In his first 500 days in office, President Donald Trump made 3,251 false or misleading statements, according the The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog. If his nose had grown a quarter-inch with each lie, it would now be sixty-eight feet long.
Here are some of his whoppers, all from just a one-month period after our last issue went to press:
Claim: Trump says he’s been asked by “so many people” if he could help bring back from North Korea the remains of their sons who died in the Korean War.
—Fox News appearance, June 13
Fact: He’s lying. Any parent whose child served in the Korean War, which ended in 1953, would be more than 100 years old.
Claim: “They came to me three days ago. ‘Sir, we’d like you to sign this order.’ What is the order? ‘We need 5,000 judges on the border.’. . . . I said, ‘How many do we have now?’ They didn’t even know.”
—Trump rally in South Carolina, June 25
Fact: He’s lying. No one came to Trump with any such request. The United States has 334 immigration judges; the National Association of Immigration Judges has asked for 365 more; and a bill from Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, calls for raising the total to 750.
Claim: “I never fired James Comey because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!”
—Trump tweet, May 31
Fact: He’s lying. Shortly after firing Comey on May 9, 2017, Trump said in a TV interview it was due to “this whole Russia thing”; he also told visiting Russians the firing relieved the “great pressure” he had been facing over Russia.
Claim: “Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal. According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with U.S. (guess they were bragging and got caught!).”
—Trump tweet, June 10
Fact: He’s lying. Canada never claimed to have a $100 billion trade surplus with the United States. This number was concocted by Trump’s staff based on a deliberate misreading of Canadian stats. In fact, the United States has a trade surplus with Canada, according to a report Trump signed.
Claim: “The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting [with Kim Jong-un of North Korea] were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.’ WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”
—Trump tweet, May 26
Fact: He’s lying. The senior official spoke to dozens of reporters in a White House briefing arranged by Trump’s aides.
Claim: “I’m the only politician that produced more than I said I was going to produce, and we're only one and a half years in.”
—Rally in Nashville, May 29
Fact: Of sixty key promises he made as a candidate, Trump has kept just fourteen, according to the Washington Post’s Promise Tracker.
Claim: “We’ve created 3.3 million new jobs since Election Day. Now, if we would have said that before the election, that I’m going to create 3.3 million new jobs, we would never have survived the onslaught from the fake news. They would have not accepted it.”
—Rally in Nashville, May 29
Fact: It’s true 3.3 million jobs were created in the eighteen months after the election; but 3.9 million jobs were created in the prior eighteen months, when Trump was trashing the U.S. economy as being “in tatters.”
Oldie But Goodie
“I will never lie to you. I will never put any other interest before you.”
—Donald Trump, campaign speech, August 19, 2016