Trump Made Twice as Many False Claims in 2019 as 2017 and 2018 Combined: Washington Post
OUT OF CONTROL
In 2019, President Trump doubled the total number of false claims he had made in the previous two years combined, the Washington Post reports. The newspaper’s Fact Checker has been tallying Trump’s false or misleading claims ever since he took office exactly three years ago. In 2017, he is said to have made 1,999 false or misleading claims, then he added 5,689 in 2018, but was untethered in 2019 with 8,155 suspect claims. The Fact Checker states that, three years after his inauguration, Trump has made more than 16,200 false or misleading claims. That boils down to six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018, and more than 22 in 2019. Last year’s surge in October and November was largely down to the controversy surrounding the July phone call when Trump urged Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, ultimately leading to the impeachment inquiry. Nearly 1,000 of the false and misleading claims made by the president deal with the Ukraine investigation.