This morning, the head of FEMA couldn’t even give a rough estimate of how many masks, ventilators, or other supplies or equipment have been sent from the national stockpile. This afternoon, Donald Trump claimed to the exact digit how many had been supplied (for example, and this number is just made up by me, but it illustrates the supposed precision of what he said): “We have shipped 245,786 N95 masks.” That number, if it wasn’t simply made up out of whole cloth, HAD to come from FEMA, whose head couldn’t even provide a rough estimate a few hours earlier.
A number of years ago, I was representing a claimant for Social Security disability benefits. The so-called “vocational expert” called by SSA claimed similar specificity, as in, “The claimant could do Job X, and there are 587 of those jobs in the Baltimore metropolitan area, and she could do Job Y and there are 1,252 of those jobs in the Baltimore metropolitan area.” When pressed on the source of those numbers, he suddenly got very vague. He also claimed to have two doctorates relevant to vocational rehabilitation from a major university. I was so outraged by his testimony, and so convinced that he was lying, that I contacted his supposed alma mater. Not only didn’t he have two doctorates from there, he had never even attended that university.
I had exactly the same reaction to Trump’s supposed specificity about the quantity of supplies that have been sent from the national stockpile. I’m convinced that Trump simply made those numbers up, much as he made up having personally selected the faculty members of “Trump University.”
