News

You Can Keep Track Of All Trump's Lies

by Chris Tognotti
Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images

It's now been more than one month since the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, even if it feels like a whole lot longer. And thus far, Presidential Trump has looked a lot like candidate Trump ― bombastic, inflammatory, self-centered, and more than a little mendacious. As such, it's very possible that you're looking for a useful way to visualize Trump's lies over time. If so, the Washington Post has you covered with a set of hugely useful infographics.

It's a project the paper's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, is undertaking for at least a couple months more, keeping track of every false and misleading claim Trump makes over the course of his first 100 days in office, complete with some handy visual representations of the, well, scale of the problem. At the time of this writing, Trump had not gone a single day of his presidency without making at least one false or misleading claim. The only variable, in other words, is how many.

So far, according to Kessler's analysis, Trump has made 132 false or misleading claims in a mere 33 days in office. As shown in the image below, you can check out which topics Trump misled or lied about over his first 100 days, and on which days those statements were made. Curious as to how many times he's said something false about immigration? Just click the "immigration" tag and the various instances will light up for you.

Washington Post

That's not the only breakdown of just how often Trump has played fast and loose with the truth, however. It's clearly something of a serial issue for him, but especially when he's blasting out messages on social media ― 34 of the false or misleading statements were made on his Twitter account, compared to 31 made in remarks, 24 in his prepared speeches, and 22 in interviews. The additional claims made in news conferences, statements, and on Facebook total 21, bringing the total to 133, where it currently sits.

That puts him on track for about 400 false or misleading claims over his first 100 days, though who knows if he'll be able to keep up such a torrid pace? As you can further see in the graphic below, while Trump has managed to hold himself to use one or two false or misleading statements in 15 of the days so far, he has yet to make it a whole deceit-free day.

As for how high the final tally for the first 100 days will go, it's too early to say. It's also unclear whether this might extend out to a longer term project after those 100 days are up, since it looks like there's going to be plenty to keep up with. It's also worth noting that it's not just infographics offered by the Washington Post on this, either ― every false or misleading claim is documented below the graphics, so you can read for yourself what exactly Trump said and the reasoning behind why it's wrong.

In short, it's not be a bad way to spend a few minutes, if you're feeling swamped by all the distortions and want to get back to the facts.