WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump[1] gloated about a court case that didn’t offer him the vindication he implied in his triumphant tweet. That capped a week of distortions, half-truths and swerves in his declarations on the economy, North Korea and other issues of the time.
A week in review:
TRUMP[2]: “Just won lawsuit filed by the DNC and a bunch of Democrat crazies trying to claim the Trump Campaign (and others), colluded with Russia. They haven’t figured out that this was an excuse for them losing the election!” - tweet Friday.
THE FACTS: Trump[3] is wrong in saying the Democratic National Committee filed the lawsuit. If he’s suggesting that the outcome of the case exonerates his campaign on allegations that Trump[4] associates colluded with Russia, that’s off-base, too.
In the suit, two Democratic donors and a former chief of staff of the DNC’s finance office alleged that the Trump campaign and Trump[5] associate Roger Stone conspired with Russian agents and WikiLeaks to publish hacked Democratic emails.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle dismissed the suit, saying it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction and was faulty for other technical reasons. But she did not weigh in on the merits of the complaint.
In fact, she wrote that “it bears emphasizing that this Court’s ruling is not based on a finding that there was no collusion between defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.”
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TRUMP[6]: “Just out that the Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians - including to government officials. How big (and bad) is that?” - tweet Tuesday....
THE FACTS: Trump[7]’s claim, which he repeated from a Fox News report, is baseless. The report said Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, a hardline member of Iran’s parliament, had made the allegation in an interview with a local newspaper. He is a vocal critic of the nuclear agreement.The agreement was signed in July 2015 to significantly limit Tehran’s nuclear ability in exchange for lifting international oil and financial sanctions. Nothing in the agreement addresses the naturalization or immigration of Iranians.Rather than increase, the number of Iranians naturalized in the U.S. declined after the deal was signed, from 10,344 in 2015 to 9,507 in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In 2014, the number of Iranians who were made citizens was 9,620. There are about a million Iranians living in the U.S., many with green cards, representing a wide pool of residents who can eventually become citizens.Trump[8] backed out of the Iran nuclear accord in May, describing it as a flawed deal.___TRUMP[9]: “The OPEC Monopoly must remember that gas prices are up & they are doing little to help. If anything, they are driving prices higher as the United States defends many of their members for