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It’s a cliché at this point: Donald Trump constantly misleads the public.
But just how often does he do this? A new analysis from the Washington Post tries to put a number on Trump’s false and misleading claims. It concludes:
488: The number of false or misleading claims made by the president. That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day.
10: Number of days without a single false claim. (On six of those days, the president golfed at a Trump property.)
4: Number of days with 20 or more false claims. (Feb. 16, Feb. 28, March 20 and April 21.) He made 19 false claims on April 29, his 100th day, though we did not include his interview with “Face the Nation,” since that aired April 30.
According to the Post, the misleading or false statements came from just about every venue possible — speeches, interviews, other unscripted remarks in front of reporters, and social media.
The comments vary in their subject matter. Some were about jobs, such as when he took credit for the January jobs report even though the data for it was taken a week before he became president. Some were about the media, like when he said the New York Times apologized for its supposedly dishonest coverage of him (which it did not do). And some are just petty, such as his bragging that he’s accomplished more than any other president in his first 100 days.
It all adds up to a massive total of misleading and false claims.
For the fact-checkers at the Post, the volume of these statements has created a weird challenge: They just can’t keep up with them all in their day-to-day news coverage.
As Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee wrote, “The president’s speeches and interviews are so chock full of false and misleading claims that The Fact Checker often must resort to roundups that offer a brief summary of the facts that the president has gotten wrong.”
For a deeper dive into Trump’s false and misleading comments, check out the Washington Post’s full breakdown.
