Was There Anything Actually True in Trump’s State of the Union?

Was There Anything Actually True in Trump’s State of the Union?

Was There Anything Actually True in Trump’s State of the Union?

Harold Meyerson on Trump, and Meehan Crist and Tim Requarth on phony forensics.

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Trump’s Teleprompter reading of his State of the Union speech was reprehensible in so many ways—why bother listening at all? Don’t we already know enough about him? Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect comments on the lies, and the inadvertent truths, in the president’s speech.

Plus, injustice in America: It’s not just the police, it’s also the prosecutors—and their reliance on “forensics”—who create much of the injustice in the American justice system. Despite the portrayal on TV of forensic analysts on the show CSI as crime-solving seekers of truth, prominent scientists, and criminal-justice experts have questioned whether suspects can really be identified by forensic techniques like matching bite marks, hairs, shoe prints, tire tracks, or even fingerprints. According to the Innocence Project, faulty forensic science is a factor in nearly 50 percent of wrongful convictions. Meehan Crist and Tim Requarth explain in their Nation article, “The Crisis of American Forensics,” live on Thursday.

 

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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