Today's Beau

Hey, MAGA - instead of ruining everybody's weekend with all that culture war bullshit, maybe you guys should spend a little time figuring out a fucking calendar works.

Equal Justice

From the comments: "Sounds like Menendez qualifies as an honorary Republican."

If it's proved that Menendez committed the crimes he's charged with, I hope they burn his ass to the ground, and I hope Biden makes a big noise about it: "We're serious about this accountability stuff, guys - nobody's above the law."

Today's Beau, etc

To shut down or not to shut down.

Trump always tells us what's really going on. So when he says, "This is the most united the Republican Party has ever been", you know the GOP is breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.

Because this divide-n-conquer shit always comes back to kick your ass.

Today's Beau

70% of us recognize that helping Ukraine is important to US interests.

58% of us see Ukraine as important to us personally.

This should not be an issue. Trump needs to get Putin's dick out of his mouth, and Speaker Johnson needs to get Trump's dick out his mouth - and take the fucking vote.

Today's Beau

There will be questions. This ain't over.

Today's Beau

ICYMI:

Hunter Biden Slams Special Prosecutor for Confusing Sawdust With Cocaine

Well, this is more than awkward.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys argued on Tuesday that U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s investigation into their client included some major factual errors, including mistaking a pile of sawdust for cocaine.

In a court filing, the law team challenged that what the Department of Justice’s discovery revealed cannot be taken “at face value.”

In previous filings, Weiss had accused the president’s son of taking a picture of several lines of cocaine. But Biden’s team says otherwise, claiming that Biden not only didn’t take the photograph, but that the picture doesn’t depict cocaine at all.

Instead, the picture shows three lines of sawdust, jokingly propped by a carpenter who took the photograph and sent it to Biden’s then psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, who in turn sent it to the junior Biden.

“Mistaking sawdust for cocaine sounds more like a storyline from one of the 1980s Police Academy comedies than what should be expected in a high-profile prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice,” the team wrote in its retort.

A court document sharing the image also included the texts from Ablow, who wrote, “This one in my office is of lines of sawdust sent to me by a master carpenter who was a coke addict. I told him that, ultimately, he would have to choose between his art and his drug. He sent me the photo and a message that said, ‘Made my choice.’”

“Hope you do, too,” Ablow added.

The new documents also accuse the special counsel of being swayed by Alexander Smirnov, whose entire testimony about the Biden family’s connection to Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings was blown up last week when he was indicted by the DOJ for lying to prosecutors.

“The Smirnov allegations infected this case,” Hunter’s lawyers wrote, arguing that the special counsel threw out Biden’s plea deal while following Smirnov “down his rabbit hole of lies.”

“Lo and behold, some seven months later, the Special Counsel finally figured out that Mr. Smirnov was lying—which should have been obvious to everyone, certainly by August 2020 when DOJ closed the investigation,” they wrote.

Today's Beau

Daddy State Awareness Guide

THE BASICS:

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything creates chaos, which helps condition us to stop thinking, and look to them for "guidance".
• Once we're totally dependent on them, we'll accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

Today's Beau

MAGA dolts are nearly done with the "believe absurdities" part of their training, and are eager to move into the "commit atrocities" phase.

Today's Beau

It's Trump's fault.

Today's Beau

Remember - it doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense.

House Republicans are intent on squashing the Border Bill even though it has everything they want - but if they pass it now, they lose the "crisis at the border" issue they're counting on to get them re-elected.

I just want an estimate, fellas - how far up Trump's ass do you intend to crawl?

Daddy State Awareness

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything creates chaos, which helps condition us to stop thinking, and look to them for "guidance".
• Once we're totally dependent on them, we'll accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

Today's Beau

Are they mad because Comer hasn't produced the evidence? No - they're mad because he wanted to get the evidence before he went forward with impeachment.

As weird as it seems, given his endless insinuations on DumFux news, Comer wanted real evidence, and that makes him the bad guy in the eyes of the MAGA Clown Caucus in the US Congress.

BTW, this does not make Comer some kinda hero. He hasn't suddenly come down with a case of good conscience - the guy has no integrity, and no honor. But he's in with a buncha dickheads who have figured out how to have even less than none.

Today's Beau

The fuckery:

Arizona GOP chair resigns, alleges pressure from Kari Lake team

The chair of the Arizona Republican Party announced he will resign Wednesday after leaked audio appeared to show him attempting to pay Senate candidate Kari Lake not to run for office in 2024.

Jeff DeWit said that the audio was “selectively edited.” He explained, however, that he chose to resign because he was threatened by members of Lake’s team that more tapes would be released if he did not step down. Lake’s campaign has denied the allegation.

Lake publicly demanded DeWit resign over the audio Tuesday, calling him “corrupt” and “compromised.”

The audio recording was first reported by The Daily Mail.

“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” DeWit reportedly told the Senate hopeful in the recording, saying only that these figures were from the “east.”

“Just say, is there a number at which,” DeWit begins, before being cut off.

“I can be bought? That’s what it’s about,” Lake retorted.

DeWit allegedly responded, “You can take a pause for a couple of years … You can go right back to what you’re doing.”

Lake — who ran an unsuccessful bid for Arizona governor in 2022 — said she would not accept a billion dollars to leave the Senate race.

On Wednesday, DeWit said the call was not a form of bribe, but rather a conversation about hiring Lake at his personal company. He said she was already an employee when the recording was made early last year.

“Contrary to accusations of bribery, my discussions were transparent and intended to offer perspective, not coercion,” the outgoing GOP chair wrote in a statement. “Our relationship was based on friendship, and the conversation that is now being scrutinized was open, unguarded exchange between friends in the living room of her house.”

“I genuinely believed I was offering a helpful perspective to someone I considered a friend,” he added.

He continued, saying Lake has been “on a mission to destroy” him since the conversation, and condemned her “disturbing tendency” to record interactions without the other party’s consent.

“This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Trump,” DeWit argued. “I question how effective a United States Senator can be when they can not be trusted to engage in private and confidential conversations.”

He also alleged that the conversation was a “set up,” adding that Lake “orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party.”

“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he continued. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording.”

“I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk,” he added.

In response to DeWit’s resignation and allegations of threats, Lake’s campaign said the “tape speaks for itself.”

“No one from the Kari Lake campaign threatened or blackmailed DeWit. It is unfortunate that Dewit hasn’t recognized how unethical his behavior was and still hasn’t apologized to Arizona Republicans,” senior advisors Caroline Wren and Garrett Ventry said in a statement.

“DeWit’s false claims are just par for the course,” they continued. “The Arizona GOP must be relieved to have his resignation. Now we can focus on getting ethical leadership and win big in 2024.”

DeWit served as the state party chair since January 2023, after working as the chief operating officer for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 White House bids.

Lake, a former news anchor, has faced pushback against her Senate bid. She has been a leading booster of former President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, and fought her own legal battle after the gubernatorial loss in 2022.

She said Tuesday that she didn’t have anyone in mind to replace DeWit.

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought. What I want to do is make sure we get the corrupt people out,” she said.

It’s not the first time Lake has been accused of recording others without consent. Last year, she recorded an impromptu airport lounge conversation with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) — the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Senate seat — confronting him over policy issues.

Lake, DeWit and the Arizona GOP have not responded to a previous request for comment on the recording.

Today's Beau

Today's Beau

Democrats understand they're called to serve

Republicans think they're entitled to rule

Today's Beau

"The grifter culture of Conservative inc."

NRA civil trial threatens to shake up gun rights organization even with leader’s resignation

Wayne LaPierre, two other current and former NRA leaders and the organization itself are facing a lawsuit that alleges they violated nonprofit laws and misused NRA funds to finance their lavish lifestyles.

Wayne LaPierre’s civil trial, slated to begin Monday in New York, still threatens to unravel the National Rifle Association despite his resignation from the powerful and prominent gun rights group.

LaPierre, 74, had led the NRA for more than 30 years as the organization’s executive vice president. He announced his departure Friday as jury selection neared an end.

He, along with two other current and former NRA leaders and the organization as a whole are fending off a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2020 that alleges they violated nonprofit laws and misused millions of dollars of NRA funds to finance lavish lifestyles for themselves.

The jury will spend the next six weeks in a Manhattan courtroom hearing testimony from roughly 120 witnesses.

If the jurors find the individual defendants liable, they will recommend the amount of money that each defendant would have to repay the NRA.

They would have also been tasked with recommending whether LaPierre should be ousted from the helm of the group, which is now moot.

But the trial outcome may still have important ramifications, according to Shannon Watts, who founded the gun safety group Moms Demand Action in 2012 in part to challenge the gun lobby.

State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen, who has the final say over monetary damages and remedies, could determine whether the defendants should be permanently barred from serving on the board of any charity in New York and whether an independent monitor should oversee the NRA’s finances.

“It was never just about Wayne LaPierre,” Watts said, adding that the organization “needs to be taken down at the studs.”

In his announcement, LaPierre said he has been a “card-carrying member” of the NRA for most of his adult life and that he would “never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom.”

“My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever,” LaPierre said. He cited health reasons for his exit, which will take effect Jan. 31.

James touted LaPierre’s resignation as “an important victory.”

“LaPierre’s resignation validates our claims against him, but it will not insulate him from accountability,” she said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting our case in court.”

A ‘personal piggy bank’

The lawsuit alleges that LaPierre diverted millions of dollars away from the group’s charitable mission for his personal use of private jets, expensive meals, travel consultants, private security and trips to the Bahamas for him and his family.

The attorney general claims LaPierre spent more than $500,000 of the NRA’s assets to fly himself and his family members to the Bahamas. From May 2015 to April 2019, the NRA incurred over $1 million in expenses for private flights on which LaPierre was not a passenger, according to the lawsuit.

LaPierre received more than $1.2 million in expense reimbursements from 2013 to 2017, the lawsuit alleges.

The other defendants are also accused of violating nonprofit laws and internal policies as they enriched themselves, the suit says, contributing to the NRA’s loss of more than $64 million in three years.

They are Wilson “Woody” Phillips, a former NRA treasurer and chief financial officer, and John Frazer, the corporate secretary and general counsel.

Joshua Powell, a former chief of staff and executive director of general operations, was also a defendant. But he told NBC News on Friday evening that he had officially settled the case against him. The attorney general’s office confirmed the settlement in a statement Saturday.

At a news conference announcing the lawsuit in 2020, James, a Democrat, accused the four defendants of using the NRA as a “personal piggy bank.”

None of the defendants has been criminally charged as part of James’ lawsuit.

Potential key moments

The defendants have collectively named 86 witnesses, a court filing shows. The plaintiffs named 36 witnesses, including former NRA higher-ups.

One of them is Oliver North, a former NRA president who was in a heated battle with LaPierre when he left the group in 2019. North had reportedly attempted to remove LaPierre from NRA leadership after he began investigating possible financial improprieties.

Another key witness for the plaintiffs is Chris Cox, the NRA’s longtime top lobbyist before he was pushed out of the group in 2019 amid leadership turmoil.

The testimonies from the two former NRA insiders, who have not yet spoken publicly, could reveal details that may be especially eye-opening to current NRA members, according to Justin Wagner, senior director of investigations with Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention nonprofit.

“This is a monumental moment in the organization’s history,” said Wagner, who is also a former prosecutor in the New York attorney general’s office.

“The main witnesses to the NRA’s mismanagement are adamant gun rights supporters,” he added. “I think those firsthand accounts will really be impactful at trial.”

The plaintiffs have asked for two hours to deliver their opening statements Monday, a court filing shows. The remarks come after failed attempts by the defendants to dismiss the lawsuit, change the court venue and countersue. The NRA also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

James initially set out to dissolve the NRA as part of her suit. However, Cohen dismissed that effort in 2022, saying her complaint “does not allege the type of public harm that is the legal linchpin for imposing the ‘corporate death penalty.’”

The lawsuit also targets the NRA as a whole. The organization has operated as a nonprofit charitable corporation in New York since 1871. Its assets are required by law to be used in a way that serves the interests of its membership and advances its charitable mission.

In the last few years, the NRA has been considerably weaker, with less influence in the political sphere and fewer members, Watts and Wagner said.

Membership fell to 4.2 million from nearly 6 million five years ago, The New York Times reported. Membership dues dropped by $14 million from 2021 to 2022, according to an audit filed as part of the lawsuit.

The NRA did not respond to a request for comment about the trial. In 2020, the group said in a statement that the lawsuit was a “baseless, premeditated attack” on the NRA and on Second Amendment freedoms.

LaPierre previously called the investigation an “unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA.”

In a statement Friday, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said they “look forward to proving our case and ensuring all charities in New York adhere to the rule of law.”

Today's Beau

Run away now, BoHo.

Ready, set, nope.

Today's Beau

Question: What has Putin won?

Short answer: Jack shit.

He wanted Ukraine in Moscow's orbit

Nope - he drove Kyiv into the arms of the west

He wanted to degrade NATO and stall its expansion

Nope - NATO has expanded, and it's stronger that ever

He wanted resources and industrial capacity and a warm water seaport

Nope - he can't even keep his shit at Sevastopol now

He wanted to show his power and global reach - that he can go toe-to-toe with anybody

Nope - he can't even go toe-to-toe with a country half the size of Russia, using 45-year-old NATO surplus. And he's lost half his Black Sea Fleet (including a submarine) to a country that doesn't even have an operable navy

Today's Beau

Has has to know there's little chance for it, so it makes me wonder if Hawley is signaling his intention to directly challenge McConnell.

Today's Beau

Republicans are leaning hard into this authoritarian strong man shit, so if they can torpedo Ukraine, then Putin looks good, and Republicans get to crow about how "right" they've been on social media, which gets them more and bigger donations, and more and bigger power.

These assholes watch a movie where the morality proposition is clearly stated and easy to understand, and then get their panties all knotted up when Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne throw in together to knock off Liberty Valance.

Today's Beau

Trump pumps out the lies faster than I can write them down.

Fact check: 14 of Trump’s false claims on ‘Meet the Press’

Former President Donald Trump delivered a laundry list of his familiar election lies and other false claims – plus some new falsehoods on subjects ranging from abortion laws to his policy on dealing with drug cartels – in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The show’s new moderator, Kristen Welker, promptly corrected some of the false claims; others were aired unchallenged. Here’s a fact check of 14 of the false claims, plus a check on another important claim for which there is no evidence.

This is not a comprehensive list of the inaccurate remarks Trump made in the interview.

Infanticide

Trump, attacking Democrats on abortion policy, claimed, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth.” He also said specifically, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”

Facts First: This is false. Killing a child after birth is not allowed in any state, and New York did not pass legislation permitting infanticide.

A law New York approved in 2019 makes abortion illegal after 24 weeks with the exception of cases where the fetus is not viable or the abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” The law does not legalize post-birth murder. Since its passage, however, it has been the subject of online misinformation falsely claiming it does.

There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing the baby.

Brad Raffensperger’s comments

Trump, who is facing criminal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, defended the January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told numerous lies about supposed election fraud and pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to give him a victory in the state.

Trump said: “Brad Raffensperger, the head – who, by the way, last week said I didn’t do anything wrong. He said, ‘That was a negotiation.’ Brad Raffensperger, who I was dealing with, I appreciate that he said that. But he said last week, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Raffensperger did not say Trump didn’t do anything wrong on the January 2021 call; Raffensperger has been sharply critical of Trump’s behavior on the call.

Trump did not specify what he was talking about, but it’s possible he was mischaracterizing Raffensperger’s testimony at a late-August court hearing on the attempt by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get his own Georgia criminal case moved from state court to federal court. Nowhere in Raffensperger’s testimony did he say Trump didn’t do anything wrong or defend Trump’s words.

Rather, Raffensperger testified that “I didn’t take it as inappropriate” when Meadows told him on the January 2021 call that he (Meadows) hoped they could reach an agreement to allow the Trump side to look more fully at the election data. (Meadows had asked if, “in the spirit of cooperation and compromise,” they could “at least have a discussion” to seek a “less litigious” path forward.) That Raffensperger remark was in response to a question that was solely about Meadows’ words, not Trump’s words.

Raffensperger published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in early September criticizing efforts to use the 14th Amendment to get Trump disqualified from the 2024 ballot on the grounds that Trump engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the US – Raffensperger argued that “denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American” – but Raffensperger didn’t even mention the call in that op-ed. When he was then asked about the call in a Fox interview about the op-ed, he said he had done due diligence before the call and knew that Trump’s various fraud claims were unfounded. He offered no defense of Trump’s conduct.

In his 2021 book, Raffensperger criticized Trump’s behavior on the call at length. He wrote “the president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.” He wrote that, regarding some of Trump’s language on the call, “I felt then – and still believe today – that this was a threat.” And he wrote that, at another point in the call, Trump was doing “nothing but an attempt at manipulation” by “using what he believes is the power of his position to threaten [another Georgia elections official] and me with prosecution if we don’t do what he tells us to do.”

A New York Times article about presidential records

Trump denounced the criminal charges against him over his retention of classified documents after his presidency. He said, “I fall within the Presidential Records Act. It’s very simple. It’s a civil thing. In fact, The New York Times of all institutions did a story, and it was headlined, ‘Please, please, please, Mr. President, could we take a look at the documents.’ And they said in the story that the only way you can get documents from a president is if you go there and say please. Because this is civil.”

Facts First: Trump inaccurately described this New York Times article. The January article did not say the only way “you” can get documents from a president is saying please. Rather, the article explained that one particular entity, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lacks “independent” enforcement power and is limited to polite requests – but that another entity, the Justice Department, enforces laws governing presidential documents and classified records. In other words, contrary to Trump’s suggestion here, the article did not say that the existence of the Presidential Records Act means there can be no enforcement, period, over presidential documents.

The Times article, whose online headline is “As Archives Leans on Ex-Presidents, Its Only Weapon Is ‘Please,’” explained that NARA is unable to compel ex-presidents to take action. But then the article said this: “Enforcement of the laws governing presidential records and classified documents is up to the Justice Department, which has opened investigations into the actions of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, who have each discovered classified records at their homes.” The article subsequently included a paragraph in which an expert was quoted as saying, “If there are violations of law, they can be referred to the Justice Department for action…But NARA itself has no police force or ability to enforce its own actions.”

Biden’s false claims

Trump said of Biden: “Look at all the lies he’s told over the last couple of weeks. He said he was at the World Trade Center and he wasn’t. He said he flew airplanes, right? He didn’t. He said he drove trucks, and he didn’t. Everything he says is, like, a lie.”

Facts First: Trump made a false claim here while denouncing Biden for making false claims: Biden has not said that he flew airplanes. This was not a one-time Trump mistake; he was even more specific at a September 8 rally, suggesting that Biden had claimed he “used to be a fighter jet pilot.”

It’s true that Biden has falsely claimed to have driven a tractor-trailer truck, though we aren’t aware of him saying this “over the last couple of weeks” as Trump said here. And Biden did make a false claim last week about when he visited the World Trade Center after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; Biden visited Ground Zero, but he did so nine days after the attacks, not “the next day” as he claimed.

Trump’s comments about drug cartels

Welker said to Trump, “If elected, you say you would order the Defense Department to use special forces to inflict maximum damage on drug cartels.” But Trump responded, “I didn’t say that. No. People said I said that.” He repeated, “I didn’t say that.”

Facts First: Trump said that. In a video he released in January, which remains on his website, he said that, if elected president again, “I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber-warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.”

The media and the war in Ukraine

Trump claimed, “I will say this: something’s going on, and it’s not good for Ukraine. Because the news is no longer reporting about the war. The fake news. They don’t report about the war anymore. You don’t find much reporting. That means that Ukraine’s losing. Okay? I see very little reporting from NBC, your network. I see very little reporting from NBC, ABC, from CBS, from anyone about the war.”

Facts First: It’s not true that news outlets “don’t report about the war anymore,” though the amount of television coverage on broadcast news networks has certainly declined from the first months after Russia’s invasion in 2022.

CNN continues to do extensive daily reporting on the war on television and online. NBC News wrote in its own fact check of this Trump claim: “That is demonstrably false. In the last two weeks alone, NBC News has published dozens of stories and broadcasts on all platforms about the Ukraine war.” The fact check cited specific examples, then continued, “CBS News and ABC News have had dozens of articles and videos on their websites, too.”

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Trump criticized President Joe Biden for releasing a large quantity of crude oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to keep prices down in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and Trump claimed that this is a reserve “I had a lot to do with filling up for the first time ever.” Trump added later in the interview, “He wanted to have low gas prices for an election. And now, we have nothing left.”

Facts First: Trump made two false claims here. First, contrary to his repeated assertions, it’s not true that he filled up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; the reserve actually contained fewer barrels of crude oil when he left office in early 2021 than when he took office in 2017. Second, while the amount of crude in the reserve is at a 40-year low, it’s not even close to true that “we have nothing left” at present; the reserve remains the world’s largest even at its current level, with about 350.6 million barrels of crude as of the week ending September 8.

The fact that the amount of oil in the reserve fell during the Trump presidency is not all because of him. The law requires some mandatory sales from the reserve for budget reasons, and when Trump issued a 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels and fill the reserve to its maximum capacity, Democrats in Congress blocked the required funding. Nonetheless, he didn’t fill up the reserve as he claims.

The size of the national debt

Trump said, “We have to save our country. We have $35 trillion in debt.”

Facts First: The national debt is very large, but Trump exaggerated its size. It is right around $33 trillion (it was $32.99 trillion as of Thursday, the latest day for which we have official data), not “$35 trillion.”

We didn’t publish a fact check when he claimed at a campaign rally on September 8 that it was $34 trillion, but this is now an exaggeration of an exaggeration – and $2 trillion is certainly a significant difference.

The price of bacon

While discussing inflation, Trump said, “Things are not going, right now, very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years – which CNN previously debunked when he made it earlier this month – is grossly inaccurate.

The average price of bacon is higher than it was when he left office, but it is nowhere near “up five times.” The average price of sliced bacon was $6.502 per pound in August 2023, compared with $5.831 in January 2021, according to federal data – an increase of about 11.5%, not even close to the 400% increase Trump keeps claiming.

Military equipment left to the Taliban

Criticizing the way Biden handled the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Trump repeated a claim about how much military equipment was left to the Taliban when the Afghan government and armed forces collapsed.

“We gave $85 billion worth of equipment to the Taliban,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

Trump and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Look, I had a very good relationship with him. And yet nobody was tougher on Russia than me. I stopped Nord Stream 2. You never heard of Nord Stream 2 – that was the pipeline – until I got involved. I said, ‘Nord Stream 2.’ People that were sophisticated, military people, and political people never heard of Nord Stream 2. I had it ended. The pipeline was dead.”

Facts First: It’s not true that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was “dead” during Trump’s presidency or that he “had it ended.” While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already estimated to be 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

Second, while we don’t know what any particular “military people” and “political people” might have said to Trump, it’s not true that, in general, “you never heard of Nord Stream 2” before he began discussing it as president. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness of the project, but he certainly wasn’t the one to bring it to the federal government’s attention.

The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.

Trump blames Pelosi for January 6

Trump repeatedly attempted to blame Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House on January 6, 2021, for the riot that day at the US Capitol – claiming she rejected his offer, days prior, of 10,000 National Guard troops. Trump said, “Listen: Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security. She turned down 10,000 soldiers. If she didn’t turn down the soldiers, you wouldn’t have had January 6.” He said explicitly, “She’s responsible for January 6.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims about Pelosi are comprehensively inaccurate.

First, the speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. (The Senate was led at the time by a Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell; McConnell is not at fault either, but Trump has not blamed him while casting blame on Pelosi.)

Second, there is no evidence for the claim that Pelosi rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops in advance of January 6. Her office has explicitly said she was not even presented with such an offer, telling CNN last year claims to the contrary are “lies.” Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “The former occupant of the White House has always been about projection. He knows he’s responsible for [the riot], so he projects it onto others.”

Third, even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority is delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).

Fourth, it’s worth noting the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found “no evidence” Trump gave any actual order for 10,000 Guard troops, and the Biden-era Pentagon told The Washington Post in 2021 it has no record of any such order. Miller testified to the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol that Trump had, in a January 5 phone call, briefly and informally floated the idea of having 10,000 troops present on January 6 but did not issue any directive to that effect. Miller said, “I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction.”

Fifth, at around 3:49 p.m. during the riot, Pelosi was filmed while on the phone with Miller urging him to hurry Guard troops to the Capitol, telling him “just get them there” and to “just pretend for a moment this was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege.” Trump made no such plea; the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found that Trump did not call any “high-level Defense official” during the riot, that Trump never ordered a Guard deployment – Miller did so – and that Trump never instructed any law enforcement agency to assist.

Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday: “Chuck Schumer and I begged him to send the troops, again and again.” She added, “These Trumpites were attacking the Capitol, fighting the police, threatening my life and the life of the vice president — we’re turning down the troops?”

Trump’s indictments

Trump referred to the four indictments against him as “Biden indictments.” He repeatedly claimed that Biden told Attorney General Merrick Garland to “indict him,” saying at one point that Biden “went to the attorney general of the United States, and he told them, ‘Indict Trump.’”

Facts First: This claim is not supported by any evidence. There is no sign that Biden has been involved in the decision to criminally investigate or prosecute Trump, let alone any proof that he personally went to Garland and urged him to indict Trump. Biden said in June that he had not spoken to Garland on the subject and was “not going to speak with him.”

Grand juries made up of ordinary citizens – in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC – approved the indictments in each of Trump’s criminal cases. The two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden directed it.

The 2020 election

Trump repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him and he claimed that he was the real winner.

Facts First: These claims are false. The election was not rigged, Trump lost fair and square to Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232, and there is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state.