Three tall tales, as told by Donald Trump

1. We will only use American steel to build the Keystone pipeline

Remember when, during the 2016 campaign, President Trump promised to make America great again by reducing dependence on imports and relying on American corporations to create jobs for American workers?  Well, that was one reason why many voters in the Rust Belt went crazy for The Donald. He promised to revitalize U.S. manufacturing - which meant more jobs for factory workers in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. 

One of the specific projects Mr. Trump highlighted was the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which carries oil from Alberta, Canada, to oil storage and distribution facilities in Texas and Illinois. Owned by TransCanada Corporation, the Keystone pipeline is partly complete; in the face of protests and worries about climate change and environmental damage, the Obama Administration rejected Phase IV (the XL part of the pipeline) in June of 2015.

President Trump and the Republicans in Congress reversed the decision in January of 2017. One of the items on the GOP agenda is to increase domestic oil production, and the Keystone project is an important element in that enterprise. To get American workers behind this and overcome liberals' worries about the environment and Native Americans' protests that the pipeline will be hazardous to their water supplies, President Trump said the pipes would be made from U.S. steel.

According to the Los Angeles Times: 

In a speech a week ago at the CPAC conference of conservative activists, the president said he had personally come up with the buy-America idea while signing off on the Keystone project.

"We have authorized the construction ... of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines," he said.

"This took place while I was getting ready to sign," he continued. "I said, 'who makes the pipes for the pipeline?'

"'Well, sir, it comes from all over the world, isn't that wonderful?'

"I said, 'Nope, it comes from the United States, or we're not building one.' American steel. If they want a pipeline in the United States, they're going to use pipe that's made in the United States."

But guess who has the final say on where the steel to build the pipeline comes from. No. It's not the President of the United States. 

It's TransCanada who decides where more than half of the steel pipes will be made. 

And guess where that huge amount of pipes has already been built. In Canada. By a Canadian company called Evraz Steel. 

Per the Christian Science Monitor:

 Evraz Steel, a Canadian subsidiary of Russia’s Evraz PLC, had signed on to provide 24 percent of the steel before the project was rejected under Obama, according to Reuters, and some pipe segments have already been built.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the steel is "already literally sitting there," waiting to be utilized. 

2.  Trump wouldn't go on golf vacations while he is President

In June of 2015, then-candidate Trump told reporters that he would not take any time off while he was President if elected. "I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump said then. "I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.”

A little over a year later, he went even further by promising he would not play golf if he was the Commander in Chief. Per CNN, "Trump even suggested during a 2016 event in Virginia, in a knock on Obama, that if elected he was 'not going to have time to go play golf.'

" 'I'm going to be working for you, I'm not going to have time to go play golf,' Trump said at the time."

Well, that promise didn't last long. During his first month as President, Mr. Trump has visited various golf courses that he owns, including the one at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Aides who are aware of the hypocrisy in his criticisms of Mr. Obama's "constant" golf-playing often try to pull the wool over the public's eyes over whether Mr. Trump hits the links. 

3.Trump accuses Obama of releasing 122 terrorists from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Man. The Donald sure has a grudge against his predecessor in the White House. Two days ago, our Twitterer in Chief was accusing former President Obama of wiretapping his phones during the campaign. Now he's claiming - on Twitter, naturally - that the former Administration released 122 terrorists from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Those former prisoners, Trump says, are now back on the battlefields of the War on Terror.

At 7:04 this morning, Mr. Trump tweeted, "122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!"

Sounds bad, right? You bet it does. Scary, even.

But, guess what, folks? It's also not true.

You see, even though inmates from Guantanamo (or Gitmo, as the U.S. military calls it) have been released since it was opened back in the 2000s after the American invasion of Afghanistan, most of them were released before Obama took office in 2009.

Of a grand total of 693 detainees that have been released from Gitmo, 532 were freed during President Bush's administration, while 161 were released during Obama's two terms in office.

Per the Director of National Intelligence's report cited in PolitiFact:

• 122 confirmed of re-engaging in terrorist activity (113 Bush, 9 Obama);
• 86 suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activity, of those (75 Bush, 11 Obama)

Not only is Mr. Trump leaving out the fact that most former prisoners are not terrorists, but he also doesn't say that 113 of the 122 inmates that went back into the fold of Al Qaeda or other terror groups were released during President Bush's term.

Clearly, Mr. Trump is a man with many talents. Spinning unbelievable tales is one of them. Too bad that being honest isn't.

Sources: 

http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-won-t-require-keystone-pipeline-1488585551-htmlstory.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0304/Why-Keystone-XL-pipeline-won-t-buy-US-steel-despite-Trump-s-order

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/245884-trump-i-would-rarely-leave-the-white-house

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/20/politics/donald-trump-golfing-presidency/

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/839084268991229952?refsrc=email&s=11

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/mar/07/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-blames-barack-obama-former-gu/

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/FINAL%20-%20GTMO%20Unclass%20CDA%20Response%20-%20September%202016.pdf