Donald Trump’s Lying Streak Since Taking Office

The 2016 election was a contest between two of the most dishonest politicians in America, with Donald Trump probably taking the lead in this category. Donald Trump has continued to behave the same since taking office with The Washington Post’s Fact Checker keeping score. He counted 132 false or misleading claims in his first 33 days in office, with at least one per day. Many of these were fairly significant:

Donald Trump earned 59 Four-Pinocchio ratings as a presidential candidate. Now that he’s president, he has continued his proclivity for making dubious, misleading or false statements. He also often repeats the same debunked claims even though they have been fact-checked. It’s hard to keep up with all of Trump’s rhetoric, so the Fact Checker is assembling in one place all of his suspect statements from his first 100 days as president. You can sort them by various categories and see how many times he has repeated the same false statement.

The most frequent topic of these claims is immigration, which came up 24 times. Other frequent topics are biographical record (17 claims) and jobs (17 claims).

The most common source of false claims was Twitter, but there were also plenty in other remarks, prepared speeches, and interviews.

Will this matter? Chris Cillizza questions whether people care:

Will that affect Trump’s political future? Perhaps less than you might think. In a Fox News poll conducted earlier this month, 45 percent of people said they trust his administration more than the media to tell the truth to the public while 42 percent said they trust the media more. That distrust of the media coupled with Trump’s aggressive efforts to discredit the press make stats like those above irrelevant to many of his supporters.

It is understandable why Donald Trump has been attacking the press, including calling the news media an enemy of the people. While this is having some success, polls have also been showing a drop in support for Trump.