Washington Post: Trump makes 29 false or misleading claims in less than 26 hours

In a reference to President Trump's inappropriate comments to thousands of Boy Scouts, cartoonist Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio has the overweight Liar-In-Chief  pledging "to do my best to do my duty to me and my presidency."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include another error on The Record's front page.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The Washington Post's Fact Checker editor posted an update on all of the lying Donald J. Trump has been doing as president and on the campaign trail before the election:

"Lowlights of Trump's 26 hours of misinformation: A super flip-flop + 29 false/misleading claims."

"In a period of less than 26 hours -- from 6:31 p.m. on July 24 to 8:09 p.m. on July 25 -- President Trump made two fired-up speeches, held a news conference and tweeted with abandon, leaving a trail of misinformation in his wake," The Post said on Friday.

"We found at least 29 false or misleading claims during that period."

Black employment

The newspaper dubbed Trump the "king of flip-floppers," especially for his cynical take on black youth employment.

"As a candidate, Trump repeatedly claimed 58 percent of African-American youth was unemployed. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment rate for black youth at the time was about one-third of that: 19.2 percent.

"However, as president, Trump is now citing the unemployment rate for African Americans, bragging that it's the best since the turn of the century.

"It's all too convenient for Trump to embrace accurate statistics when they look good for him. It was such a cynical flip-flop."

You can read the full analysis here.

The Record

There doesn't appear to be any explanation for why the chaos in Washington bounces on and off the front page of The Record of Woodland Park.

A banner headline led Saturday's paper after Trump replaced White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

But today, Page 1 of the Sunday edition carries a major "investigation" of "neglect" and "poor medical care" in the Hudson County Jail, which is on the fringe of The Record's circulation area.

The front page also carries a Mike Kelly column on "Bergen's barbecue diplomat," and a sports column on "two N.Y. football coaches."

You'd hardly call either column riveting.

Record Food Editor Esther Davidowitz.

Major error

You can still buy ling, tusk and other fresh Icelandic fillets at The Fish Dock in Closter, one of six seafood places recommended by Food Editor Esther Davidowitz in Friday's Better Living section. 

She also raved about The Fish Dock's take-out lunches, including the popular fish and chips, and the seafood bisque, but July 1 was the last day both lunches and dinners were prepared for takeout during the summer.

The shop is closed for vacation until Aug. 24.

Something's fishy

There was another problem with the article on "6 Top Seafood Spots."

A tease on Friday's front page said Davidowitz and Chef Ben Pollinger "take a fishy food crawl through Bergen County."

Of course, "fishy" is absolutely the wrong word to use, because it means "arousing feelings of doubt or suspicion, questionable, dubious, doubtful, suspect."

Saturday screw-up

On Friday, Daniel Rochat was sentenced to life in prison in the horrific murder of Barbara Vernieri, an East Rutherford real estate agent.

But the editor who wrote the line on Saturday's front page, referring readers to the story on the Local front, really screwed up:

"Real-estate agent sentenced to life in prison. 1L [italics added].

Journalism by numbers

So, you have to wonder about the accuracy of other stories and features in the Gannett-owned newspaper:

In Better Living today, readers are offered "Five charming towns that are worth a bit of exploration" [you've been reading about the same towns for decades].

The Travel section reports on "10 THEME PARK FOODS THAT WILL GET YOUR TASTE BUDS IN ON THE ACTION" [whatever that is supposed to mean].

And Saturday's Better Living section raved about "5 home offices so gorgeous you'll look forward to work" [another nonsense headline unless one of those offices is in your home].

Trump flip-flopped on jobless rate, Mexico paying for wall, Obama's golfing and more

Credit: DemocraticUnderground.com

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

On June 16, The Washington Post listed Donald J. Trump's flip-flops in the two years since he "descended on the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for president."

"For our two-year anniversary of fact-checking Trump, we compiled everything he promised in his announcement speech that he flip-flopped on as president," the newspaper's Fact Checker wrote:

• The unemployment rate (he called it "nonsense" on the campaign trail; now he touts it as legitimate);
• China currency devaluation (he no longer blames them for devaluing their currency, which was false to begin with);
• Mexico paying for the wall (he now equivocates, saying Mexico will pay "eventually," "at a later date," "in some form");
• Criticizing President Obama for playing golf (President Trump has golfed 17 times since Inauguration Day -- more than twice the number of times Obama golfed at this point);
• And immigration (he promised to end Obama's executive granting deferred action to children of undocumented immigrants, which he now says he won't do).

"Of course, when you're running for president, it's easy to lob baseless rhetoric..., The Washington Post reported. "It reminds us of the lyric in 'Hamilton' the musical: 'Winning was easy ... governing is harder.'"

Click on the following link for the paper's report:

Here's everything he flip-flopped on

Voter apathy

I applaud that great newspaper in the nation's capital for fact-checking the Liar-In-Chief. 

But how much space does The Washington Post and other news outlets big and small devote to emphasizing the importance of voting?

I never see anything in my local newspaper, The Record of Woodland Park, about voter apathy, even when around 18,000 of the 22,000 registered voters stay home in Hackensack's City Council and Board of Education elections.

And when Governor Christie was re-elected in 2013, the turnout was the lowest in any gubernatorial election ever, and that hurt the losing Democratic candidate.

Clinton, Ossoff

Millions of Democrats stayed home on Nov. 8, convinced that Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly lose to a racist, con man and tax dodger, but they were wrong, and the election was decided in the antiquated Electoral College.

In Tuesday's runoff election for a House seat between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handle, CNN reported that more than 140,000 voters cast ballots early, but "more Republicans have voted early than Democrats," and that had Ossoff sweating.

Could Democratic apathy in a district that has been Republican for decades be the reason Osoff lost?

And can we forget all the nonsense about the election being a referendum on Trump's presidency?

Column from hell

In the more than 13 years Staff Writer John Cichowski has pretended to be The Record's commuting columnist, he's rarely interviewed long-suffering NJ Transit bus and train riders.

That's despite deep cuts in state aid to the mass-transit agency, the difficulty of finding rush-hour seats, and delays caused by mechanical failures, train crashes and only one express bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Today's overly dramatic column on expected summer delays caused by repairs to Amtrak rails and switches in Manhattan is too little, too late.

One quote on Page 1 tells you just how out of touch Cichowski is with growing traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings, where rush-hour delays of more than 1 hour at tollbooths have become routine:

"People might as well drive into New York," said Jacklyn Elizabeth, who 'was returning home to California via Denville after visiting relatives.'

She added, "Does New Jersey want to kill mass transit?"

No, lady. Christie, our governor, already took care of that years ago. 

A selfie of Food Editor Esther Davidowitz.

Mystery meat

In a feature on the Better Living front today, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz is asking readers to play Russian roulette with harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and preservatives linked to cancer by eating sandwiches stuffed with mystery meat and cold cuts (1BL).

The headline: 

"9 GOTTA-HAVE NORTH JERSEY SANDWICHES"

Davidowitz says, "Here [are] special shout-outs to nine North Jersey sandwiches for being so darned awesome" (she doesn't mention that eight of them aren't good for you).

Thanks. I'll stick with the lobster roll from Jack's in Edgewater.

Francis Scandale

Francis "Frank" Scandale of Glen Rock, a former editor of The Record, was featured in Saturday's Better Living section:

"Grilling tips from one dad to another"

Although a photo of him grilling hamburgers appeared, his face wasn't shown, and he wasn't identified as a former editor of the paper in Hackensack and then Woodland Park.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Scandale caved in to the bean counters in Hackensack, relegating to a back page the iconic photo of firefighters raising the American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center.

He was told it would be "too expensive" to remake the front page for The Record's exclusive image.

That decision likely blew the chances of the photographer, Tom Franklin, to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Scandale was shown the door by then-Publisher Stephen A. Borg a little over a decade later:

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Editor Frank Scandale's decade of failure