Thread by @ddale8

Trump is doing a rally tonight in Dallas. Tweets and fact checks in this thread.

There is an announcement that Trump will be coming out in 20 minutes: "Get in your seats, Texas, you got seats to fill."

Trump is at least 37 minutes late. The crowd is dancing to Macho Man again.

Trump has begun. He touts the opening of the new Louis Vuitton plant he visited, says "there's never been a better time to be a proud American," and touts the job growth in the country and in Texas.

Trump calls Democrats "hateful and enraged." He adds, "Crazy. They're crazy. They're crazy."

Trump: "At stake in this fight is the survival of American democracy itself." He says he no longer believes the Democrats love America.

Trump has learned that Schiff has immunity for his comments at committee, for which Trump repeatedly called for Schiff to be prosecuted. He says Schiff should not have immunity, but he has stopped calling for prosecution now that he has been told about the immunity.

Trump again uses a tree metaphor in arguing for his re-election: "You plant a baby tree. It's gotta catch. Get that extra time -- we'll have more tax cuts."

Trump accuses Democrats of wanting to "indoctrinate our children." He says he knows "from personal experience": children come home and say "Mommy, Daddy, this is what I learned," and "you're going, Oh, no, don't tell me."

After reciting a list of accusations against Democrats, Trump says, "If they didn't hate our country, they wouldn't be doing this to our country." He goes on to say his wall is "going up rapidly," though no additional miles had been built as of the beginning of October.

Trump says he won't disparage media tonight: "I'm going to say, 'You're legitimate media.'" He then adds, "I don't actually mean that." He then talks about how the Academy Awards is now a failed enterprise because "it had stupid people" who criticized Trump.

Trump repeated his claim that all of the Democrats wanted a wall five years ago. Democrats did support Republican demands for fencing in the comprehensive immigration reform bill six years ago, but in exchange for things like a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Trump: "I will never allow the IRS to be used as a political weapon -- except in the case of myself, where they use it against me." This is another case of him ad-lib-inserting nonsense about himself into a prepared text about other people.

After criticizing Beto O'Rourke's proposals on guns and on churches' tax-exempt status, Trump boasts that he was the only one who noticed O'Rourke's hand and arm gestures. "Nobody noticed it. I noticed it. The flailer."

"She's nuts," Trump says of Nancy Pelosi. He criticizes Democrats' subpoenas. He claims a commentator who "doesn't like us" said "I've never seen anyone hand out so many subpoenas." He doesn't name the commentator but claims they are "standing right there."

Trump says that foreign leaders, including "dictators" who don't like to go by the title dictator, always tell him, "Sir, congratulations, sir, on what you've done." That story usually has only one Sir.

Trump with some of his most aggressive words about unmasking the federally protected whistleblower: "Who is the whistleblower? Who is the whistleblower? We have to know! Is the whistleblower a spy?"

For at least the 22nd time in the last two-and-a-half weeks, Trump falsely says, "The whistleblower got it all wrong." The whistleblower was highly accurate. We know this because of the rough transcript released by the White House itself.

Trump bashes CNN for calling his claim that Hunter Biden got $1.5 billion from China "unsubstantiated." It is unsubstantiated. A conservative author said the company was looking to raise that much, but Biden's lawyer says it got only $4 million.

Trump is wrongly suggesting that there's something nefarious about the video in which Biden boasted of pressuring Ukraine to get rid of a prosecutor widely thought to be ineffective or corrupt. "That's what you call quid pro quo," Trump says.

Trump falsely says China has never spent more than $20 billion in a year on US agriculture. It spent $25.9 billion in 2012. Trump usually says it never spent more than $16 billion.

Trump is saying his usual false things about how tariffs have cost Americans "nothing" and China is "eating" all of them.

Trump claims the US trade deficit with China was $500 billion for years ("we lose $500 billion"). The trade deficit with China has never been $500 billion. "We lose with everybody," Trump adds, though the US long had trade surpluses with dozens of countries.

Trump after bashing Hunter Biden's China business dealings after flying there on Air Force Two: Can you imagine if Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump? (He trails off.)

Trump on the Bidens: "You-know-what and pillage. It's the R-word. You-know-what and pillage. You know what word I'm talking about, right? I don't want to use it 'cause they'll say it's a horrible word that Trump used." No evidence Joe Biden ever profited from his son's dealings.

Trump calls Rep. Louie Gohmert "a man who is smart as hell."

Trump on Texas: "You had a hurricane two years ago now. They (local Republicans) still keep calling me for money. 'Sir, could you give us another...Thank you for being so generous to Texas, sir.'" As he used to, he says that Hurricane Harvey had "the biggest dump of water."

"You made a fortune on the hurricane," Trump tells Texas of federal recovery money.

For at least the 10th time as president, Trump exaggerates the (impressive) number of rescues the Coast Guard did during Hurricane Harvey, as usual saying "16,000." The Coast Guard told me it was 11,022.

Trump says sir a lot, then begins railing about Hillary Clinton's emails.

Trump tells his now-standard Sir story about a general telling him "we don't have ammunition." The military did say there was a shortage of certain precision bombs at the time, but the broad "no ammunition" claim is obviously false.

Trump is telling a extremely nonsensical story about how people tried to make a deal with Turkey for 15, 20 years but couldn't, but he got it done. The Syrian Civil War is less than 10 years old. This is an extremely narrow deal related to Turkey's offensive this month.

Trump calls Erdogan "a gentleman," saying he just needed "a little tough love."

Trump says that a bit of war was necessary in northern Syria: "Sometimes you have to let 'em fight a little while." He likens the situation to a childhood scrap: "Like two kids in a lot...let 'em fight...and then you pull 'em apart."

"Bring our soldiers back home. Bring our soldiers back home," Trump says. He is not currently doing so, having deployed 1,800 more to Saudi Arabia and redeployed the troops being withdrawn from Syria to elsewhere in the region.

Trump tells the wrong version of his story about Mexican soldiers deployed to combat migration, saying there are 27,000 "on our border." The 25,000+ are divided between Mexico's northern and southern border. CBP's Mark Morgan says it's about 15,000 on the US border.

Trump claims to have spent more than $2.5 trillion on the armed forces. That total appears to include the defense appropriation for the 2020 fiscal year, which hasn't been completed yet. (And the 2020 fiscal year just started.)

Trump claims there are "close to 30,000 people" outside. (Is anyone outside reporting?) He asks the fire marshal to fill up a "little area" on the floor that is empty, while also claiming to have broken the arena record.

It is the lowest unemployment rate in just under 50 years. Trump makes it "51 years," because.

Trump claims to have ended a "war" on American energy, then boasts of the US becoming the #1 producer of oil and gas in the world.

That accomplishment happened in 2012, under Obama, whom he accuses of perpetrating the "war."

Trump says his usual semi-comedic wrong thing about how the use of wind power means that you can't watch TV if the wind isn't presently blowing. The Energy Department has a whole thing on its website explaining that this thought is wrong.

Trump says he can be very presidential, more than any other president except for Abraham Lincoln in his hat, and "all you have to do is act like a stiff." He acts out being a stiff.

Trump is recounting election night 2016 in great detail -- with a rare bonus bashing of Evan McMullin, referring to him as "the guy with the shaved head."

Trump falsely claims that "we didn't win any cases" at the WTO before him, not "anything for years, practically." Trump's own Council of Economic Advisers said in a February report that the US had won 86% of the cases it has brought since 1995.

We are on the Jim Gilmore portion of the proceedings. Trump is shouting about his preparations for the 2016 debates. He said he fired his debate coach in about 10 minutes, because he advised Trump to never interrupt anyone, and you can't beat Ted Cruz without interrupting.

Trump is incorporating his wife into this very long story about his 2016 Republican-primary debate preparation, claiming to have said, upon seeing that Ted Cruz was a national debate champion, "My potential first lady, I've got a problem."

Trump claims Democrats "want to give more to illegal aliens than they give to American citizens." Some Democrats want undocumented immigrants to get access to the same programs and benefits as citizens get, not more.

This "people outside" claim is always one of the most time-consuming to fact check, so if anyone sees any crowd-reporting from outside (or if you're a reporter outside), please message me or email [e-mail].

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1185007306339078144

Trump repeats his already-disproven promise that he will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. He has repeatedly pushed bills that would have weakened these protections; he is currently supporting a lawsuit to get rid of Obamacare entirely.

Trump calls Democrats the party of "blatant corruption."

Trump on how Republicans are the party of Abraham Lincoln: "We forget that. We've gotta use that more often, don't you think?"

Trump reads his accurate text about how he has gotten 152 judges confirmed. Last week he falsely claimed it was "more than 160."

Trump falsely claims that presidents "always" have no judicial vacancies to fill. Presidents usually have dozens. He then tells a Sir story about how he had "142." It was 104.

Trump says Obama leaving him judicial vacancies shows that he was a bad president. (McConnell blocked his appointees late in his presidency.) He complains about the claim that Obama was a "wonderful president."

Trump does his usual thing about how his presidency will end "in 16 years, maybe 20" -- there are some cheers -- but how he's only kidding to drive people crazy.

Trump tells his usual lie about how he got Veterans Choice passed after others had tried and failed for 50 years. Obama signed Choice into law in 2014.

Trump thanks Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, a frequent defender of him on television. "What a mouthpiece he's got. And he's a man of God," Trump says. He applauds Jeffress for saying Trump may not be perfect or know the Bible as well as some of us, "but he's a leader."

Trump repeats his vow to end the AIDS epidemic within 10 years, falsely claiming the Obama administration "spent no money on that."

Trump has concluded after more than 80 minutes.

Per @FactbaseFeed, Trump's speech ran for 87 minutes, the 8th-longest of his presidency. Here's my story from September about how his rally speeches have gotten way longer in recent months. cnn.com/2019/09/21/pol…