter section, with the most notable false claims and a "main" hatnote, left in this main article.
So right now, let's stop adding more to this section and start improving what's already there. Several things to do:
As with everything Trump does, as the master self-promoter he is, everything he does is notable, including this subject. He's "high energy" and very productive, also in this area. Therefore we can afford to be choosy and include quality content, because there's plenty of junk to choose from. There are plenty of good fact checkers, and plenty of very notable people and specialists who have documented, analyzed, and commented on this. Use them. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
This belongs in the history section: (This ref [1] is used elsewhere in the article, so, to avoid duplication, not including it in the text below, but placing it here so it works below.) -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 04:20, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Sources
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Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
06:39, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The Trump family has a long history of untruthfulness. In an article entitled "The Swedish Whopper: Donald Trump's Long-standing Struggle With the Truth," the Trump family lie is revealed to be their claim, maintained for two generations, that they are Swedish, when in fact they are Germans. Donald's father, Fred Trump, "for a reason that has never been disclosed, began telling people that he was Swedish." [1]
The lie was repeated by Fred's son Donald, who, in The Art of the Deal (1987), repeated and embellished the lie by claiming that his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child," [2] even though he left his family and emigrated from his home town, Kallstadt, Germany, in 1885, when he was 16 years old. [3] Wayne Barrett confirmed that Donald also claimed that his father, Fred Trump, was "born in New Jersey to Swedish parents; in fact, he was born in the Bronx to German parents." [4]
Sources
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Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
07:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Would this be on-topic? I think so. He has a long history of creating and/or pushing conspiracy theories. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:52, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Trump has been involved in the promotion of a number of conspiracy theories which have lacked meaningful substance. These have included promoting Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011 ("birther" theories); claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2016; claiming that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election (in addition to his electoral college win) if there had not been "millions" of illegal voters in that election cycle; [1] [2] and the Spygate conspiracy theory [3] [4] [5] [1] [2] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton win the 2016 US presidential election. [6] [7] It has been widely described as blatantly false. [3] [8] [6] [9]
Trump also made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in 2017, for which the Department of Justice has said evidence has yet to be provided. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but the Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump. [10] [11]
Trump is a friend of "professional conspiracy theorist" [12] Alex Jones, and has appeared on his show. When InfoWars and Jones were banned from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson called it "censorship" and used the well-known Trump-Jones friendship as an argument: "Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump." [13]
Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
07:12, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
"Donald Trump's false and misleading claims" is a title that narrows the scope too much. We don't want to end up with a list article which mentions the subject without doing it justice. We also need a title and scope which doesn't bring down the wrath of the AfD and censorship mob.
The subject is quite large, having been broached in many different ways and many different angles by RS. My approach to article creation starts with notability: Has a subject caught my attention because multiple RS are dealing with it? Then maybe there's something for a new article, or at least a new section in an existing article. I then collect all the RS I can find, and I create several Google Alerts to keep me up to date. I then group like with like to get an idea of how many angles there are to the story: history, notable persons or events, controversies, consequences, etc.
This subject is huge as everyone has noticed it, is affected, and all RS have mentioned it, often quite a lot. It also has international attention. World leaders don't trust or believe Trump.
The title must be NPOV, yet describe the scope. It must be both specific and vague, enough to define the outer limits of the subject, while allowing for growth within those limits. Too specific a title can demand a list article. This subject is far too large for that.
Here are titles going from wordy (the full scope), to simple, which still allows that full scope:
1. "Donald Trump's controversial relationship to truth, facts, and reality"
2. "Trump's relationship to truth, facts, and reality"
3. "Trump's relationship to truth"
I have an outline which my collection of hundreds of RS has naturally created, with multiple RS in each section:
1.1 The Trump family lie 1.2 Trump's relationship to truth and lies 1.2.1 "Truthful hyperbole" 1.2.2 "Alternative" and "fake" facts 1.3 Trump's war on truth and the media 1.3.1 Trump calls negative stories "fake news" 1.3.2 Trump as source of real fake news 1.3.3 Seen as an authoritarian tactic 1.3.4 Killing the truth 1.3.5 Attacks on the "lying press" 1.3.6 Use of the "Big Lie" technique 1.4 Media's hesitancy to label him a "liar" 1.4.1 Liar or bullshitter? 1.5 "Gaslighting" the public 1.6 Followers in spite of lies 1.7 How big a liar? 1.8 Post-truth President and campaign 1.9 Types of lies 1.9.1 Some notable examples 1.9.2 Lies about charitable giving 1.10 Truthful statements and self-contradictions One item found: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/09/trumps-claim-that-the-number-of-officer-deaths-in-2016-increased-56-percent-from-2015/ 1.11 Motivations 1.12 Lies as a test of loyalty 1.13 Lying as an aspect of his mental health 1.14 Trump's ignorance and lies 1.15 Damaged reputation and credibility 1.16 James Comey's statements under oath 1.17 Involvement of Trump's surrogates and defenders 1.18 Fact checking Trump 1.19 Biographers and ghostwriters 1.19.1 Mark Singer 1.19.2 Tony Schwartz 1.20 Article series 1.20.1 "Trump and the Truth", New Yorker series of 14 articles 1.20.2 "The Problem with Trump", Los Angeles Times series of 6 articles 1.20.2.1 REACTIONS to LA TIMES SERIES
Not all of those sections should be used or even included, but many of them have enough stuff worthy of inclusion. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 14:32, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
That article mentions the following attempt at deception, but we need to condense it for use here. Although Trump stated "I said it", he later tried to sow doubt about the tape's authenticity, including that it might not be his voice. Here's what it says now:
In 2017, it was reported that Trump had questioned the authenticity of the tape in multiple private conversations that year, including one with a Republican senator, even though he had already acknowledged that the voice was his, and apologized, after the tape was revealed. [1] [2]
In January 2017, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women's genitals. [3]
How should we mention this? It's pretty notable. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 22:07, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
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I understand the difficulty of making distinctions between flatly false statements and "lies." No one can prove that Trump is knowingly making flatly false statements. He could, after all, be delusional (which is arguably worse than being a liar, but I digress). It's the Constanza Doctrine: it's not a "lie" if you believe it.
That said, Trump repeats certain flatly false statements long after they've been decisively debunked by multiple factcheckers. Case in point: on several occasions he has asserted that US Steel is opening six, then seven, and most recently "a minimum of eight" new steel mills — well after it was confirmed that, in fact, US Steel has not announced any new mills.
IMO, these habitual flatly false statements should be highlighted in this and/or another spinoff article. If, say, at least three of five recognized factcheckers (NYT, WaPo, AP, Factcheck, Politifact) have determined that a Trump statement is flatly false (not merely misleading), and yet Trump continues to repeat those statements afterward then we should present that statement with some designation (color-coding?) to indicate to readers that it's a particularly brazen falsehood. Then the reader can assess for themselves if that constitutes a knowing and willful falsehood, more commonly known as a "lie." soibangla ( talk) 17:55, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
<ref>
tag has too many names (see the
help page).
[1]Frayæ, in this move, the chronology is reversed. I deliberately placed the "family lie" as a precursor to everything else (what we normally would have in an "early history" section), since Donald was born into a deceptive (salesmen) family, and as an adult he even embellished and added to the family lie. Take a look at it.
I think we need to think in more fundamental and broad terms than just individual "false statements". We need to look more broadly at his "relationship to truth". Otherwise we end up with so narrow a scope that we can replace this with a list article. There is far more written about the larger ethical issues than just about individual statements. Leave room in the arrangement and title for that. It's not all a chronological issue.
A section for commentary and analysis is needed. I have lots of very notable content from important people for such a section. This also has international aspects regarding credibility, as his reputation, and the reputation of the USA, is seriously damaged. Our foreign policy is suffering because no one trusts him. Our relations to foreign intelligence agencies is also damaged, as they no longer dare to share intelligence with us, since Trump's carelessness with classified information, and direct line to Putin, endangers sources. The moment Trump (and Devin Nunes and Dana Rohrabacher) learns something of a classified nature, the Russians and Chinese also learn it. RS comment on this aspect too.
Bishonen, I definitely like this change to more NPOV language. That was originally from an essay of mine and needed cleaning up. Thanks for doing that.
Otherwise this is looking good. Just think broader and not only about individual false statements. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 21:41, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
- Lead section
- Business career
- In The Art of the Deal
- 2016 presidential campaign
- Presidency
- Fact checking
- Credibility
- Commentary and analysis
- Post-presidency
- See also
- Notable false claims (spinoff linked in see also)
- References
- External links
Sources
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This subject (Notable false claims) is a clear candidate for a SPINOFF list article, with a shorter section, with the most notable false claims and a "main" hatnote, left in this main article.
Possible titles, which would also define the scope (which is much narrower than this article):
There should be a section for those falsehoods which have been debunked, but which he keeps repeating. His followers don't even know what he's doing to them.
Keep in mind that he has a record number of "pants on fire" statements to choose from. As he would have it, "no one tops Trump". -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Find ways and places to include these:
-- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:11, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
There's an endless stream of reliable news articles about Trump's false statements, and about his treatment of facts more generally. E.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-leaders.html When are we going to have more than 5 sentences on this subject? Isn't it past time for a spinoff article? R2 ( bleep) 16:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
what a bunch of bunk there are lots of negative Trump content here on Wikipedia עם ישראל חי ( talk) 16:17, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
One of his campaign aides has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Until they do, we're stuck with false and misleading, I think. Space4Time3Continuum2x ( talk) 18:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
This is from one of my personal essays, so it obviously would need some reworking for use here. I don't expect everything to be usable. Our job at Wikipedia is to document the sum total of human knowledge, and that includes facts and opinions. Trump's dubious relationship to truth is obviously a very notable subject, and it's arguably his most notable and best documented character trait, going back to long before his dabblings in politics. It's how he rolls. He's a salesman, and we know that they always rate near the bottom for honesty and ethics. No surprise there. I also have a list of several hundred fully formatted RS on the subject. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 15:05, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
"I think this idea that there is no truth
is the thread that will run through the rest of
the Trump presidency, as it has his entire
candidacy and his presidency so far."
-- Nicolle Wallace [1]
As president, Trump has frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] and experience teaches that, quoting David Zurawik, we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards" [7] because he's a "habitual liar". [8] In general, news organizations have been hesitant to label these statements as "lies". [9] [10] [5]
Fact checkers have kept a close tally of his falsehoods, and, according to one study, the rate of false statements has increased, with the percentage of his words that are part of a false claim rising over the course of his presidency. [5] According to The New York Times, Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office, [2] 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post, [11] and 1,628 total in his first 298 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" analysis of The Washington Post, or an average of 5.5 per day. [12] After 558 days in office, the tally was at 4,229 false or misleading claims, and it had risen to an average of 7.6 per day from 4.9 during Trump's first 100 days in office. [13]
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, told Dana Milbank that, in his six years on the job, "'there's no comparison' between Trump and other politicians. Kessler says politicians' statements get his worst rating — four Pinocchios — 15 percent to 20 percent of the time. Clinton is about 15 percent. Trump is 63 percent to 65 percent." [14] Kessler also wrote: "President Trump is the most fact-challenged politician that The Fact Checker has ever encountered ... the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up." [3]
Maria Konnikova, writing in Politico Magazine, wrote: "All Presidents lie.... But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent.... Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true." [15]
Senior administration officials have also regularly given false, misleading or tortured statements to the media. [16] By May 2017, Politico reported that the repeated untruths by senior officials made it difficult for the media to take official statements seriously. [16]
Trump's presidency started out with a series of falsehoods initiated by Trump himself. The day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. Then he proceeded to exaggerate the size, and Sean Spicer backed up his claims. [17] [18] [19] [20] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures, [21] [22] [23] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by stating that he merely presented " alternative facts". [24] Todd responded by saying "alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods." [25]
Author, social scientist, and researcher Bella DePaulo, an expert on the psychology of lying, stated: "I study liars. I've never seen one like President Trump." Trump outpaced "even the biggest liars in our research." [26] She compared the research on lying with his lies, finding that his lies differed from those told by others in several ways: Trump's total rate of lying is higher than for others; He tells 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies, whereas ordinary people tell 2 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies. 50% of Trump's lies are cruel lies, while it's 1-2% for others. 10% of Trump's lies are kind lies, while it's 25% for others. His lies often "served several purposes simultaneously", and he doesn't "seem to care whether he can defend his lies as truthful". [27]
In a Scientific American article, Jeremy Adam Smith sought to answer the question of how Trump could get away with making so many false statements and still maintain support among his followers. He proposed that "Trump is telling 'blue' lies—a psychologist's term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.... From this perspective, lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency." [28]
David Fahrenthold has investigated Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true. [29] [30] Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York. [31] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses. [32] Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump's claimed charitable giving [33] and casting "doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities." [34]
Here are a few of Trump's notable claims which fact checkers have rated false:
A poll in May 2018 found that "just 13 percent of Americans consider Trump honest and trustworthy". [45]
The Editorial Board of The New York Times took this telling sideswipe at Trump when commenting on the unfitness of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court: "A perfect nominee for a president with no clear relation to the truth." [46]
Trump's incessant attacks on the media, reliable sources, and truth have kept an army of fact checkers busy, the latter having never encountered a more deceptive public person. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged — resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting." [52]
Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact checkers:
"Here's the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump's lying is "off the charts." No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on. Every fact checker — Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact — finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or "pants on fire" false." [53]
The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, Daniel Dale, has been following Donald Trump's campaign for months. He has fact checked thousands of statements and found hundreds of falsehoods:
NOTE: Many of the sources above are older. The situation has not improved, but is rapidly getting much worse, as described by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true." [70]
Trump has been involved in the promotion of a number of conspiracy theories which have lacked meaningful substance. These have included promoting Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011 ("birther" theories); claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2016; claiming that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election (in addition to his electoral college win) if there had not been "millions" of illegal voters in that election cycle; [71] [72] and the Spygate conspiracy theory [73] [74] [75] [71] [72] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton win the 2016 US presidential election. [76] [77] It has been widely described as blatantly false. [73] [78] [76] [79]
Trump also made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in 2017, for which the Department of Justice has said evidence has yet to be provided. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but the Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump. [80] [81] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, writing for The Washington Post, found that Trump has made over 3,000 false or misleading claims (including repeats) in the first 466 days of his presidency. [82] [83]
Trump is a friend of "professional conspiracy theorist" [84] Alex Jones, and has appeared on his show. That's a big red flag. Anyone with any regard for truth would stay away from Jones and InfoWars, but Trump cares not for truth and Jones helped his election. [85] When InfoWars and Jones were banned from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson called it "censorship" and used the well-known Trump-Jones friendship as an argument: "Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump." [85]
I found some more useful sources but don't have the time to actually summarize them or add them so figured I'd leave them here for later:
Praxidicae ( talk) 14:18, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
There are many RS which use the words "lie(s)", "lying", and "liar" about Trump. There has been a very high level debate among editors of major RS as to whether they should use those words, and some have just decided to start doing it, and others won't. So it all depends on the source, and we do use the words used by RS. Here's a section I've written about that subject. It's rough and not ready for use, but with some work, some of it could be used here. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 04:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Media's hesitancy to label him a "liar" | ||
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. | ||
Aaron Blake, senior political reporter at The Washington Post explained: "Whether you like Trump or not, it's demonstrably true that he says things that are easily proved false, over and over again. The question the media has regularly confronted is not whether Trump's facts are correct but whether to say he's deliberately lying or not." [1] David Greenberg, an author and a professor at Rutgers, questioned whether one could always know Trump's intent and motives, and he expressed caution about calling Trump a liar, even though he admitted there was a "... barrage of false, duplicitous, dishonest and misleading statements emanating from Donald Trump and the White House in the last week...." [2] Mary Ann Georgantopoulos, reporter at BuzzFeed, explained why BuzzFeed did not take accusing someone of lying lightly:
On NBC's Meet The Press, January 1, 2017, The Wall Street Journal's Editor in Chief Gerard Baker said the journal wouldn't call Trump's false statements "lies": "I'd be careful about using the word 'lie'. 'Lie' implies much more than just saying something that's false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead." [4] Three days later he wrote: Trump, 'Lies' and Honest Journalism, By Gerard Baker, Jan. 4, 2017
Veteran reporter Dan Rather strongly disagreed with Baker's position, calling it "deeply disturbing". [6] He proposed a very different approach: "A lie, is a lie, is a lie." He wrote: "These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures." He directly criticized the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, and also Donald Trump, for lying, and wrote: "The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before." [7] Greg Sargent also responded to Baker, stating that "Donald Trump 'lies.' A lot. And news organizations should say so." He also referred to "the nature of Trump's dishonesty — the volume, ostentatiousness, nonchalance, and imperviousness to correction at the hands of factual reality...." [8] Sargent described how Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of The New York Times, wrote that Trump's lies should be called lies "because he has shown a willingness to go beyond the 'normal sort of obfuscation that politicians traffic in.'" [8] Adrienne LaFrance: Calling Out a Presidential Lie [9] The New York Times editorial board has used “lie” to describe Trump’s rampant abuse of facts. And Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin has taken the media to task for not using the word. Other outlets ― including MSNBC, New York Magazine and HuffPost ― will use the word when it’s merited. [4]
Don't Call Trump a Liar—He Doesn't Even Care About the Truth, Lauren Griffin, Newsweek, January 29, 2017
"Eric Boehlert, senior fellow at the media watchdog group Media Matters, has a strong message for the media trying to keep up with President Donald Trump: Get ready to call him out, and get ready to call him a liar if you have to.
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I feel that the false statements listed need dates, maybe some extra prose to tie them into the relevant time period and related articles. Without knowing when he made these statements I find it hard to get the full meaning from the section. And checking the sources to find out takes time and is a poor reader experience. — Frayæ ( Talk/ Spjall) 17:39, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
best known ones with the most impactis subjective original research; we should not be political analysts. A summary/overview level would be more encyclopedic and of more value to readers, in my opinion. ― Mandruss ☎ 00:53, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Home from work now. (Even though I'm retired, I keep active.) I agree completely with everything above, so we need to work on it and be more cautious. I see, from a quick glance, that a number of items have been added by User:Soibangla, who happens to be a very productive editor. Kudos for their industriousness. Now let's see that energy channeled and refined (see below)
Thanks also to User:Mandruss for cite cleanup. Together we can all get this article in good shape and "get it right".
Some advice I received was to "define some inclusion criteria and put it at the top of the section in an <!--invisible comment--> before things get out of control with people adding stuff right and left. Something along the lines of "widely reported in reliable sources and one that he states repeatedly after it has been debunked." So stuff like the US having the highest tax rate, but not every little mis-stated statistic." That's good advice.
I see this section as a near certain, and logical, candidate for a SPINOFF list article, with a shorter section, with the most notable false claims and a "main" hatnote, left in this main article.
So right now, let's stop adding more to this section and start improving what's already there. Several things to do:
As with everything Trump does, as the master self-promoter he is, everything he does is notable, including this subject. He's "high energy" and very productive, also in this area. Therefore we can afford to be choosy and include quality content, because there's plenty of junk to choose from. There are plenty of good fact checkers, and plenty of very notable people and specialists who have documented, analyzed, and commented on this. Use them. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
This belongs in the history section: (This ref [1] is used elsewhere in the article, so, to avoid duplication, not including it in the text below, but placing it here so it works below.) -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 04:20, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
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Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
06:39, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The Trump family has a long history of untruthfulness. In an article entitled "The Swedish Whopper: Donald Trump's Long-standing Struggle With the Truth," the Trump family lie is revealed to be their claim, maintained for two generations, that they are Swedish, when in fact they are Germans. Donald's father, Fred Trump, "for a reason that has never been disclosed, began telling people that he was Swedish." [1]
The lie was repeated by Fred's son Donald, who, in The Art of the Deal (1987), repeated and embellished the lie by claiming that his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child," [2] even though he left his family and emigrated from his home town, Kallstadt, Germany, in 1885, when he was 16 years old. [3] Wayne Barrett confirmed that Donald also claimed that his father, Fred Trump, was "born in New Jersey to Swedish parents; in fact, he was born in the Bronx to German parents." [4]
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Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
07:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Would this be on-topic? I think so. He has a long history of creating and/or pushing conspiracy theories. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:52, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Trump has been involved in the promotion of a number of conspiracy theories which have lacked meaningful substance. These have included promoting Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011 ("birther" theories); claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2016; claiming that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election (in addition to his electoral college win) if there had not been "millions" of illegal voters in that election cycle; [1] [2] and the Spygate conspiracy theory [3] [4] [5] [1] [2] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton win the 2016 US presidential election. [6] [7] It has been widely described as blatantly false. [3] [8] [6] [9]
Trump also made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in 2017, for which the Department of Justice has said evidence has yet to be provided. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but the Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump. [10] [11]
Trump is a friend of "professional conspiracy theorist" [12] Alex Jones, and has appeared on his show. When InfoWars and Jones were banned from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson called it "censorship" and used the well-known Trump-Jones friendship as an argument: "Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump." [13]
Done --
BullRangifer (
talk) PingMe
07:12, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
"Donald Trump's false and misleading claims" is a title that narrows the scope too much. We don't want to end up with a list article which mentions the subject without doing it justice. We also need a title and scope which doesn't bring down the wrath of the AfD and censorship mob.
The subject is quite large, having been broached in many different ways and many different angles by RS. My approach to article creation starts with notability: Has a subject caught my attention because multiple RS are dealing with it? Then maybe there's something for a new article, or at least a new section in an existing article. I then collect all the RS I can find, and I create several Google Alerts to keep me up to date. I then group like with like to get an idea of how many angles there are to the story: history, notable persons or events, controversies, consequences, etc.
This subject is huge as everyone has noticed it, is affected, and all RS have mentioned it, often quite a lot. It also has international attention. World leaders don't trust or believe Trump.
The title must be NPOV, yet describe the scope. It must be both specific and vague, enough to define the outer limits of the subject, while allowing for growth within those limits. Too specific a title can demand a list article. This subject is far too large for that.
Here are titles going from wordy (the full scope), to simple, which still allows that full scope:
1. "Donald Trump's controversial relationship to truth, facts, and reality"
2. "Trump's relationship to truth, facts, and reality"
3. "Trump's relationship to truth"
I have an outline which my collection of hundreds of RS has naturally created, with multiple RS in each section:
1.1 The Trump family lie 1.2 Trump's relationship to truth and lies 1.2.1 "Truthful hyperbole" 1.2.2 "Alternative" and "fake" facts 1.3 Trump's war on truth and the media 1.3.1 Trump calls negative stories "fake news" 1.3.2 Trump as source of real fake news 1.3.3 Seen as an authoritarian tactic 1.3.4 Killing the truth 1.3.5 Attacks on the "lying press" 1.3.6 Use of the "Big Lie" technique 1.4 Media's hesitancy to label him a "liar" 1.4.1 Liar or bullshitter? 1.5 "Gaslighting" the public 1.6 Followers in spite of lies 1.7 How big a liar? 1.8 Post-truth President and campaign 1.9 Types of lies 1.9.1 Some notable examples 1.9.2 Lies about charitable giving 1.10 Truthful statements and self-contradictions One item found: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/09/trumps-claim-that-the-number-of-officer-deaths-in-2016-increased-56-percent-from-2015/ 1.11 Motivations 1.12 Lies as a test of loyalty 1.13 Lying as an aspect of his mental health 1.14 Trump's ignorance and lies 1.15 Damaged reputation and credibility 1.16 James Comey's statements under oath 1.17 Involvement of Trump's surrogates and defenders 1.18 Fact checking Trump 1.19 Biographers and ghostwriters 1.19.1 Mark Singer 1.19.2 Tony Schwartz 1.20 Article series 1.20.1 "Trump and the Truth", New Yorker series of 14 articles 1.20.2 "The Problem with Trump", Los Angeles Times series of 6 articles 1.20.2.1 REACTIONS to LA TIMES SERIES
Not all of those sections should be used or even included, but many of them have enough stuff worthy of inclusion. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 14:32, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
That article mentions the following attempt at deception, but we need to condense it for use here. Although Trump stated "I said it", he later tried to sow doubt about the tape's authenticity, including that it might not be his voice. Here's what it says now:
In 2017, it was reported that Trump had questioned the authenticity of the tape in multiple private conversations that year, including one with a Republican senator, even though he had already acknowledged that the voice was his, and apologized, after the tape was revealed. [1] [2]
In January 2017, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women's genitals. [3]
How should we mention this? It's pretty notable. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 22:07, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
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I understand the difficulty of making distinctions between flatly false statements and "lies." No one can prove that Trump is knowingly making flatly false statements. He could, after all, be delusional (which is arguably worse than being a liar, but I digress). It's the Constanza Doctrine: it's not a "lie" if you believe it.
That said, Trump repeats certain flatly false statements long after they've been decisively debunked by multiple factcheckers. Case in point: on several occasions he has asserted that US Steel is opening six, then seven, and most recently "a minimum of eight" new steel mills — well after it was confirmed that, in fact, US Steel has not announced any new mills.
IMO, these habitual flatly false statements should be highlighted in this and/or another spinoff article. If, say, at least three of five recognized factcheckers (NYT, WaPo, AP, Factcheck, Politifact) have determined that a Trump statement is flatly false (not merely misleading), and yet Trump continues to repeat those statements afterward then we should present that statement with some designation (color-coding?) to indicate to readers that it's a particularly brazen falsehood. Then the reader can assess for themselves if that constitutes a knowing and willful falsehood, more commonly known as a "lie." soibangla ( talk) 17:55, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
<ref>
tag has too many names (see the
help page).
[1]Frayæ, in this move, the chronology is reversed. I deliberately placed the "family lie" as a precursor to everything else (what we normally would have in an "early history" section), since Donald was born into a deceptive (salesmen) family, and as an adult he even embellished and added to the family lie. Take a look at it.
I think we need to think in more fundamental and broad terms than just individual "false statements". We need to look more broadly at his "relationship to truth". Otherwise we end up with so narrow a scope that we can replace this with a list article. There is far more written about the larger ethical issues than just about individual statements. Leave room in the arrangement and title for that. It's not all a chronological issue.
A section for commentary and analysis is needed. I have lots of very notable content from important people for such a section. This also has international aspects regarding credibility, as his reputation, and the reputation of the USA, is seriously damaged. Our foreign policy is suffering because no one trusts him. Our relations to foreign intelligence agencies is also damaged, as they no longer dare to share intelligence with us, since Trump's carelessness with classified information, and direct line to Putin, endangers sources. The moment Trump (and Devin Nunes and Dana Rohrabacher) learns something of a classified nature, the Russians and Chinese also learn it. RS comment on this aspect too.
Bishonen, I definitely like this change to more NPOV language. That was originally from an essay of mine and needed cleaning up. Thanks for doing that.
Otherwise this is looking good. Just think broader and not only about individual false statements. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 21:41, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
- Lead section
- Business career
- In The Art of the Deal
- 2016 presidential campaign
- Presidency
- Fact checking
- Credibility
- Commentary and analysis
- Post-presidency
- See also
- Notable false claims (spinoff linked in see also)
- References
- External links
Sources
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This subject (Notable false claims) is a clear candidate for a SPINOFF list article, with a shorter section, with the most notable false claims and a "main" hatnote, left in this main article.
Possible titles, which would also define the scope (which is much narrower than this article):
There should be a section for those falsehoods which have been debunked, but which he keeps repeating. His followers don't even know what he's doing to them.
Keep in mind that he has a record number of "pants on fire" statements to choose from. As he would have it, "no one tops Trump". -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Find ways and places to include these:
-- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 03:11, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
There's an endless stream of reliable news articles about Trump's false statements, and about his treatment of facts more generally. E.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-leaders.html When are we going to have more than 5 sentences on this subject? Isn't it past time for a spinoff article? R2 ( bleep) 16:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
what a bunch of bunk there are lots of negative Trump content here on Wikipedia עם ישראל חי ( talk) 16:17, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
One of his campaign aides has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Until they do, we're stuck with false and misleading, I think. Space4Time3Continuum2x ( talk) 18:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)