False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
 During and between his terms as President of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.[1][5][6][7] The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of six per day.[2] Commentators and fact-checkers have described Trump's lying as unprecedented in American politics,[13] and the consistency of falsehoods as a distinctive part of his business and political identities.[14] Scholarly analysis of Trump's X posts found significant evidence of an intent to deceive.[15] Many news organizations initially resisted describing Trump's falsehoods as lies, but began to do so by June 2019.[16] The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation.[17] Steve Bannon, Trump's 2016 presidential campaign CEO and chief strategist during the first seven months of Trump's first presidency, said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."[18][19] In February 2025, a public relations CEO stated that the "flood the zone" tactic (also known as the firehose of falsehood) was designed to make sure no single action or event stands out above the rest by having them occur at a rapid pace, thus preventing the public from keeping up and preventing controversy or outrage over a specific action or event.[20] As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election.[7] Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of Hitler's "big lie" propaganda technique.[21] In June 2023, a criminal grand jury indicted Trump on one count of making "false statements and representations", specifically by hiding subpoenaed classified documents from his own attorney who was trying to find and return them to the government.[22] In August 2023, 21 of Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election were listed in his Washington, D.C. criminal indictment,[23] and 27 were listed in his Georgia criminal indictment.[24] It has been suggested that Trump's false statements amount to bullshit rather than lies.[25][26][27] Veracity and politicsMany academics and observers who study the American political scene have called Trump unique or highly unusual in his lying and its effect on political discourse. "It has long been a truism that politicians lie", wrote Carole McGranahan for the American Ethnologist in 2017, but "Donald Trump is different". He is the most "accomplished and effective liar" to have ever participated in American politics; moreover, his lying has reshaped public discourse so that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented".[9] Historian Douglas Brinkley stated that U.S. presidents have occasionally "lied or misled the country", but none were a "serial liar" like Trump.[28] Donnel Stern, writing in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal", because Trump "lies as a policy", and "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.[29] Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described how lies have "always been an integral part of politics". However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale", during his campaign and presidency. Skjeseth commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.[10] Jeremy Adam Smith wrote that "lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency."[30] Thomas B. Edsall wrote "Donald Trump can lay claim to the title of most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency."[30] George C. Edwards III wrote: "Donald Trump tells more untruths than any previous president. There is no one that is a close second."[30] RepetitionTrump is conscious of the value of repetition to get his lies believed. He demonstrated this knowledge when he instructed Stephanie Grisham, his White House press secretary, to use his method of lying: "As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn't matter what you say."[31] Trump effectively uses the big lie technique's method of repetition to exploit the illusory truth effect, a tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.[32] Research has studied Trump's use of the effect.
The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio", for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to the Post Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.[17] CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale notes that news outlets may initially check a false claim by Trump, but are unlikely to continue pointing out that it's false, "especially because he is constantly mixing in dozens of new lies that require time and resources to address. And so, by virtue of shameless perseverance, Trump often manages to outlast most of the media's willingness to correct any particular falsehood".[34] BullshitIt has been suggested that Trump's apparent "avalanche of lies" consists of bullshit rather than of lying as strictly defined.[26][27] According to Harry Frankfurt's influential 2005 book On Bullshit, the liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it, while the bullshitter does not care whether what they say is true or false.[25] Eduardo Porter writes in The Washington Post that Frankfurt's bullshitter definition fits Trump: "To subvert the truth, you must first know it, or at least think you do. That’s not Trump’s game."[27] For example, Trump does not, in Porter's argument, have to check US unemployment or inflation statistics to assert that "we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare", because for bullshit, the facts do not matter. On the contrary, by ignoring the facts, bullshit has the power to guide group beliefs in a politically desirable direction and thereby to shape group identities.[27] As early as 2015, Jeet Heer wrote that Trump’s propensity to bullshit is not an aberration in his party: "Over the last two decades, the GOP as a party has increasingly adopted positions that are not just politically extreme but also in defiance of facts and science".[26] Business careerReal estateWithin years of expanding his father's property development business into Manhattan in the early 1970s, Trump attracted the attention of The New York Times for his brash and controversial style, with one real-estate financier observing in 1976, "His deals are dramatic, but they haven't come into being. So far, the chief beneficiary of his creativity has been his public image." Der Scutt, the prominent architect who designed Trump Tower, said in 1976, "He's extremely aggressive when he sells, maybe to the point of overselling. Like, he'll say the convention center is the biggest in the world, when it really isn't. He'll exaggerate for the purpose of making a sale."[35] A 1984 GQ profile of Trump quoted him stating he owned the whole block on Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. GQ noted that the two buildings Trump owned were likely less than a sixth of the block.[36] The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, opened a civil investigation into Trump's business practices, especially regarding inflated property values.[37] She joined the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation into possible property tax fraud by the Trump Organization.[38] Other investments and debtIn 1984, Trump posed as his own spokesman John Barron and made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including by claiming he owned over 90% of his family's business. Audio recordings of these claims were released in 2018 by journalist Jonathan Greenberg.[39] Following the October 1987 stock market crash, Trump claimed to the press that he had taken no losses and sold all his stock a month before. Per SEC filings he owned large stakes in some companies during the crash. Forbes calculated that Trump had lost at least $19 million related to Resorts International stock,[40][better source needed][41] while journalist Gwenda Blair noted $22 million from stock in the Alexander's department store chain.[42] Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump said he had very little debt.[43] Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion (~$8.25 billion in 2023) to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.[44] In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering some of the $100 million (~$176 million in 2023) his bank had lent Trump, said "During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction."[45] A 1998 New York Observer article reported that Jerry Nadler "flatly calls Mr. Trump a 'liar'", quoting Nadler stating, "Trump got $6 million [in federal money] in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it" by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.[46] During a 2005 deposition in a defamation lawsuit he initiated about his worth, Trump said: "My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings ... and that can change rapidly from day to day".[47] PhilanthropyDavid Fahrenthold investigated Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true.[48][49] Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York.[50] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses.[51] SportsIn 1983, when Trump was forming a business relationship with the New Jersey Generals football team, he spoke about the team at a public forum. "He promised the signing of superstar players he would never sign. He announced the hiring of immortal coaches he would never hire. He scheduled a news conference the next day to confirm all of it, and the next day never came", CNN reporter Keith Olbermann recalled in 2021. Following the forum, Trump approached Olbermann and, rather than waiting for questions, began speaking into Olbermann's microphone about "an entirely different set of coaches and players than he had from the podium."[52] In 1987, during testimony regarding an antitrust case between the United States Football League (USFL) and the National Football League (NFL), Trump stated that he had had a meeting with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle years earlier where Rozelle offered him an NFL franchise in exchange for keeping the USFL a spring-time league and not initiating a lawsuit with the NFL.[53][54] Rozelle denied having made this offer and stated he was opposed to Trump becoming an NFL team owner, with a person present at the meeting between the two stating that Rozelle told Trump, "As long as I or my heirs are involved in the NFL, you will never be a franchise owner in the league".[55][56] In 1996, Trump claimed he wagered $1 million (~$1.79 million in 2023) on 20-to-1 odds boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. The Las Vegas Sun reported that "while everyone is careful not to call Trump a liar", no one in a position to know about such a sizable wager was aware of it.[57] In a 2004 book, The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports, Trump claimed to have hit "the winning home run" when his school played Cornwall High School in 1964, garnering a headline "Trump Homers to Win the Game" in a local newspaper. Years later, a journalist discovered that Trump's high school did not play Cornwall that year, nor did any such local headline surface. A classmate recalled a separate incident in high school in which Trump had hit "a blooper the fielders misplayed", sending the ball "just over the third baseman's head", yet Trump insisted to him: "I want you to remember this: I hit the ball out of the ballpark!"[58] After purchasing the Trump National Golf Club in 2009, Trump erected The River of Blood monument between the 14th hole and 15th tee with a plaque describing the blood of Civil War casualties that turned the river red. No such event ever took place at this site.[59] Trump has repeatedly claimed he is an 18-time club championship winner at several clubs, none of which can be positively confirmed, and 16 of which were not official or all-member club championships. All these wins have been recorded at golf clubs owned or managed by The Trump Organization. Professional and amateur golfers, such as Buddy Marucci, have claimed that Trump would threaten to revoke the membership of anyone who won against him, thus allowing him to win club championships with little competition. Trump has claimed to have won the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach Club Championship in 1999, before the club was officially opened to membership,[60] and the 2023 Senior Club Championship at the same course, despite not being present for the first day.[61] OtherIn 1973, The New York Times ran its first profile of Trump, stating he had "graduated first in his class from the Wharton School of Finance" five years earlier.[62] However, in 1984, The New York Times Magazine noted that "the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind."[63] After three Trump casino executives died in a 1989 helicopter crash, Trump claimed that he, too, had nearly boarded the helicopter. The claim was denied 30 years later by a former vice president of the Trump Organization.[64] Promoting his Trump University after its formation in 2004, Trump asserted he would handpick all its instructors. Michael Sexton, former president of the venture, stated in a 2012 deposition that Trump selected none.[65] During a 2018 interview, television personality Billy Bush recounted a conversation he had had with Trump, in which he refuted Trump's repeated false claims that The Apprentice was the top-rated television program in America. Bush recalled Trump responding, "Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do."[66] PerceptionsAlair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York during the 1980s, and a former publisher of Crain's New York Business, said "I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized."[40][better source needed] Leona Helmsley later used this line as her own when she spoke about Trump in her 1990 interview in Playboy magazine.[67] Trump often appeared in New York tabloid newspapers. Recalling her career with New York Post's Page Six column, Susan Mulcahy told Vanity Fair in 2004, "I wrote about him a certain amount, but I actually would sit back and be amazed at how often people would write about him in a completely gullible way. He was a great character, but he was full of crap 90 percent of the time." (Trump told the magazine, "I agree with her 100 percent.")[68][69] Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization vice president who worked for Trump from 1978 until 1998, said "he would tell the staff his ridiculous lies, and after a while, no one believed a single word he would say".[70] In The Art of the DealTony Schwartz is a journalist who ghostwrote Trump: The Art of the Deal.[71] In July 2016, Schwartz was interviewed by Jane Mayer for articles in The New Yorker.[72][71] He described Trump highly unfavorably, and described how he came to regret writing The Art of the Deal.[72][71][73] When Schwartz wrote it, he created the phrase "truthful hyperbole", as an "artful euphemism" to describe Trump's "loose relationship with the truth".[71] This passage provides context, written in Trump's voice: "I play to people's fantasies ... People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and it's a very effective form of promotion".[74] He said Trump "loved the phrase".[71][75] Schwartz said "deceit" is never "innocent". He also said, "'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'"[71] Schwartz repeated his criticism on Good Morning America and Real Time with Bill Maher, saying he "put lipstick on a pig".[76] Schwartz described Trump's lying:[71]
.jpg) Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Trump's father, Fred Trump, began claiming Swedish descent.[77][78][79] Both parents of Fred Trump were born and raised in Kallstadt, Kingdom of Bavaria, now part of Germany. The falsehood was repeated by Donald to the press[35][80] and in The Art of the Deal,[81][82][79] where he claimed his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child".[83] In the same book, Donald said his father was born in New Jersey.[71][84] When asked during his presidency why he upheld the false narrative about his father being Swedish, Trump said, "My father spent a lot of time [in Sweden]. But it was never really something really discussed very much."[85] As president, Trump on at least three occasions claimed his father was born in Germany.[86] Trump's father is of German descent but was born in the Bronx.[79] In one case Trump said his father was "born in a very wonderful place in Germany",[87] and another time stated, "I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all",[88] invoking an ethnic slur for a German.[89] The Guardian pointed out the irony of Trump supporting the "birtherism" conspiracy theory asserting Barack Obama was born in Africa.[90] September 11 attacksOn September 11, after at least one of the World Trade Center towers was destroyed, Trump said in an interview with WWOR-TV in New York: "40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it's the tallest."[91] Once the Twin Towers had collapsed, the 71-story Trump Building at 40 Wall Street became the second-tallest building in Lower Manhattan, 25 feet (7.6 m) shorter than the building at 70 Pine Street.[92] Two days after the attack, Trump stood near Ground Zero and told a television station he was paying two hundred of his employees to come "find and identify victims". No record of such work has ever been found. In 2023, he reposted the claim on Truth Social.[93] At a rally in Columbus, Ohio, in 2015, Trump said "I have a view—a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center." He added "and I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit ... I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, 'Wow that's unbelievable.'" At the time of the attack, Trump lived in Trump Tower more than four miles (6 km) away from the World Trade Center towers. His campaign did not respond to inquiries about how it was possible for him to see people jumping from that far away.[94] In another rally in 2015, Trump claimed seeing "thousands and thousands" of Arab Americans in New Jersey cheering during the collapse of the World Trade Center. News organizations like the Associated Press (AP), The Washington Post, and The Star-Ledger reported rumors of 9/11 celebrations in New Jersey, but they were found to be unfounded, unsourced, or finding that people were memorializing the event. Nobody else was known to remember seeing masses of thousands of people celebrating after 9/11. Furthermore, Trump would not have been able to clearly see people cheering in New Jersey from his residence.[95] During his 2016 campaign, Trump falsely claimed to have predicted the attacks in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, that Osama bin Laden was not well known when the book was published and that it called for the U.S. to "take him out".[96] 2016 presidential campaignTrump promoted conspiracy theories that have lacked empirical support. These have included "birther" theories that Barack Obama was not born in the US.[97][98][99] In 2011, Trump took credit for the release of Obama's "long-form" birth certificate, while raising doubt about its legitimacy,[100] and in 2016 admitted that Obama was a natural-born citizen from Hawaii.[101] He then falsely stated that Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy theories.[101][102][103] In 2015, Boing Boing reproduced newspaper articles from 1927 reporting that Trump's father had been arrested at a Ku Klux Klan march and been discharged.[104] Multiple articles on the incident list Fred Trump's address in Jamaica, Queens,[105] as do the 1930 census[106] and a 1936 wedding announcement.[107] Trump admitted to The New York Times that the address was "where my grandmother lived and my father, early on." When asked about the 1927 story, he denied his father had ever lived at that address and said the arrest "never happened", and "There was nobody charged."[108] Within six months of Trump's announcement of his presidential campaign, FactCheck.org declared Trump the "King of Whoppers", stating, "In the 12 years of FactCheck.org's existence, we've never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong."[109] In 2016, Trump suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[110] He also accused Cruz of stealing the Iowa caucuses during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.[111] Trump claimed that his father had given him "a small loan of a million dollars", which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion",[112] denying Marco Rubio's allegation that he had inherited $200 million.[113] A 2018 New York Times exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8", and that he had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60 million ($140 million in 2018 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.[114] Trump claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% "isn't reflective [of reality] ... I've seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment". PolitiFact rated this claim "Pants on Fire", its rating for the most egregious falsehoods.[115] Jeremy Adam Smith, writing for the Greater Good Magazine, said Trump's falsehoods may be "blue lies", which are "told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group". As a result, he posited, Trump's dishonesty does not lose the support of his political base, even while it "infuriates and confuses almost everyone else".[116][117] In 2015, BuzzFeed News' Andrew Kaczynski reported that Trump, despite having claimed to have the best memory in the world, had a history of "conveniently forgetting" people or organizations in ways that benefit him. In July 2016, PolitiFact's Linda Qiu pointed out that Trump "seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements". Kaczynski and Qiu cited examples of Trump's stating he did not know anything about former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, despite statements showing he clearly knew who Duke was.[118][119] Over three months before the 2016 presidential election, Trump claimed it was going to be "rigged".[120] In 2016, Trump said repeatedly that he would jail Hillary Clinton. In an interview with Will Cain on Fox & Friends Weekend in June 2024, he denied ever having said so. He blamed his supporters for chanting that message: "I didn't say 'lock her up,' but the people said 'lock her up, lock her up'." He suggested he "could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing."[121][122] On June 4, he called into Newsmax, claiming he always believed it would have been "terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state ... into jail", yet this time adding the threat: "It's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them."[123] Border wall with MexicoThroughout his campaign and into his presidency, Trump repeatedly claimed the US would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto said his country would not pay, and never did.[124][125] While not unusual for a campaign promise to not pan out, Trump's insistence Mexico would pay was a central element of his campaign and continued for years. At the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump reiterated saying, "Mexico is paying for it and it's every bit—it's better than the wall that was projected."[126] First term
Fact-checking TrumpTrump's statements as president engaged a host of fact-checkers. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged—resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting."[127] The situation got worse, as described by Pulitzer Prize-winning Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true."[128] Glenn Kessler said in 2017 as a fact-checker for The Washington Post there was no comparison between Trump and other politicians. Kessler gave his worst rating to other politicians 20% of the time, but gave it to Trump 64% of the time.[129] Kessler wrote that Trump was the most fact-challenged politician he had ever encountered and lamented that "the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up".[130] Kessler and others have described how Trump's lying has created an alternate reality.[131][132] David Zurawik says we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards"[133] because that's "how to cover a habitual liar".[134] The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio", for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to The Washington Post, Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.[17] Glenn Kessler wrote:
Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact-checkers:
At the end of 2018, Kessler provided a run-down summary of Trump's accelerating rate of false statements during the year:
Several major fact-checking sites regularly fact-checked Trump, including:
As late as June 2018, the news media were debating whether to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's falsehoods. That month, however, many news organizations, including CNN, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy began describing some of Trump's false statements as lies. The Toronto Star was one of the first outlets to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's statements, and continues to frequently. Some organizations continue to shy away from the term. On June 5, 2019, Paul Farhi wrote that Glenn Kessler, author of The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column, had used the word lie only once to describe Trump's statements, although he has sometimes used other terminology that implies lying.[16] Since then, The Washington Post's fact-checking team has written the 2020 book Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth. The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies.[143][144] By October 9, 2019, The Washington Post's fact-checking team documented that Trump had "made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days".[145] On October 18, 2019, the Washington Post Fact Checker newsletter described the situation:
After departing the White House, January 20, 2021, Trump gave a farewell address at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland prior to departing on Air Force One for his residence in Palm Beach, Florida.[147] The AP fact-checked his speech, and reported that it included false statements about his presidency and administration's accomplishments. These included statements that he passed the largest tax cuts in history; that the U.S. economy during his tenure was the greatest in U.S. history; that he achieved record job creation; that his administration rebuilt both the U.S. military and the American manufacturing industry; that he destroyed the ISIS caliphate; and a reiteration of his previously repeated falsehood that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act.[148] These falsehoods added to the 30,573 falsehoods that The Washington Post's fact-checker had tallied by the end of Trump's presidency,[1] an average of 21 falsehoods a day.[149] Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive:
Credibility pollingAccording to a September 2018 CNN-SSRS poll of 1,003 respondents, only 32% percent found Trump honest and trustworthy, the worst read in CNN polling history. The number was 33% on election day, November 8, 2016.[150][151] In June 2020, a Gallup poll of 1,034 adults within the U.S. found that 36% found Trump honest and trustworthy. By comparison, 60% of respondents found President Obama honest and trustworthy in June 2012 during his re-election campaign.[152][153] Commentary and analysisAs president, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks.[154][130][155][156] Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office according to The New York Times,[154] and 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post.[157] By the Post's tally, it took Trump 601 days to reach 5,000 false or misleading statements and another 226 days to reach the 10,000 mark.[158] For the seven weeks leading up to the midterm elections, it rose to an average of 30 per day[159] from 4.9 during his first 100 days in office.[160] The Post found that Trump averaged 15 false statements per day during 2018.[8] The New York Times editorial board frequently lambasted Trump's dishonesty. In September 2018, the board called him "a president with no clear relation to the truth".[161] The following month, the board published an opinion piece titled, "Donald Trump Is Lyin' Up a Storm".[162] James Comey had frequent discussions with Trump, and in his first major interview after his firing he described Trump as a serial liar who tells "baffling, unnecessary" falsehoods:[163]
The Washington Post commentator Greg Sargent pointed out eight instances where government officials either repeated falsehoods or came up with misleading information to support falsehoods asserted by Trump, including various false claims about terrorists crossing or attempting to cross the Mexican border, that a 10% middle class tax cut had been passed, and a doctored video justifying Jim Acosta's removal from the White House press room.[164] James P. Pfiffner, writing for The Evolving American Presidency book series, wrote that compared to previous presidents, Trump tells "vastly" more "conventional lies" that politicians usually tell to avoid criticism or improve their image. However, Pfiffner emphasized that "the most significant" lies told by Trump are instead "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts", because by causing disagreements about what the facts are, then people cannot properly evaluate their government: "Political power rather than rational discourse then becomes the arbiter."[165] Selman Özdan, writing in the journal Postdigital Science and Education, describes that "many" of Trump's statements in interviews or on Twitter "may now be classed as bullshit", with their utter disregard for the truth, and their focus on telling "a version of reality that suits Trump's aims". She added that these statements are "often" written in a way which criticizes or mocks others, while offering a misleading version of Trump's accomplishments to improve his image.[166] Daniel Dale, writing for The Washington Post, described fact-checking Trump as being "like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true", noting that Trump had repeatedly and falsely claimed that he had passed the Veterans Choice Act and that U.S. Steel was building six, seven, eight or nine plants (the company had invested in two existing plants). Dale added: "Many of Trump's false claims are so transparently wrong that I can fact-check them with a Google search."[167] In 2019, Dale noted that Trump had a tendency to use large inaccurate numbers instead of smaller accurate ones.[168] Susan Glasser wrote that falsehoods are "part of his political identity" and quoted Glenn Kessler's description of them as "Trump's political 'secret sauce'". She described how "The White House assault on the truth is not an accident—it is intentional." When comparing Trump to Nixon, she quoted Barry Goldwater, who described Nixon as "the most dishonest individual I ever met in my life", but she did not stop there. She spoke to Morton Halperin "who oversaw the writing of the Pentagon Papers and then served on Nixon's National Security Council staff... Halperin insisted, strongly, that Nixon wasn't nearly as damaging to the institution of the Presidency as Trump has been. 'He's far worse than Nixon,' Halperin told me, 'certainly as a threat to the country'."[14] Purpose and effectGoogle Trends topic searches for "Gaslighting" began a substantial increase in 2016, at the time of the campaign for the U.S. presidential election.[169] Google Trends topic searches for "Fake news" began a substantial increase in late 2016, about the time of the U.S. presidential election.[170] A few days after Trump's January 20, 2017, inauguration, some experts expressed serious concerns about how Trump and his staff showed "arrogance" and "lack of respect...for the American people" by making "easily contradicted" false statements that rose to a "new level" above the "general stereotype that politicians lie". They considered the "degree of fabrication" as "simply breathtaking", egregious, and creating an "extraordinarily dangerous situation" for the country.[171] They elaborated on why they thought Trump and his team were so deceptive: he was using classic gaslighting in a "systematic, sophisticated attempt" as a "political weapon"; he was undermining trust and creating doubt and hatred of the media and all it reports; owning his supporters and implanting "his own version of reality" in their minds; creating confusion so people are vulnerable, don't know what to do, and thus "gain more power over them"; inflating a "sense of his own popularity"; and making people "give up trying to discern the truth".[171]
Specific topicsInaugural crowdTrump's presidency began with falsehoods originating from Trump. On the day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the crowd. He then exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up his claims.[172][173][174][175] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,[176][177][178] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by saying he merely presented alternative facts.[179] Todd responded by saying, "Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods."[180] In September 2018, a government photographer admitted he, at Trump's request,[181] edited pictures of the inauguration to make the crowd appear larger: "The photographer cropped out empty space 'where the crowd ended' for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama's in 2009."[181][182] 2016 presidential electionTrump went on to claim his victory in 2016 was a landslide;[183][184][185] that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had "serious voter fraud";[186][187][188][189] and that he didn't win the popular vote because Clinton received 3–5 million illegal votes.[190][191] Trump made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice twice refuted.[192][193] In January 2018, Trump claimed texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but The Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded they "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.[194][195] Denial of Russian hacking and election interferenceTrump frequently denied or sowed doubt that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and interfered in the 2016 election. He made many different claims, such as that there was no hacking, other countries than Russia did it, or the DNC hacked itself and that Seth Rich was involved. He has said Russia did not try to get him elected and often called allegations of Russian meddling "a hoax". "Trump is fond of tossing out conspiracy theories, even if just to add a sliver of doubt. His supporters have embraced his conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to Mueller's investigation." The Russia investigation conclusively proved Russian intelligence was behind the hackings.[196][197] Robert Mueller, who led a Special Counsel investigation, concluded Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted 26 Russian citizens and 3 Russian organizations. The investigation led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans. The Mueller report, made public in April 2019, examined contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or associates.[198] Denial of collusion with RussiaTrump repeatedly claimed he and his campaign did not collude with Russia, and Republicans and many otherwise reliable sources have repeated that false claim even though Mueller said that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim that there was no collusion has been described as a myth.[199] In a January 2019 interview, Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani undermined Trump's claim when he "claimed Wednesday night that he 'never said there was no collusion' between President Trump's campaign and Russia leading up to the 2016 presidential election."[200]
After his comments, Giuliani made statements that NPR described as an "apparent reversal" from his TV interview: He said "'there was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form' and that he had 'no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign'."[201] The investigation found there were at least 140 contacts between Trump or 18 of his associates with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks or their intermediaries, though the contacts were insufficient to show an illegal "conspiracy".[202] Dismissal of FBI directorOn May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentioned the issue of an FBI investigation into the links between Trump associates and Russian officials, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a rationale seconded by Sessions.[203][204][205] On May 11, Trump said in an NBC News interview: "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey ... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story".[206][207][208] On May 31, Trump tweeted, "I never fired James Comey because of Russia!"[194] Personal lawyerIn 2017 and in the first half of 2018, Trump repeatedly praised his attorney Michael Cohen as "a great lawyer", "a loyal, wonderful person", "a good man" and someone Trump "always liked" and "respected". In the second half of 2018, with Cohen testifying to federal investigations, Trump attacked Cohen as a "rat", "a weak person, and not a very smart person" and described Cohen as "a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work ... He represented me very little".[206][209][210] In 2018, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he did not know about a payment of $130,000 that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels or where Cohen had obtained the money from.[211] Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post described this statement as a lie,[212] as Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen.[211][212][213] On May 30, 2024, a New York City jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal these reimbursement payments. In 2021, several lawyers who had previously worked with Trump, reportedly declined to assist him in asserting executive privilege over the subpoenas served by the House Select Committee on January 6. One of these was William Burck, who had represented 11 Trump associates regarding the Mueller investigation. When Trump was asked about the refusal of his former lawyers to involve themselves in his legal battle, he said: "I don't even know who they are... I am using lawyers who have been with us from the beginning."[214][215] Spygate conspiracy theoryIn May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false[216][217][218] Spygate conspiracy theory[216][219] alleging the Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's campaign to help Clinton win the 2016 election.[220][221] Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both main parties dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false.[222] A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."[223] 2018 California wildfiresDuring the 2018 California wildfires which ultimately caused $3.5 billion (~$4.18 billion in 2023) in damages and killed 103 people, Trump misrepresented a method that Finland uses to control wildfires. After speaking with President of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Trump reported in November 2018, that Niinistö had called Finland a "forest nation" and "they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem." Trump's comments sparked online memes about raking leaves. Niinistö clarified there is "a good surveillance system and network" for forest management in Finland and he did not recall having mentioned raking.[224] Special counsel investigationIn March 2019, Trump asserted that the Mueller special counsel investigation was "illegal". Previously in June 2018, Trump argued that "the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" However, in August 2018, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019.[225][226] The Mueller Report asserted that Trump's family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of falsehoods from Trump himself, whether unintentional or not, to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis.[227] Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION". However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against the President. In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department.[228][229][230] Trump, Republicans, and many otherwise reliable sources have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Mueller found "no collusion", even though Mueller said that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim has been described as a myth.[199] EconomyThrough his first 28 months in office, Trump repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.[231] As of March 2019, Trump's most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency more than a hundred times, were that a U.S. trade deficit would be a "loss" for the country, that his tax cuts were the largest in American history, that the economy was the strongest ever during his administration, and that the wall was being built. By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the U.S. or other NATO members.[232] Trump claimed during the campaign GDP could grow at "5 or even 6" percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 3%, the same rate as 2015 under Obama. Obama's advisers described growth limits as "sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire".[233] Trump claimed in October 2017 he would eliminate the federal debt over eight years, even though it was $19 (~$23.00 in 2023) trillion at the time.[234] However, the annual deficit (debt addition) in 2018 was nearly $800 billion, about 60% higher than the CBO forecast of $500 billion when Trump took office. The CBO January 2019 forecast for the 2018–2027 debt addition was 40% higher, at $13 trillion, rather than $9.4 trillion when Trump was inaugurated.[235] Other forecasts place the debt addition over a decade at $16 trillion, bringing the total to around $35 trillion. Rather than a debt to GDP ratio in 2028 of 89% had Obama's policies continued, CBO estimated it at 107%, assuming Trump's tax cuts for individuals are extended past 2025.[236] Trump sought to present his economic policies as successful in encouraging businesses to invest in new facilities and create jobs. In this effort, he took credit on several occasions for business investments that began before he became president.[237][238] Trump repeatedly claimed that China or Chinese exporters were bearing the burden of his tariffs, not Americans, a claim PolitiFact rated as "false".[239] Studies indicate U.S. consumers and purchasers of imports are bearing the cost and that tariffs are essentially a regressive tax. For example, CBO reported in January 2020 that: "Tariffs are expected to reduce the level of [U.S.] real GDP by roughly 0.5 percent and raise consumer prices by 0.5 percent in 2020. As a result, tariffs are also projected to reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020."[240] While Trump has argued that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit, it expanded to a record dollar level in 2018.[241] Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China before his presidency; the actual deficit never reached $400 billion prior to his presidency.[211] The following table illustrates some of the key economic variables in the last three years of the Obama Administration (2014–2016) and the first three years of the Trump Administration (2017–2019). Trump often claimed the economy was doing better than it was, after he was elected.[233]
Family separation policyPresident Trump repeatedly and falsely said he inherited his administration's family separation policy from Obama, his predecessor. In November 2018, Trump said, "President Obama separated children from families, and all I did was take the same law, and then I softened the law." In April 2019, Trump said, "President Obama separated children. They had child separation; I was the one that changed it." In June 2019, Trump said, "President Obama had a separation policy. I didn't have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I'm the one that put them together... I inherited separation, and I changed the plan". Trump's assertion was false because the Obama administration had |
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