| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | One president, 4,229 false or misleading claims He held a summit with Kim Jong Un. He met one-on-one with Vladimir Putin. He browbeat NATO allies in Europe. He hosted raucous campaign rallies and fired off tweets like there was no tomorrow. President Trump made a staggering 976 false or misleading claims during June and July, according to The Fact Checker's database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. With nearly 1,000 claims packed into two months, it's clear we've entered a new phase of Trump's presidency. The June-July tally represents 23 percent of the grand total of 4,229 faulty claims since Trump took office. During the president's first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. Now, he's averaging 7.6 claims a day. Put another way: In his first year as president, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims. In the six months since, he made another 2,089, nearly doubling his total in half the time. |  | | Almost one-third of Trump's claims — 1,293 — relate to economic issues, trade deals or jobs. He frequently takes credit for jobs created before he became president or company decisions with which he had no role. He cites his "incredible success" in terms of job growth, even though annual job growth under his presidency has been slower than the last five years of Barack Obama's term. And there are also copious false claims about immigration and crime, the Russia investigation, NATO funding, North Korea, the tax cut bill he signed in December and many other issues. All 4,229 claims are categorized and fact-checked in our searchable graphic. July 5th was the day with the most false or misleading claims, at 79. We did a line-by-line analysis of a Trump campaign rally in Montana held that day, and found that more than three-quarters of what Trump said was false, misleading or unsupported by evidence. | | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. | | An urban myth we debunked — in 2005! — comes back to life Time for a stroll down memory lane, except in this case the memory is baloney. As the story goes, Osama bin Laden was using a satellite phone in the late 1990s to communicate with aides, spooks were listening in on these conversations, the U.S. was gathering valuable intelligence about al-Qaeda, but it all came crashing down when the Washington Times reported a government "leak" about bin Laden's satellite phone use in 1998. The line went dead. President George W. Bush complained in 2005 that the media had blown up a valuable source of information about a leading terrorist. Then, this week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated this foreboding story in a briefing. It so happens that Bush's accusation caught Glenn Kessler's attention in 2005, and he thoroughly debunked it a few years before officially becoming The Fact Checker. Before the Washington Times published its story, bin Laden's communication to aides via satellite phone had been reported by Time magazine in 1996 — and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time. The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself. The Trump administration often complains about the press, but Sanders should do better research before peddling fake news. A quick Google search would have found our original debunking of this urban myth, so we gave her Four Pinocchios. |  | | | An Internet conspiracy comes to life at a Trump rally The self-proclaimed followers of "Q" were impossible to miss at President Trump's rally in Florida this week. But who is Q and just what exactly is "QAnon"? The short answer: It's a very detailed, choose-your-own-reality conspiracy theory that has resonated deeply with Trump supporters. A secret cabal inside the government is trying to manipulate, uh, world history maybe? And as the theory goes, there's a rival cabal helping Trump fight back against the first cabal. There's also something about a storm, something about ankle monitors, something to do with Robert Mueller and Hillary Clinton and John McCain blah blah blah. "Q claims to be a government insider exposing an entrenched, international bureaucracy that is secretly plotting all sorts of nefarious schemes against the Trump administration and its supporters," the New York Times reported. It sounds like something out of "Homeland" or "Scandal," but the QAnon movement has flourished across social networks and YouTube in real life. Pro-Trump actress Roseanne Barr has indicated she believes Q. This conspiracy theory, with its fantastical web of intrigue casting Trump as a hero and the government as his enemy, once again demonstrates the powerful reach of fake news. | | Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly | | | |  | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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