FACT CHECKING TRUMP HAS ONLY INCREASED HIS LYING

…Our president, “Lyin Don”

Is Trump just accelerating what Putin is trying to achieve?

Well, as Trump had started calling Senator Ted Cruz, “Lyin Ted”, I may start going forward  by calling the president, “Lyin Don”.

As of the beginning of August 2018, his overall average of “lies-per-day” is now 7.6 lies.  But in these last two weeks, it’s been 16 lies per day.

We do know that Trump regularly lies to America, but as the Robert Mueller investigation gets closer to Trump, the president has seriously increased his falsehoods.

The Post’s fact checkers took some summer vacation time off and got behind in fact checking the president.  But once they got back on the job, they found that  as of day 558 of Trump’s presidency, Trump’s lies had increased to 4,229 false claims, and that was an increase of 978 lies, just over the last two months.

Since he was inaugurated, that’s what gives us an average of 7.6 lies per day.

His latest lie at a recent Florida rally really cracked me up.  And it showed that Donald Trump has never actually bought food at a grocery store.  His lie was in support of everyone needed to have a picture ID to vote.  The lie was that: “To buy groceries today, you have to have a picture ID.”  No, he didn’t say it was for buying liquor or some special medicines, he said “groceries”.

Before the Paul Manafort trial had started, Trump was only telling 5.9 lies per day, (Yes, I did say “only”….)  And when he first came into office, it was “only”, 4.9 lies per day.

I really think that Trump is panicking and he is seriously afraid of what Mueller will find from the Manafort case, or from Cohen or whatever Mueller will get from all the documents, e-mails and recordings that were acquired in the raids on Manafort’s and Cohen’s homes and offices and safe deposit boxes.

Also, Mueller has Trump’s tax returns, which could be telling a whole other story.

Trump has a habit of repeating, over and over, many of his false or misleading statements. We’ve counted nearly 150 false claims that the president has repeated at least three times, some with even more breathtaking frequency.

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 in 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.

Just on trade, the president has made 432 false or misleading claims. He frequently gets the size of trade deficits wrong or presents the numbers in a misleading fashion.

He also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. In June and July, more than 20 times the president made a claim some that the United States “lost” money on trade deficits. Just about every economist would give Trump an “F” for making such statements.

A trade deficit simply means people in a country is buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first. Trade deficits are also affected by other large economic factors, such as the strength of currencies, economic growth rates, and savings and investment rates.

Not surprisingly, immigration is the top single source of Trump’s misleading claims, as of now they total 538.  Thirty times just in the past five months, the president has falsely claimed his long-promised border wall with Mexico is being built, even though Congress has denied serious funding for it.  (Yes, there have been some improvements to the current border fencing.)

The reality is, that in his first year as president, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims. Now, just six months later, he has almost doubled that total.

On July 5, the president reached a new daily high of 79 false and misleading claims. On a monthly basis, June and July rank in first and second place, with 532 and 446 false claims, respectively.

Moving up the list, are claims about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether people in the Trump campaign were in any way connected to it.

The president has made 378 statements about the Russia probe, using hyperbolic claims of “worse than Watergate,” “McCarthyism” and, of course, “witch hunt.” He often asserts the Democrats colluded with the Russians, even though it was the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign that were the victims of Russian activities, as emails were hacked and then released via his favorite, WikiLeaks. All told, nearly 160 times the president has made claims suggesting the Russia probe is made up, a hoax or a fraud.

Misleading claims about taxes — now at 336 — are also a common feature of Trump’s speeches. Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history.

On foreign policy, the president consistently misstates NATO spending. More than 60 times, he has falsely said the United States pays as much as 90% of the alliance’s costs and that other NATO members “owe” money. But he is conflating overall defense spending with NATO obligations, and the United States, unlike many NATO allies, has taken on global responsibilities.

The fact checkers have catalogued the president’s many flip-flops, since those earn Upside-Down Pinocchio’s if a politician shifts position on an issue without acknowledging that he or she did so.

Given that the president has been in office more than 18 months, hey have decided to begin phasing out the listing of his astonishing flip-flop on the accuracy of the unemployment rate.

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that the government numbers were phony numbers and the real unemployment rate was really many times higher.  But now however, as president, he regularly touts government unemployment statistics as proof of his economic agenda’s success, though he many times gives a false larger number.  His refusal to acknowledge this shift has been frustrating, but even flip-flops have a statute of limitations.

It is so sad, and potentially dangerous for a democracy to have a national leader that regularly lies, and to have so many Americans that believe anything he says, and thinks that our free press is “fake news”.

In other nations, the leader lying has been the first signal of a failing democracy.  And there’s a major thug of a leader in Russia that is doing all he can to make that happen.

Copyright G.Ater  2018