Why we're not doing a Trump claims database for his second term Many readers keep emailing: Why is the Washington Post Fact Checker not keeping track of Trump's false and misleading claims during his second term, as it did when Trump was first president? Lots of conspiracy theories abound, but the answer is simple. We needed to get back our lives. In his first term, we documented that Trump accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency. Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and an additional 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later. While the database won wide acclaim — it was nominated by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University for inclusion in a list of the Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade — it took a personal toll. We lost many evenings and most of our weekends to keeping it up. That's why we only compiled a database for the first 100 days of Biden's presidency. If Kamala Harris had won, we likely would have done the same. But Trump is in a different realm. He's constantly talking, repeating the same false claims over and over, no matter how often they have been debunked. The fact checks in the original database amount to about 5 million words and many include links to sources that debunk Trump's statements. He keeps repeating many of them in his second term, even while making new ones. To examine it, please click the link below. | 
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