DONALD J. TRUMP: THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD, HE MUST NOW STOP LYING

…This man had more 4-Pinocchio lies than all the Republicans & Democrats combined, over 3 years.

 

Donald Trump had amassed 59, Four-Pinocchio ratings, while Hillary had a total of 7.

 

A major question regarding Donald Trump was presented by the nation’s media.  That questions is, now that Donald Trump has been elected as the American president, will his fact-checking Pinocchio rating improve?

 

When Trump declared his presidency campaign almost 2 years ago, he was described as “a fact checker’s dream and nightmare”.  That was because Trump continued to spout off so many twisted and inaccurate so called “facts” that it took massive efforts to decode.

 

Sure enough, Mr. Trump went on to earn an astonishing 59 Four-Pinocchio rulings, amassing more Four-Pinocchio ratings over 18 months than all the Republicans or Democrats combined over the past three years. 

 

Of course, Hillary Clinton had her own trustworthiness issues, particularly regarding her e-mail controversy, but compared to Mr. Trump on honesty, Hillary’s was about 1/20^th of Trump’s Four-Pinocchio ratings

 

To put this into perspective, the fact checkers at the Washington Post did 168 fact-checks of Clinton and Trump claims and 315 fact-checks of all the candidates who ran for president.  They awarded Pinocchio’s to both Clinton and Trump, and they fact-checked about 400 claims from 25 primary and general debates.

 

Of all the fact checks, Donald Trump had amassed a collection of 59, Four-Pinocchio ratings while Hillary had a total of 7, Four-Pinocchio ratings.

 

With all the noise coming over the internet, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social media, fact-checking is now more important than ever.

 

The next areas for the fact checkers is that, as the politicians now assume their new or re-elected roles as leaders and policymakers, the fact checkers are preparing to begin fact-checking the outgoing and incoming Congress.  In addition, the new administration and the various political debates yet to come.

The fact checkers took a break this week and they took some time to reflect on the past two weeks.

 

One Post employee, Glenn Kessler reflected on the campaign, and the challenges President Trump may face based on his questionable relationship with the facts.

Many commentators have argued that the rise of Trump indicates that the United States has entered a post-election-fact free era.  However, recent research indicates that fact checks do have a positive effect.  Research has found that fact checking reduced the increased prevalence of false beliefs.  As expected, fact-checking websites all experienced huge surges in readership during the election campaign. The Post Fact Checker site had five times more visitors than during the 2012 election cycle.  But one must hope that now that Trump will assume the presidency, he may find that it is not in his interest to keep making factually unsupported statements.

 

As an example, Trump frequently said that the US unemployment rate is really 42%, rather than the 5% figure produced by the government. We know from readers that this claim, though false, was readily accepted by some serious supporters.

 

However, now that Trump will head the government that includes his own Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Unless he orders the BLS to change the internationally accepted method by which it calculates the unemployment rate, (which knowing the old Trump, why not?), his own government will be issuing numbers that consistently and directly contradict him.

 

But there is another reason that this kind of mis-information will have to change. 

 

Trump faces another problem if a true 5% unemployment rate translates in Trump-land to 42% under his own accounting.  If that’s the case, even reducing Trump’s unemployment rate by a full 10%, that would still mean an unemployment rate of 32%, by his own reckoning.  Not exactly a positive platform for a 2020 reelection.

 

 

There are other of Trump's former statements that will have to change, or he and his administration will also be in this same position.

 

Every new president always starts with a clean slate, and Trump is inheriting a much better economy than Obama did in 2009.  Everyone is eager to see whether Trump will actually and seriously improve his Pinocchio ratings once he takes the oath of office.

 

As they say in the real world.  Donald Trump, you can no longer say whatever you want without some serious repercussions, potentially from all around the world.  But now we have to ask, “Will the real Donald J. Trump please stand up!”

But will he?

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016