United States President Donald Trump has made 8,158 “false or misleading claims” during his time in the White House, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. Trump completed two years in office on January 20.
The newspaper quoted The Fact Checker’s database that analyses, categorises and tracks every doubtful statement Trump makes. The report said that Trump made an average of nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. In his second year, the number tripled to 16.5 false statements a day, leading to over 6,000 such claims. There were 74 days, or about 10% of his presidency, in which Trump made more than 30 false claims a day.
“In the first 100 days, the President made 492 unsupported claims,” said the report. “He managed to top that number in just the first three weeks of 2019. In October, as he was barnstorming the country in advance of the mid-term elections, he made more than 1,200 false or misleading claims.”
Among his misleading claims, the biggest number of them have been about immigration, totalling 1,433 statements. Trump made 300 misleading statements on the subject just in the past three weeks, the report said. The Fact Checker counted 12 such claims in Trump’s immigration address on January 19.
Foreign policy and trade followed immigration, with Trump making 900 false claims on foreign affairs and 854 on commerce. In 126 statements, Trump also falsely claimed that the US had lost money on trade deficits. “Countries do not ‘lose’ money on trade deficits,” The Washington Post explained. “A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country.”
Other topics on the list included 790 misleading statements about the economy and 755 about jobs. A “miscellaneous” category, including attacks on journalists or Trump’s perceived enemies, listed 899 such statements. He routinely brands mainstream news reports that do not suit his view as “fake news”.
The Washington Post recorded only 82 days, about 11% of Trump’s time in office, in which he made no false statements. “These were often days when the president golfed,” it said.
Importantly, Trump has made several misleading claims about an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, said the report.
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