Fact Checker: Surprise! It would take nine years for all of Trump’s nominations to be approved.

April 27, 2018

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

Surprise! It would take nine years for all of Trump’s nominations to be approved

President Trump regularly complains about Democrats, but rarely is fully justified in his claims. In a tweet, he accused Democrats of “slow walking’ all of [his] nominations — hundreds of people. At this rate it would take 9 years for all approvals!” Nine years is a long time. Needless to say this caught our attention, and so, we did some math.

It has taken Trump much longer to get his appointees confirmed compared with other recent presidents. Compared with those other presidents, however, Trump has also been much slower to submit nominees. Plus, Democrats claim that too many of Trump’s nominees were poorly vetted or had incomplete documentation, leading to delays and Trump has not helped matters by forcing out or firing key Cabinet members. But putting all of this aside, it’s clear that Democrats have slowed the process on even noncontroversial nominees, using the cloture vote, just as Republicans did in 2014.

Given the slow pace, we’re not sure the president could come up with an additional 900 names in the next three years. But the math adds up — it would take 9.4 years for Trump’s nominees to be confirmed. And so, we awarded the president the elusive Geppetto Checkmark.

But the story doesn’t end there. After this Fact Check published, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) office cried foul. We ran the numbers again — this time assuming the rate of nominees subjected to a cloture vote would remain the same. We also accounted for the number of days a cloture vote takes and the time the Senate isn’t in session and presumably, is not passing laws. With all of this considered, we found it would take 4.3 years to confirm Trump’s nominees, if the Senate did nothing but confirm nominees. Shorter, but still far from a walk in the park since it extends beyond the president’s term.

Does the death penalty stop drug trafficking in other countries?

Trump has mused both publicly and privately about extending the death penalty to some drug traffickers. According to the president, certain countries that execute dealers and drug lords do not have much of a problem with narcotics crimes. We investigated Trump’s claim, focusing on the seven countries that impose the death penalty with any regularity for drug offenses: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. Our analysis was based on research from Harm Reduction International, an NGO that tracks worldwide executions for drug offenses, and organizations including the UN, Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department and government and media organizations operating in those seven countries.

We found that Trump’s argument largely fails to hold water. China is ranked as the world’s top executioner, yet it has a significant drug problem. Excluding China, Iran carries out 90 percent of worldwide executions for drug offenses, according to HRI. But Iran has a serious drug problem as well, and so do Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. The other two countries are Saudi Arabia and Singapore. But Singapore is hardly comparable to the United States, since it is a geographically small country with a population equal to that of Colorado or Wisconsin. There’s almost no evidence for Trump’s claim, so we awarded Three Pinocchios.