Donald Trump flat-out lied to Congress and Americans last night in his talk to Congress and the country. Here are some of the lies, fact-checked immediately after the speech by political commentator Rachel Maddow.
In a seismic shift against Trump’s favorable views of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump’s overt lie that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is “a dictator,” GOP Senators Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) publicly spoke out against Trump’s views.
Senator Wicker, the Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a reporter that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a criminal who is not to be trusted in peace negotiations about Russia’s war on Ukraine.
When asked about the way the U.S. conducted peace negotiations with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and specifically how the U.S. excluded Ukraine and America’s NATO allies from the talks, Senator Wicker said Ukrainians should “definitely” be at the table in any peace negotiations, and European interests should be “considered and carefully weighed.”
When Sen. Wicker was asked if Putin can be trusted in peace negotiations, Wicker answered,
“No. Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has no medical background and no experience running a large agency. (Photo: Encyclopedia Britannica).
Activist and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, whom Trump has nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) despite his having no experience in public health, formally petitioned (pdf) the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May of 2021 to revoke the Emergency Use Authorization for Covid vaccines at a time when thousands of Americans were dying weekly from Covid infections.