{"id":75555,"date":"2019-06-16T00:16:14","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T05:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=75555"},"modified":"2019-06-16T00:16:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T05:16:14","slug":"ap-fact-check-trumps-misfires-on-iran-trade-and-that-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2019\/06\/16\/ap-fact-check-trumps-misfires-on-iran-trade-and-that-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s Misfires on Iran, Trade and That Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"WASHINGTON – In President Donald Trump\u2019s reckoning, an Iran tamed by him no longer cries \u201cdeath to  America,\u201d the border wall with Mexico is proceeding apace, the estate tax has been lifted off the backs of farmers, the remains of U.S. soldiers from North Korea are coming home and China is opening its wallet to the U.S. treasury for the first time in history. These statements range from flatly false to mostly so. Here\u2019s a week of political rhetoric in review: IRAN: <\/strong>TRUMP<\/strong>, speaking about Iranians \u201cscreaming \u2018death to America\u2019\u201d when Barack Obama was in the White House: \u201cThey haven\u2019t screamed \u2018death to America\u2019 lately.\u201d \u2014 Fox News interview Friday.<\/p>\n

THE FACTS<\/strong>: Yes they have. The death-to-America chant is heard routinely.<\/p>\n

The chant, \u201cmarg bar Amreeka\u201d in Farsi, dates back even before Iran\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Once used by communists, it was popularized by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution\u2019s figurehead and Iran\u2019s first supreme leader after the U.S. Embassy takeover by militants.<\/p>\n

It remains a staple of hard-line demonstrations, meetings with current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, official ceremonies, parliamentary sessions and main Friday prayer services in Tehran and across the country. Some masters of ceremonies ask audiences to tone it down. But it was heard, for example, from the crowd this month when Khamenei exhorted thousands to stand up against U.S. \u201cbullying.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

rkers.\u201d \u2014 remarks Tuesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa.<\/p>\n

THE FACTS<\/strong>: He\u2019s claiming credit for a trend of rising wages for lower-income blue-collar workers that predates his presidency.<\/p>\n

Some of the gains also reflect higher minimum wages passed at the state and local level; the Trump administration opposes an increase to the federal minimum wage.<\/p>\n

With the unemployment rate at 3.6%, the lowest since December 1969, employers are struggling to fill jobs. Despite all the talk of robots and automation, thousands of restaurants, warehouses, and retail stores still need workers.<\/p>\n

They are offering higher wages and have pushed up pay for the lowest-paid one-quarter of workers more quickly than for everyone else since 2015. In April, the poorest 25% saw their paychecks increase 4.4% from a year earlier, compared with 3.1% for the richest one-quarter.<\/p>\n

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Fact-Checking Site Supports Claim US Ranked as ‘Flawed Democracy’<\/div>\n
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A fact-checking site has verified claims circulating on the Internet that the United States has fallen in a ranking of world’s strongest democracies.<\/p>\n

Snopes.com issued the verification Friday, supporting an internet claim by a group called The Christian Left that “the USA has dropped off the list of the 20 most democratic countries in the world.” It cited an annual ranking by The Economist<\/em> magazine, which has been evaluating the world’s governments on type and strength since 2006.<\/p>\n

The Economist<\/em>‘s most recent Democracy Index, its 2017 evaluation issued in January 2018, showed that the United<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Those gains are not necessarily flowing to the \u201cblue collar\u201d workers Trump cited. Instead, when measured by industry, wages are rising more quickly for lower-paid service workers. Hourly pay for retail workers has risen 4.1% in the past year and 3.8% for hotel and restaurant employees. Manufacturing workers \u2014 the blue collars \u2014 have seen pay rise just 2.2% and construction workers, 3.2%.<\/p>\n

TRUMP<\/strong>: \u201cAnd to keep your family farms and ranches in the family, we eliminated the estate tax, also known as the \u2018death tax,\u2019 on the small farms and ranches and other businesses. That was a big one. … People were having a farm, they loved their children, and they want to leave it to their children. … And the estate tax was so much, the children would have to go out and borrow a lot of money from unfriendly bankers, in many cases. And they\u2019d end up losing the farm, and it was a horrible situation.\u201d \u2014 remarks in Council Bluffs.<\/p>\n

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THE FACTS<\/strong>: There still is an estate tax. More small farms may be off the hook for it as a result of changes by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2017 but very few farms or small businesses were subject to the tax even before that happened.<\/p>\n

Congress increased the tax exemption \u2014 temporarily \u2014 so fewer people will be subject to those taxes.<\/p>\n

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Facebook to Step Up Fact-checking in Fight Against Fake News<\/div>\n
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Facebook is to send more potential hoax articles to third-party fact checkers and show their findings below the original post, the world’s largest online social network said on Thursday as it tries to fight so-called fake news.<\/p>\n

The company said in a statement on its website it will start using updated machine learning to detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers, potentially showing fact-checking results under the original article.<\/p>\n

Facebook has been criticized as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 U.S<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Previously, any assets from estates valued at more than $5.49 million, or nearly $11 million for couples, were subject to the estate tax in 2017. The new law doubled that minimum for 2018 to $11.2 million, or $22.4 million for couples. For 2019, the minimums rose to $11.4 million, or $22.8 million for couples. Those increased minimums will expire at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, only about 80 small farms and closely held businesses were subject to the estate tax in 2017. Those estates represent about 1 percent of all taxable estate tax returns.<\/p>\n

NORTH KOREA<\/strong><\/p>\n

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TRUMP<\/strong>: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to do very well with North Korea over a period of time. I\u2019m in no rush. … Our remains are coming back; you saw the beautiful ceremony in Hawaii with Mike Pence. We\u2019re getting the remains back.\u201d \u2014 joint news conference Wednesday with Poland\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

THE FACTS<\/strong>: The U.S. is not currently getting additional remains of American service members killed during the Korean War.<\/p>\n

With U.S.-North Korea relations souring, the Pentagon said last month it had suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations this year on recovering additional remains of American service members. The Pentagon said it hoped to reach agreement for recovery operations in 2020.<\/p>\n

The Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Vietnam summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North\u2019s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit where Kim committed to permitting a resumption of U.S. remains recovery; that effort had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005.<\/p>\n

The agency said it had \u201creached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, coordinate, and conduct field operations\u201d with the North during this budget year, which ends Sept. 30.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON – In President Donald Trump\u2019s reckoning, an Iran tamed by him no longer cries \u201cdeath to  America,\u201d the border wall with Mexico is proceeding apace, the estate tax has been lifted off the backs of farmers, the remains of U.S. soldiers from North Korea are coming home and China is opening its wallet to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}