Trump Is As Much an Idiot About Egypt as Everything Else

Trump: Why let a little thing like facticity get in the way of making a point about the Middle East?

There is a major leadership crisis in the US, Donald Trump told a group of supporters in Las Vegas April 28. The Middle East is out of control as can be clearly seen by the recent vote in which Egyptians voted 99 percent to end the peace treaty with Israel.

What, you missed it? Maybe because it…um…didn’t happen.

“I don’t know if you saw the vote,” he said. “There was a vote in Egypt the other day. Ninety-nine percent of the people want to break the peace treaty with Israel. Did you see that? Did anybody see that? Ninety-nine percent! So, we have problems. We have weak, pathetic leadership.”

Donald Trump has problems. Nobody in his audience saw it (not even the guys who shouted “Yeah!” when he asked), because there was no such vote. There have been no votes since the referendum on the Egyptian constitution. And so far the military has maintained normative relations with Israel, at least pending the outcome of the new elections in September.

Best spin one can put on this is that he mistook a PPew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey for a vote. And even then got the numbers wrong, because what the survey actually said, according to an April 25 press release is that “[b]y a 54%-to-36% margin, Egyptians want the peace treaty with that country [Israel] annulled.”

Survey, vote…like a president needs to know the difference. And 54 % versus 99%…it’s not like presidents or big businessmen need to know anything about numbers, right?

You can see a clip of Trump making the claim on FactCheck.org:

Trump+100+Percent+Wrong+on+Egyptian+%26%238216%3BVote%26%238217%3B.