New Hampshire: Stupid is as stupid does

With self-proclaimed “outsiders” Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders eclipsing the competition and winning the New Hampshire Presidential primary Tuesday a lot of words come to mine.

Professional political pundits used words like “game changing” or “revolutionary.”

Perhaps, but other words come to our minds:  Chaotic, incredible, stupid, obscene and idiotic are just some of them.  Others are in the same vein or, like so much of what the blustery babble of Trump, too profane to print.

Republican Trump wrapped up his campaign before the voting started Tuesday with typical blowhard bluster.  He called Ted Cruz a “pussy.”

Another sad but typical candidate who said Democrat Hillary Clinton was “schlonged” by Barack Obama.  He has also told opponents to “go f–k yourself” and sprinkled his speeches with the kind of sophomoric profanity you might expect to hear at a drunken fraternity party but not from someone who claims to be ready to be President of the country.

Democrat Sanders is a self-declared “socialist” and one who claims he is bring openness and honesty to the political system.

Sanders?  Honest? Is someone taking too many drugs?

Sanders claims to be an outsider but he’s a long-time politician who twists facts, rewrites history and tells just as many lies, if not more, than others he claims are the bad guys.

A few facts (courtesy of FactCheck.org:

• Sanders mixed and matched two different sets of date to make a misleading claim that “millions of voters are working long hours for low wages.”  Economists say real statistics invalidate that claim.
• Sanders claims NAFTA and other trade deals have “cost millions of U.S. jobs.”  Economists say the numbers fall far shot of “millions.”
• Sanders: “Not one Republican has the guts to recognize tht claimed change is real.” Two Republican Presidential candidates and several GOP members of Congress have gone on record in support of climate change and say humans contribute to it.
• Sanders denied that his campaign suggested he had the endorsement of a newspaper, The Nashua Telegraph.  The paper did not endorse Sanders even though a TV ad run by Sanders in New Hampshire said it did.

This is just a smattering of misinterpretations, misstatements and downright lies by the man that voters in exit polls claim is “the only honest person running for President.”

To be fair, all candidates misstate statistics, shade statements and lie but Sanders is the one who makes a big deal out of being “honest.”

While Sanders is dishonest his lies do not approach the level of falsehoods that fall that gush out of Trump, who suffers from diarrhea of the mouth.

PolitiFact found that 76 percent of Trump’s statements are “Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.”

A few examples:

• “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down,” he said at a Nov. 21 rally in Birmingham, Ala. “And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”  No video or news report from 9/11 supports that claim. Public safety officials on the ground in New Jersey say it never happened.
• “Whites killed by whites — 16%. Whites killed by blacks — 81 percent.”  Actual statistics say just the oppostie: 82 percent for whites killed by whites and 15 percent for whites killed by blacks.
• “The Mexican government…they send the bad one over.”  No evidence has surfaced to show the Mexican government encouraging criminals to cross the border into America.  Current stats show illegal immigration form Mexico is down.
• Trump claimed people who went to school with Obama “never saw him.”  A search of news stories found many interviews with college friends who listed dates and incidents where they were both with Obama and/or saw him.  No verifiable claims of any student surfaced with claims of not seeing the future President
• Trump’s announcement for his Presidential run in 2015 has five points for his campaign:  All were proven incorrect.

So the “big winners” of the New Hampshire primary Tuesday were two frauds who should be running from the law, not for office.

Were voters in New Hampshire mislead?  Yep.  Were they stupid? Absolutely.

___________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2016 Capitol Hill Blue