Home of the Jim Heath Channel and Fact News

It’s a record that historians will be baffled with. The 45th President of the United States has told 10,000 mostly blatant lies since taking office, and half the country seemingly doesn’t care very much.

Since the inauguration, a team of journalists at The Washington Post has kept a tally of every “false or misleading claim” Donald Trump has made.

Yesterday, the Post confirmed that Trump has roared past the 10,000 mark: as of Saturday, he’d made 10,111 bogus claims in 828 days in office.

That works out to roughly 12 per day, 85 per week, or 370 per month.

Trump has fibbed at rallies (2,217 times), on Twitter (1,803 times), and in speeches (999 times), among other settings.

About one-fifth of Trump’s false or misleading statements have concerned immigration; he’s said his border wall is being built—his most-repeated junk claim—160 times.

In recent days, the president demonstrated why he so quickly has piled up the claims.

There was a 45-minute telephone interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on April 25: 45 claims.

There was an eight-minute gaggle with reporters the morning of April 26: eight claims.

There was a speech to the National Rifle Association: 24 claims.

There was 19-minute interview with radio host Mark Levin: 17 claims.

And, finally, there was the campaign rally on April 27: 61 claims.

Trump’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals.

All told, the president racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days, April 25-27.

That’s more than he made in any single month in the first five months of his presidency.

Trump’s campaign rallies continue to be a rich source of misstatements and falsehoods, accounting for about 22 percent of the total.

The rally in Green Bay on April 27 was little different, with claims that covered a range of issues:

— He exaggerated the size of trade deficits with Japan, China and the European Union and falsely claimed the United States loses money from such deficits.

— He said he had “nothing to hide” from the Russia investigation but refused to testify under oath.

— He continued his practice of inflating the jobs created under his administration by starting the count from the election, not his inauguration.

— He launched a series of exaggerated or false attacks on Democrats, including claiming the Green New Deal will require every building in Manhattan be replaced (no) and saying Democrats support the killing of healthy babies that have been born (no).

— He overstated the possible impact of the new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in myriad ways and trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, even though the differences are modest.

— He took credit for funding a program — the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative — his administration tried to eliminate.

— He made a series of false claims about immigration, such as “open borders bring tremendous crime” (there is no documented link between illegal immigration and crime).

— He claimed he passed the biggest tax cut in history (no) and he said he had cut the estate tax to “zero” (no).

— He said he was one vote away from repealing Obamacare (no).

— He falsely said the United States paid for “almost 100 percent” of NATO (no), that Saudi Arabia inked $450 billion in deals with the Trump administration (no) and even that the United States subsidizes the Saudi military (U.S. aid amounts to $10,000 a year).

— He even claimed that he insisted the new embassy in Jerusalem be made of Jerusalem stone even though ever since the British mandate in then-Palestine, municipal laws have required that all buildings must be faced with this local form of limestone that has a warm, golden hue.

There is no evidence Trump will be concerned about the number of lies he tells heading into the 2020 election.

 

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