I woke up this morning upset about the media spin on the debate initially. Many seemed to praise Mike Pence for his smooth lying while knocking Tim Kaine’s constant interruption. According to FiveThirtyEight here are the disruption stats graphed below.
That said, if one does not judge on the veracity of statements, then yes, Pence pulled out a slight win. When truthfulness is added to the equation, Pence was just Donald Trump without the attitude. Find a detailed account and fact-check of Mike Pence lies here.
Mike Pence lying
Here are seventeen lies among the many Mike Pence told. I kind reader sent it in.
- Falsely said Iraq ‘was secured in 2009.” (It was not.)
- Falsely said Clinton and Kaine are advocating “open borders.” (They are not.)
- Falsely said it’s “nonsense” that Trump has called for a “deportation force.” (He has used those precise words.)
- Falsely said “Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement” in Iraq. {While she was in the administration, experts say it is wrong to suggest this was a personal failing of hers.)
- Falsely said it was “absolutely false” that Trump had said, “keep them, out if they’re Muslim.” (That is what Trump said for months, and he has refused to retract the proposal even though he has started talking about it differently.)
- Falsely said Clinton and Obama pulled out of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe “out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.” (Wrote the Washington Post: “Pence reprises a GOP talking point from the 2012 campaign, but it’s not correct. Obama substituted a different system, but it was on the recommendation of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican. Gates, in fact, had recommended the original plan to George W. Bush and then decided the new system implemented by Obama was more efficient, less costly and timelier than the Bush plan.”)
- Falsely said of Kaine, “He left his state about $2 billion in the hole.”
- Falsely said Clinton and Kaine want to expand Obamacare “into a single-payer program. (They are not proposing this.)
- Falsely said, “two Syrian refugees were involved in the attack in Paris.” (None of the attackers was a refugee.)
- Falsely accused Clinton of running a “pay to play” scheme. (There’s no evidence of this.)
- Falsely said Trump “never said” more nations should get nuclear weapons. (He did.)
- Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton said her number-one priority was a reset with Russia.”
- Falsely said it was “absolutely inaccurate” that he had said, “Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama.” (He said this.)
- Falsely said, ‘We found, thanks to the good work of the Associated Press, that more than half her private meetings when she was secretary of state were given to major donors of the Clinton Foundation.” (This misleading court excludes all of her private meetings with foreign officials and US officials.)
- Falsely said, ”They give virtually every cent in the Trump Foundation to charitable causes.” (The Washington Post and other outlets have discovered that Trump has used foundation money for political donations, personal purchases, and to settle legal cases involving his business.)
- Falsely said, “Less than ten cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes.” (The foundation gives away less than 10%, of its money in the form of grants- but uses most of the rest to conduct charitable service programs of its own. Nearly 90% of its funds go to its programs; watchdogs have described it as efficient.)
- Falsely said Trump had said, of Mexicans, “Many of them are good people” (Trump was considerably weaker in his announcement speech: he said, “some, I assume, are good people.”)