President Trump finally got Democratic female lawmakers to stand and applaud at Tuesday's State of the Union when he noted the historic number of women working across the country and serving in Congress. The otherwise solemn Democrats whooped and hollered, high fived and smiled widely at the news.
"You weren’t supposed to do that," Trump joked when he saw the Democrats stand and cheer. "Thank you very much. Thank you very much."
It was a quintessential bipartisan moment that is hard to come by on Capitol Hill, but to others it was one that was worthy of fact checking. Instead of accepting the congressional statistic as something both political parties can celebrate, NPR issued a fact check to inform the president that the uptick in female representation was not his doing.
“There are more women in Congress than ever before, but not in Trump’s party,” NPR Politics Reporter Danielle Kurtzleben was quick to tell him. “The number of Republican women in the House has fallen from 23 to 13 since the last Congress. Altogether, there are 127 women in Congress, up from 110 in 2018. But women remain hugely underrepresented – fewer than one in four members of Congress are women. (Meanwhile, women are the majority of voters.)”
Donald Trump Jr. railed against NPR as "morons." He explained in a tweet that his father was not trying to take credit for the impressive number of women in Congress. He was just acknowledging it and celebrating it.
Fact check: You people are morons. He praised them and their success. He didn’t pick sides. He didn’t take credit. He genuinely was happy for it and yet you still knock him.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 6, 2019
What the hell is wrong with you? https://t.co/I2R0IrPIYn
Does he have a point? Perhaps Kurtzleben should have let this one alone?