News Reporter: Fact Checker: Our updated tally of President Trump’s false/misleading claims: 1,628 claims in 298 days

Friday, 17 November 2017

Fact Checker: Our updated tally of President Trump’s false/misleading claims: 1,628 claims in 298 days

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

Our updated tally of President Trump's false/misleading claims: 1,628 claims in 298 days

As regular readers know, the president has a tendency to repeat himself — often. But for some reason, our year-long project analyzing, categorizing and tracking every false or misleading claim by President Trump had seemed like quite a burden in the past month. Well, the numbers are in and now we know why: In the past 35 days, Trump has averaged an astonishing nine claims a day.

We started this database because the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up. Readers can use the interactive database to quickly search a claim after they hear it, since there's a good chance he's said it before.

There are now at least 50 claims that he has repeated three or more times. The president's claim that "Obamacare is failing" continues to top the list (the Congressional Budget Office found Obamacare exchanges are expected to remain stable for the foreseeable future) followed by his habit of taking credit for business decisions he didn't make. Two claims about taxes are on the rise: that the tax plan will be the biggest tax cut in U.S. history and that the United States is one of the highest-taxed nations (both false).

Ten months in, the president's tally stands at 1,628 false or misleading claims through Nov. 13. That's an average of 5.5. claims a day and puts him on track to reach 1,999 claims by the end of his first year in office, though he obviously would easily exceed 2,000 if he maintained the pace of the past month.

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All the known times the Trump campaign met with the Russians

When asked if surrogates from the Trump campaign had communications with Russians, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Senate Judiciary committee in October, "I did not — and I'm not aware of anyone else that did. I don't believe that happened." In his testimony before the same committee this week, the attorney general said, "My answers have not changed. I have always told the truth and I have answered every question as I understood them to the best of my recollection."

The release of George Papadopoulus's plea agreement and Carter Page's testimony have again raised questions about Sessions's previous testimony and the Trump campaign's interactions with Russians. The campaign and the White House have denied and down-played these connections. However, we now know members of the Trump campaign interacted with Russians at least 31 times throughout the campaign.

There are at least 19 known meetings and knowledge of these communications went to the highest levels of Donald Trump's operation — both Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort, two of the campaign's three managers, were aware of it. Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, Trump's final campaign managers, were aware of that WikiLeaks had been in touch with Donald Trump Jr.

Information about members of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russians has come out in dribs and drabs. As a public service, we compiled a comprehensive timeline of what we now know from media reports and court documents detailing who interacted with Russians during the campaign as well as internal conversations about those meetings.

We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @nikki_lew or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.

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