WASHINGTON (AP) — As near-certain impeachment closes in on him, President Donald Trump raged at his Democratic accusers by offering a highly selective account of the testimony of a damning witness and misrepresenting the facts of the phone call at the heart of the constitutional showdown.
Trump branded Democrats crazy for wanting to impeach him after all the things he said he's done for the country, some of which he did not actually do. And he falsely credited his daughter with creating 14 million jobs though it's not clear she's created any.
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg came out with an energy plan that claimed he was personally responsible for much of the decline of the coal industry. He wasn't.
Here is a sampling of last week's political rhetoric:
JOBS
TRUMP, on his daughter, Ivanka: "She has been so extraordinary, in terms of her advocacy for America's working families. Fourteen million people she's gotten jobs for, where she would go into Walmart, she would go into our great companies and say, 'They really want help. They really want you to teach them.' ... She's done over 14 million." — remarks Thursday at White House meeting on child care and paid leave
THE FACTS: His daughter hasn't created 14 million jobs. The United States has created only 6.6 million jobs since Trump took office.
The president referred to a White House initiative led by Ivanka Trump that has garnered nonbinding commitments from 370 companies to provide 14 million training opportunities in the years ahead. Training for a job is not working at a job for money.
There are questions about how much the administration is willing to spend to help U.S. workers, whether the agreements by companies will result in higher salaries and whether employers will stick to their pledges if the economy sours and they have less incentive to hire.
By having companies sign the pledge, the administration is relying on the private sector to take on more of the financial burden of training workers.
The government spends just 0.03% of the gross domestic product on job training, a level of support that has been halved since 2000, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Of the 36 countries in the organization, only Japan and Mexico spend less than the United States by that measure.
Nor is it clear how many workers were going to be trained even without the initiative. In many cases, the pledge simply confers a presidential seal of approval on what some companies were doing anyway.
COAL & CLIMATE
BLOOMBERG says he "helped close more than half the nation's dirty coal plants." — energy plan announcement Friday.
BLOOMBERG announcement: "Coal production in the United States is on the decline, thanks to the efforts spearheaded by Mike over the past decade. ... In 2011, Mike helped launch the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, which has since shuttered more than half — 299 to date — of America's coal-fired power plants, and counting."
THE FACTS: Bloomberg is taking sweeping, unearned credit for the decline of coal. Market forces, not his money, influence or activism, put coal on its inexorable path.
Drops in prices of natural gas and renewable energy have made costlier coal-fired power plants much less competitive for electric utilities. A new federal report reaffirms that long-standing consensus among experts.
