CNN’s John Avlon on Thursday exposed President Donald Trump’s habit of taking credit for agreements that were actually made by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
In a “Reality Check” segment, Avlon played several video clips of Trump boasting about things he’d supposedly done, although in reality they were done before he even became president.
He starts out by pointing to Trump claiming credit for the opening of a Shell plant in Pennsylvania this week, despite the fact that construction for the plant was first announced by the Obama administration in 2012.
And, Avlon explains, that isn’t the only Obama deal that Trump has appropriated as his own.
“Back in 2017, BuzzFeed published a litany [of deals] under the headline, ‘Trump keeps taking credit for deals struck while Obama was president,'” Avlon said. “The article included everything from Ford plants to jobs at Charter Communications and SoftBank.”
Avlon then demonstrated how Trump blatantly lied when he took credit for the VA Choice bill that expanded U.S. veterans’ options for receiving health care. The law, it turns out, was cosponsored by the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and signed into law by Obama in 2014.
“But that hasn’t stopped President Trump from repeating it more than 80 times!” Avlon says. “When you repeat a false statement over 80 times after being called out on it, that’s a lie.”
Watch the video below.