The Washington Post released an article on Wednesday of this week with this headline: “President Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in 558 days”. A week earlier the Toronto Star printed an article entitled, “Donald Trump has said 2083 false things as U.S. president”.
Even though the two newspapers don’t agree on the shear vastness of Trumps lies, errors, and ignorant mistatements I’m mortified that a Canadian newspaper finds it necessary to count them.
Counting “false things”, whether they are lies or simply ignorant statements, matters according to the two newspapers. Here’s what the Toronto Star says:
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| Pinocchio as played by the Italian actor Toto - Photo from Wikipedia |
“We’ve had presidents that have lied or misled the country, but we’ve never had a serial liar before. And that’s what we’re dealing with here,” Douglas Brinkley, the prominent Rice University presidential historian, told the Star last December 17th. “We haven’t seen anything like this. It’s a storybook, ‘emperor has no clothes’ kind of thing. Or it’s like dictators in countries where they just make up all sorts of crazy things and people are supposed to nod in agreement,” Brinkley continued.”
“That tens of millions of Americans are indeed nodding in agreement, of their own free will, has created a profound angst among Democrats and others who worry about a spiral into truthlessness. Some of them despairingly tell journalists not to waste their time fact-checking the lies, since facts have obviously become irrelevant,” the Star’s Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Dale wrote in that December 17th article.
Dale points out that facts are vitally important in a time when the serial liar Trump, and his minions, are trying to reshape the truth to fit their own twisted and un-American agenda.
Here are some of Trump’s false statements and lies catalogued by the Toronto Star. The “In fact” is also provided by the Star:
Trump: ”With Mexico, $120 billion (trade deficit). Mexico. Who would think Mexico? Mexico's making a fortune.”
Source: Interview with CNBC's Joe Kernen (July 20, 2018)
In fact: The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $69 billion in 2017, $71 billion in 2017 when counting goods alone. Trump has usually claimed that the deficit with Mexico is $100 billion; this was the first time he exaggerated all the way to $120 billion.
The Star says Trump has repeated this lie thirty-four times.
Trump: ”The consumer and business optimism polls have reached the all-time highs -- highest number ever recorded."
Source: Remarks at Cabinet meeting (July 18, 2018)
In fact: Consumer confidence is not at an all-time high, nor even a high for this century. The Conference Board consumer confidence index fell 2.4 points in June to 126.4. The index stood at 132.6 in November 2000.
Trump: ”Our laws are so bad, Tucker, somebody comes in and they step in our land and now we end up with a court case that takes seven years, but the people never show up to court. It's so bad and we have to do something about it. Like, if they come into our land, we have to say, I'm sorry, you have to leave. Not I'm sorry, please come to court; we're going to put you in court, you'll come back in three years for your trial and then they never show up. That's what's happening now. It's crazy.”
Source: Interview with Fox News's Tucker Carlson (July 17, 2018)
In fact: It is not true that people "never show up to court" for their immigration hearings. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 37 per cent of people who were free pending trial did not show up for hearings over the past two decades. The author of the report, a former immigration judge, said the number was 39 per cent in 2016. In other words, even according to vehement opponents of illegal immigration, most unauthorized immigrants are indeed showing up for court.
The Star says Trump has repeated this lie nine times.
The Washington Post says that Trumps rate of false statements, errors, and flat out lies has been increasing in number.
“That’s an overall average of nearly 7.6 claims a day. When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day,” the Post wrote in its August 1st article. “But the average number of claims per day keeps climbing the longer Trump stays in office. In fact, in June and July, the president averaged 16 claims a day. Put another way: In his first year as president, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims. Now, just six months later, he has almost doubled that total.”
The Post analyzed a false statement made by Trump in Tampa Florida on July 31st:
Trump: “We’ve gotten rid of more regulations than any president in the history of the United States. And that’s done in less than two years.”
The Post points out that Vice President Pence made the same claim when he spoke in St. Louis on July 19th. Pence closed his remarks by saying, “It’s true.”
But it’s not true. And the Post wonders why the Trump administration has to lie about it.
You can read the Washington Post’s Fact Checker by following this link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/?utm_term=.a08aa330d4ea
You’ll find the Toronto Star’s complete catalogue of false statements by Trump here: http://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/
I encourage you to read them from time to time. Knowing what is true matters.
-- Tim
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