Trooper745 Loc: Carolina

You have disingenuously made a mountain out of a mole hill, apparently because of your mind being terribly warped by TDS. Trumps comments are believed by some to be mostly accurate, others question their accuracy, and the lying news media and whacko leftists like you call his speech an outright and dastardly lie, .... so what's new?

Even if he did misspeak on parts of what he said, none of it comes close to the left's beloved Hillary Clinton's great big lie, "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.... There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. That is what happened." And her second best lie, "Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."

But here are the details. https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2018/12/28/trump-did-not-lie-to-the-troops-media-types-just-cant-add-n2538155

President Trump said: "You protect us. We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, 'cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you've ever received. ... You haven't gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”

Later he went on to say: "They had plenty of people that came up, they said, 'You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%, we could make it 2%, we could make it 4%,'" Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. "I said, 'No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.’"

Neither statement is accurate, when taken out of context, but neither is also completely inaccurate either.

Nevertheless that didn’t stop the media.

Don Lemon of CNN: "Even in a combat zone, this president can’t tell the truth, lying right to their faces. Telling them he got a 10% pay raise this year. And that it was the first they got in ten years. That’s a lie."

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC: "The President also lied about pushing through a huge pay raise for the troops. I don’t get it. Because it’s not true. It’s not even close to being true.”

Jim Sciutto of CNN: “He said that he gave them their first pay raise in ten years, and that he gave them a pay raise of ten percent—not true.”

The Hill: “Trump incorrectly claims military pay hasn’t gone up for 10 years."

So where’s the truth?

The most problematic part of what Trump said is that he was in fact mistaken in his first statement. The military has received pay raises annually. For six of the eight years that Obama was president they received a paltry 1-1.7% raise per year. Even when you factor in the first two years' raises under Obama of 3%+, Obama’s average raise for the military was 1.9% per year. In President Trump’s first three years he has averaged 2.4%. He also conflated the “not getting a raise” to the bill he signed in September of this year, which for the first time in a decade, did not tie raises and spending for the military to a “continuing resolution” but rather became a hardened budgetary item. This sense of permanence in where the funding comes from is a more secure reality for the military men and women who serve for it is not served up on the whim of things like whether or not the Congress will choose to shut down, as opposed to funding the voter’s priorities of border security.

Other than that point, none of the above media critiques are true in the reporting of what the president said or meant.

Don Lemon, do you see anywhere in the quote above that says the president claimed he provided a 10% raise in a single year? Nope. Joe Scarborough and Jim Sciutto you’re both just wrong.

Trump never indicates in his statement that he isolated the raise the troops were receiving under his watch as being accomplished in the calendar year of 2018. Many of the media outlets breathlessly reported that he had said as much, but look at his own words—he didn’t.

What he did imply is that he had given them a raise of roughly 10%. At 2.4% per year times 4 years he will have overseen a raise of 9.6% for the troops in his first term. Comparatively over Obama’s last 4 years that administration served up a whopping 1.25% pay raise per year equalling roughly half of Trump’s raise over an equally comparable period of time.

If Trump’s consistency holds for the duration of two full terms he will deliver up nearly 19.2% in pay increases over the course of his time in office, shattering Obama’s totals.

To be clear the president, after having a bit of jet lag, and having visited with the troops, was inaccurate in the timing of when pay raises have happened. He was correct in that it has been ten years plus since military funding scheduled pay raises—as they should be—budgetarily and with confidence that Congress will fund.

But to be even more clear the president has also given them a huge pay raise—double the size of Obama’s—and rounding out to roughly 10 percent, unless term two rolls around, and then it may end up looking more like 20 percent.

emarine

Go back & view Trumps Troop visit video & quit with the delusional BS excuses... our Troops will receive a .2% pay raise from fiscal year 2018 to 2019... the rest is all Trump BS in which you blindly support unless you don't comprehend basic math... You realize pay increases reflect the cost of living which fluctuates every year … & you can thank Congress for the pay raise... Trumps was lower... http://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/the-president-and-military-pay-raises/

Hemiman Loc: Communist California

Obama was honorable? You have to be thinking of another guy with the same name.You have got to be joking or just flat out lying.He was the most corrupt politician any country ever had and if you can’t see it there is something seriously wrong with you.

Smedley_buzkill

You want truth? How about the 25 million plus dollars that your girl, Hillary the Harpy accepted from Saudi Arabia? You think maybe they just gave it to her out of the goodness of their hearts and didn't expect any sort of quid pro quo?