Presidential hopeful Donald Trump continues to act the moron of the race for the White House as he spoke to crowds in Charleston about a story he claimed they could read about "in the history books". Unfortunately for Trump (and for those cheering), fact-checking site Snopes.com says that the story is actually an urban legend which originated online during 2001.
Explaining the fake story of how one man dealt with terrorism, he said of General Pershing: "He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs' blood, and he had his men load rifles and he lined up 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person he said, 'You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.' And for 25 years there wasn't a problem."
Trump used the false tale to show how willing he was to go after terrorists and terrorism, but for those with more than a single brain cell in their heads it further cemented him as a man who shows huge disdain for Muslims in order to please his racist fans.
"We better start getting tough, and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads, or we're not gonna have a country folks" he continued.
Would Americans be better off living in a country led by a man who cannot fact-check his own stories? According to Snopes, the incident he cites isn't mentioned in a single biography of General Pershing, with his actions actually being described as a man wanting to minimise the number of casualties, only threatening to use the pig blood punishment and never actually going through with it.
The story itself is a hoax spread via chain email forwards - one person who started it all must be feeling very strange about their fantastical story making it into a candidate for POTUS's pleas.
This isn't the first lie Trump has told his supporters. At the back-end of last year he claimed he saw "thousands and thousands of people" cheering in New Jersey when the twin towers fell, a state he claimed had a large Arab population. Police in the local area have since dismissed those rumours and there isn't a single shred of footage or evidence existing to prove that thousands of people were celebrating the attack.
He also says that his entire campaign is self-funded, but fails to mention that donors have played a huge part in his campaign. He's still, to-date, accepting donations on his official campaign website.
Speaking about accepting Syrian refugees into the States, he said that those coming in are "mostly strong men", despite Buzzfeed News learning from a State Department spokesperson that "Military-aged males unattached to families comprise only approximately 2% of Syrian refugee admissions to-date" (November 2015).
The fantasist claimed that US economic growth had "never" been below zero until the third quarter of 2015, failing to mention that it had in fact been below zero a whopping 42 times since 1946.
Though his inconsistencies have been pointed out time and time again, Trump holds firm in his refusals to admit error whenever proof is given to show how wrong he is. He's a fantasist using fear to further his own gain and the thought of him becoming President of the United States is more terrifying than anything that's come before.
It's impossible to know Trump's true feelings on certain matters because he's been incredibly contradictory in his position. He's a hideous competitor for presidency and I for one hope that America doesn't do the unthinkable and allow him into such a great position of power.
Tagged in Donald Trump