When President Trump sat down with the New York Times for an interview recently,
he said something untrue about every 75 seconds.
That’s not just the usual political boasting and grandstanding. Those
were actual, verifiable claims which professional fact checkers investigated
and found to be untrue.
For example, Trump said in the interview that “virtually every Democrat”
has said that the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians during the
2016 election, while there was “tremendous collusion” between Democrats and the
Russians.
….Also, there is NO COLLUSION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2017
That’s
not just false but “breathtakingly false,” as one fact-checker put it.
Democrats have not exonerated Trump, though some have been circumspect about
what we know and don’t know about Russian meddling, and there is little
evidence that Democrats were colluding with Russia.
In fact, the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency found in January of 2017that
Russia aimed to discredit Hillary Clinton and help Trump’s chances in the
election, so the claim doesn’t make much sense.
The interview was not an outlier, either.
A year-end review of untrue claims from FactCheck.org found
Trump dominating the list with remarks on everything from his inauguration to
the Russia investigation to his own tax bill. Of PolitiFact’s 483 fact checks on Trump so
far, 69% were rated “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire,” and his claims
on Russian meddling were the “Lie of the Year.” The Washington Postfound 1,950 false or misleading claims made over 347 days.
It’s easy to dismiss the scale of this problem.
After all, public trust in government is near historic lows. Most
Americans think politicians lie on a regular basis (though, by and large, they typically don’t), and professional fact-checkers have been
around for years and not made a substantive difference in U.S. politics.
Critics will point to these stories as evidence that “Donald Trump lies” and
compile “lists of Trump lies,” Trump will call the media “fake news” and
“dishonest” and nothing will change, right?
But there’s substantial evidence that Trump’s approach to the truth is
having an effect.
A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 62% of voters don’t think Trump is honest, while only 34%
believe he is. While Republicans remain trusting, with 75% believing he’s
honest, more than two-thirds of independents don’t agree and a sky-high 93% of
Democrats think he’s dishonest. By comparison 52% of voters thought Trump was not honest just after the
November election — a full 10-point drop over his first year.
Please continue this article, and to view video, please go here: http://time.com/5084420/donald-trump-lies-claims-fact-checks/
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