Once Again Trump Blows Up His Own Lies

Washington (CNN)Trying to pick the most notable lies from Donald Trump's presidency is like trying to pick the most notable pieces of junk from the town dump.

There's just so much ugly garbage to sift through before you can make a determination.

But I'yard qualified for the dirty job. I fact checked every discussion uttered past this President from his inauguration day in Jan 2017 until September 2020 -- when the daily number of lies got and so unmanageably loftier that I had to start taking a pass on some of his remarks to preserve my health.

Trump got even worse after Nov 3. Since then, he has spent the final months of what has been a wildly quack presidency on a relentless and dangerous lying spree about the election he lost.

As the country grapples with the deadly consequences of this charade, I've selected the fifteen Trump lies that stand out to me from his four years in power -- for their importance, for their egregiousness, for their absurdity, or for what they say about the man.

The near telling prevarication: It didn't rain on his inauguration

Trump began his presidency by lying nigh the conditions.

It rained during Trump's inaugural address. So, at a celebratory ball later that 24-hour interval, Trump told the crowd that the rain "but never came" until he finished talking and went within, at which point "it poured."

This was the first lie of Trump'southward presidency. Like his lies that same week about his inauguration oversupply, it hinted at what would come next.

The President would say things that we could see with our own eyes were non true. And he would often do this brazen lying for no apparent strategic reason.

The almost unsafe lie: The coronavirus was under control

This was more than like a family unit of lies than a single lie. But each 1 -- the prevarication that the virus was equivalent to the influenza; the lie that the state of affairs was "totally nether control"; the lie that the virus was "disappearing" -- suggested to Americans that they didn't have to change much nearly their usual behavior.

A year into the crisis, more than than 386,000 Americans have died from the virus.

Nosotros can't say with precision how the crisis would have unfolded differently if Trump had been more truthful. Merely information technology'southward reasonable to venture that his dishonesty led to a significant number of deaths.

The most alarming prevarication saga: Sharpiegate

Trump tweeted in 2019 that Alabama was one of the states at greater gamble from Hurricane Dorian than had been initially forecast. The federal weather condition office in Birmingham then tweeted that, actually, Alabama would exist unaffected by the storm.

Non bully, but fixable fast with a simple White Business firm correction. Trump, however, is and so congenitally unwilling to acknowledge error that he embarked on an increasingly farcical campaign to prove that his incorrect Alabama tweet was really correct, eventually showcasing a hurricane map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie.

The slapstick might accept been funny had White House officials not leaped into action behind the scenes to try to pressure federal weather condition experts into saying he was correct and they were wrong. The saga proved that Trump was non some lonely liar: he was backed by an unabridged powerful appliance willing to fight for his fabrications.

The near ridiculous subject of a lie: The Boy Scouts

When I emailed the Boy Scouts of America in 2017 about Trump's claim that "the head of the Male child Scouts" had chosen him to say that his bizarrely political address to the Scouts' National Jamboree was "the greatest spoken language that was ever fabricated to them," I didn't expect a reply. One of the hardest things about fact checking Trump was that a lot of people he lied about did not think it was in their interest to be quoted publicly contradicting a vengeful president.

The Boy Scouts did. A senior Scouts source -- a phrase I never expected to have to blazon as a political reporter in Washington, DC -- confirmed to me that no telephone call always happened.

Yep, the President of the U.s.a. was lying near the Boy Scouts.

The ugliest smear prevarication: Rep. Ilhan Omar supports al Qaeda

At a White House result in 2019, Trump grossly distorted a 2013 quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar to endeavour to get his supporters to believe that the Minnesota Democrat had expressed support for the terrorist group al Qaeda.

Trump went on to evangelize boosted bigoted attacks against Omar in the following months. Simply it's difficult to imagine a more vile lie for the President to tell most a Muslim official -- who had already been getting expiry threats -- than a smear that makes her sound pro-terrorist.

The most irksome serial lie: The trade deficit with Prc used to exist $500 billion

Trump, an incorrigible exaggerator, rarely chose to utilise an accurate number when he could instead utilize an inaccurate bigger number. And so he said well over 100 times that, before his presidency, the Usa for years had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with Prc -- though the actual pre-Trump deficit never fifty-fifty reached $400 billion.

Trump fabricated versions of the "$500 billion" claim and so many times that information technology became nearly physically painful for me to fact check it whatever more than.

The most entertaining prevarication shtick: The burly crying men who had never cried before

They were almost always male person. They were almost e'er big. They were almost e'er bluish-collar. And, according to the President, they kept walking upwards to him crying tears of gratitude -- fifty-fifty though they had almost ever not previously cried for years.

Trump's series of Tears Stories -- which sometimes doubled every bit "Sir" Stories -- helped me sympathize his lying as a kind of performance art.

The stories were oddly grandiose, like something you lot'd hear from a two-scrap foreign strongman. They were also pure shtick. Trump was like a touring stand up-upwards comic, refining and re-using his favored dishonesty $.25 until they stopped working for him.

The virtually traditional big lie: Trump didn't know virtually the payment to Stormy Daniels

We've established that Trump was not your traditional political liar. One of his distinguishing features is that he lied pointlessly, dissembling about trivial subjects for trivial reasons.

Only he likewise lied when he needed to. When he told reporters on Air Force One in 2018 that he did not know well-nigh a $130,000 payment to porn performer Stormy Daniels and that he did not know where his then-attorney Michael Cohen got the money for the payment, it was both audacious -- Trump knew, because he had personally reimbursed Cohen -- and kind of conventional: the President was lying to try to get himself out of a tawdry scandal.

The biggest lie by omission: Trump concluded family separation

Much of Trump's lying was impuissant, half-broiled. Some of it was almost art. Here's what he told NBC'southward Chuck Todd in 2019 near his widely controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children at the border: "You lot know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that concluded it."

Aye, Trump signed a 2018 social club to end the family unit separation policy. What he did not mention to Todd is that what he had ended was his own policy -- a plan appear past his own attorney full general that had made family separation standard rather than occasional, as it had been under Obama.

All of Trump's words in those ii sentences to Todd were accurate in themselves. But he was lying because of what he left out.

The most shameless campaign prevarication: Biden will destroy protections for pre-existing weather condition

Trump'south re-election campaign was consistently and consciously dishonest, especially in its attempts to cast Joe Biden equally a frightening radical. When Trump claimed in September that Biden would destroy protections for people with pre-existing health weather condition -- though the Obama-Biden administration created the protections, though the protections were overwhelmingly pop, though Biden was running on preserving them, and though Trump himself had tried repeatedly to weaken them -- Trump was not simply lying merely turning reality upside downward.

The lie he fled: He got Veterans Selection

Trump could have told a perfectly adept factual story near the Veterans Option health care programme Obama signed into law in 2014: information technology wasn't good plenty, so he replaced information technology with a more than expansive program he signed into law in 2018.

That's not the story he did tell -- whether out of policy ignorance, a desire to erase Obama's legacy, or just because he is a liar. Instead, he claimed over and over -- more than 160 times earlier I lost count -- that he is the one who got the Veterans Choice plan passed after other presidents tried and failed for years.

And why not stretch? He knew he probably wouldn't exist challenged past a press corps drowning in other Trump drama. It wasn't until August 2020 that he was asked most the lie to his face.

The Crazy Uncle prevarication honour: Windmill noise causes cancer

It was a trouble for the country that the President was not only a conspiracy theorist himself simply immersed in conspiracy culture, regularly stumbling upon ludicrous claims and and then sharing them as fact.

For such a fierce critic of the media'south use of anonymous sources, Trump sure liked to employ a lot of unnamed sources himself. His stories were full of nonsense he attributed to "people" or that he claimed "they" say. One of the nigh bonkers "they say" items: his 2019 declaration that "they say" the noise from windmills "causes cancer."

After Trump amplified another conspiracy lie in 2020, NBC'south Savannah Guthrie admonished him by saying that "you lot're not, like, someone's crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever."

Except he was, until Twitter took down his account.

The nigh hucksterish prevarication: That programme was coming in two weeks

Trump's big health care plan was eternally coming in "two weeks." So were a bunch of other plans and announcements.

Trump is, at his core, a huckster. Every moment of his presidency was a chance for him to sell someone on something, whether or not that something actually existed. And if they asked when they could actually see the magic elixir he said was being brewed just over at that place behind the mantle, he would but have to delay them until they forgot about it.

My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year

Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan's Man of the Twelvemonth years earlier his presidency?

He wouldn't have been. He wasn't. And yet this prevarication he appeared to have invented in the concluding week of his 2016 campaign became a staple of his 2020 entrada, repeated at Michigan rally after rally.

Information technology's so illustrative because it makes so footling sense.

The about depressing prevarication: Trump won the election

Trump'southward long White House campaign against verifiable reality has culminated with his prevarication that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential ballot he conspicuously, certifiably and fairly lost.

To many of united states, it'south ludicrous nonsense. But to millions of deluded Americans, information technology'due south the truth. And it has at present gotten people killed.

The nation'southward truth trouble, clearly, isn't but a Trump trouble. With this last blizzard of charade and the Capitol insurrection it fomented, Trump has shown us, over again, just how discrete from reality much of his political base has get -- or always was.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html

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