"The president told military personnel in Iraq that they’ll get a raise of over 10 percent, their first in a decade. But it’s 2.6 percent, and they get a hike every year."
Does he think that the military are a bunch of dummies who don't even know how much they are being paid?
And if you hear your commander-in-chief talking nonsense .... does that give you a nice reassuring feeling that you are part of a well-run outfit, who have what it takes to ensure that your mission is successful and then get you home safe?
Thought not.
During his first visit to a combat zone since assuming office nearly two years ago, President Donald Trump couldn’t help but take personal credit for a very generous and fictional pay raise for U.S. troops.
The president told service members at al-Asad air base in Iraq that he was proud to secure them a much-needed pay bump of “more than 10 percent” after years of stagnant wages. Many of the troops in attendance may have been surprised to learn they hadn’t seen a pay increase in more than a decade.
“Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got?” Trump said, asking for a show of hands. “You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
In fact, military members have seen a pay raise in each of the last 10 years, ranging from 1 percent to 3.9 percent, according to the Defense Department. They even saw pay bumps when other federal workers were subjected to a three-year pay freeze in the wake of the Great Recession.
The pay increase for 2019 passed by Congress and signed by the president in August will be 2.6 percent, the largest since 2010. It is not far above last year’s raise for troops, which was 2.4 percent.
Trump told the troops that other people wanted their raise to be smaller, but he fought for a double-digit boost.
“We had plenty of people that came up. They said, ‘You know, we can make it smaller. We can make it 3 percent. We can make it 2 percent. We can make it 4 percent.’ I said, ‘No. Make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’”
The falsehood about military pay raises may be turning into a theme for Trump. As Politifact reported in May, the president claimed that the last pay increase, for fiscal year 2018, was also the “first time in 10 years.” On Wednesday, Trump used the phrase “in more than 10 years” four times.
The fact-checking site noted that the last single year without a military pay raise was 1983, and that was only because the date of the raise was shifted from Oct. 1 to Jan. 1.
Trump headed to Iraq late on Christmas night to make his surprise appearance in front of the troops. Until now, Trump has preferred to speak to troops via teleconference from the White House or his Florida country club.
As HuffPost previously reported, Trump’s factual inaccuracies Wednesday were hardly the first he’s uttered about the military. Trump has claimed the military budget he signed was the biggest ever ― it isn’t ― and he’s taken credit for passing a law that allows veterans to use private doctors if they can’t get quick care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. That law was actually signed by Barack Obama.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
canpakes wrote:Lying to soldiers - to their face, for self-serving purposes - is now very patriotic behavior, apparently.
Well, soldiers are not usually easy to deceive on matters that have a practical impact on their lives. Soldiers who are not good at seeing clearly (and quickly) the basic elements of threat and benefit in a situation tend to end up dead. And soldiers care about what they are paid.
So I doubt very much whether many soldiers who heard Trump sounding off about their non-existent 10% pay rise took it seriously. They know very well what they are paid. Trump's lies had a different target: his base - who are the kind of people who still believe that a US president can be believed when he states facts in public, or when he claims to be standing with a group of Navy Seals, and all the rest of the nonsense.
Can anyone tell me how Fox News treated the '10% pay rise' lie? They do seem to be getting a bit more sceptical of late.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
well your post isn't very good, very accurate, or very informative. Trump is correct at 10% even though he is rounding up from 9.6 (4x2.4=9.6). Not sure where the OP got the notion that it was 10% for one year....i assume that came from the poster and the cited article having no real facts about the budget. But that's cool, run with it.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
subgenius wrote:Not sure where the OP got the notion that it was 10% for one year....
Read carefully ...
“Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got?” Trump said, asking for a show of hands. “You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
In fact, military members have seen a pay raise in each of the last 10 years, ranging from 1 percent to 3.9 percent, according to the Defense Department. They even saw pay bumps when other federal workers were subjected to a three-year pay freeze in the wake of the Great Recession.
The pay increase for 2019 passed by Congress and signed by the president in August will be 2.6 percent, the largest since 2010. It is not far above last year’s raise for troops, which was 2.4 percent.
Trump told the troops that other people wanted their raise to be smaller, but he fought for a double-digit boost.
“We had plenty of people that came up. They said, ‘You know, we can make it smaller. We can make it 3 percent. We can make it 2 percent. We can make it 4 percent.’ I said, ‘No. Make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’”
The falsehood about military pay raises may be turning into a theme for Trump. As Politifact reported in May, the president claimed that the last pay increase, for fiscal year 2018, was also the “first time in 10 years.” On Wednesday, Trump used the phrase “in more than 10 years” four times.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.