At a breakfast this morning with NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg in Brussels, Donald Trump said that “Germany is totally controlled by Russia,” which makes for some great viral tweets.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, for example:
And we're off. Within minutes of his first event of the day, President Trump is going off about defense spending, singling out Germany and claiming they are totally controlled by Russia. John Kelly looks around the room and takes a long drink of water.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 11, 2018
And MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell:
“Germany is totally controlled by Russia” says @realDonaldTrump “captive” to Russia as NATO summit opens on unprecedented angry exchange
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) July 11, 2018
But, surprise! That’s not entirely what he said. Here’s the entire exchange (also note that John Kelly doesn’t take a “long drink of water”) where Trump says, “Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they are getting 60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline”:
"Germany is totally controlled by Russia": President Trump took a few jabs at Germany during a combative breakfast kicking off a NATO summit in Brussels. https://t.co/0IMmIdoZuB pic.twitter.com/AqiotVpHGo
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 11, 2018
To make matters worse, The Daily Beast has a fact check up that says Trump used the wrong statistics, but they’re wrong:
Trump tells NATO that Germany is "totally controlled" by Russia, citing wrong statistics about how much energy the country receives from Putin https://t.co/3Jqhuy1r0l
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 11, 2018
Screenshot from the article where The Daily Beast, quoting the BBC, says “the latest official figure was actually 50.75%:
And now via the BBC, which The Daily Beast doesn’t link to so we had to search for it. The official estimate of Russian gas imports is 50% to 75% and it looks like The Daily Beast quoted the earlier version with a typo:
Man, it’s going to be a long day.
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