Trump's long con on preexisting conditions Days before his inauguration in January 2017, Donald Trump told The Washington Post he was nearly done with his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Three and a half years later, the Trump administration has yet to unveil its proposal. Trump keeps saying — nearly 100 times since taking office, according to our count — that he will "always protect patients with preexisting conditions." But he has been working to undermine those protections since Day One. It's been one of Trump's most egregious deceptions for years, but especially so now that he is asking the Supreme Court to shred the entire Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic. We awarded the president a Bottomless Pinocchio, our worst rating, for claiming since his earliest days in office that he will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. Trump's vow is at odds with nearly every action he has taken as president on this issue. On Twitter and in public remarks, he constantly reassures sick patients and those with preexisting conditions that he has their back. Behind the scenes, he's pushing the entire government to end those very same protections. In the executive branch, Trump is issuing rules to weaken the guarantee and allow states waivers that would lead to skimpier coverage. In Congress, he has supported bills to erode the same protections for preexisting conditions. And last week, the Justice Department filed a legal brief asking the nation's highest court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act, even as neither Trump nor Congress has any replacement in hand. For the full fact check, click here. Sign up for The Post's Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked within the newsletter are free to access. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. You don't say In the wake of George Floyd's killing and the protests that followed, Trump has been pitching himself as the "law and order" candidate in the November presidential election and has been highlighting scattered outbreaks of violence. The Trump campaign riffed on that theme by releasing an ad — tweeted by the president — that combines shots of mayhem from around the country with quotes that suggest that Democratic lawmakers and former vice president and presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden actively support looting, attacks on police and other violence. As of June 30, the video had been viewed more than 6 million times. But viewer beware: The ad uses quotes with improper context and deceptively edits them with imagery from the demonstrations, skewing the original meaning of the remarks. For the full fact check, click here. Note: Last week's edition of the newsletter included the wrong link to our video investigation of the Trump administration's claims that organized "antifa" violence was part of the George Floyd protests. The Fact Checker video team found that the claims were bereft of evidence. Here's the correct link to the fact check. Now in book form Our new book is now a national bestseller. "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth," published by Scribner last month, tells the story of a president who has racked up more than 19,000 false or misleading claims — and what it's like to fact check him. Over 386 pages, we debunk a host of statements and tweets the president has made on the economy, immigration, foreign policy, his impeachment, the Russia probe, the coronavirus pandemic and more. The book is as comprehensive as it is reader-friendly, divided into chapters by subject. It's available in print, e-book and audiobook. Reviewers have called it "a great public service," "an extremely valuable chronicle" and "an authoritative and pull-no-punches guide through Trump's alternate universe." We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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