In a separate article about his persecution by Democratic prosecutors, former President Trump said he was “under investigation by more Democrats than Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Al Capone combined.”
The audience at a rally in North Carolina in 2022 burst into laughter when President Trump concluded, “I think I'm probably the most honest human being that God has ever created.” It seemed like it did. The crowd erupted into applause.
As Trump seeks to retake the White House, polls show Republicans are increasingly accepting of his rhetoric, even as a cottage industry of fact-checkers suggests the reality lies elsewhere. I found out that Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican political consultant, believes that Trump's complaints and frustrations about the United States under siege ring true in the minds of “a large portion of the population,” thus calling Trump a true believer. He says this is because he considers himself a storyteller.
“So Trump has two qualities at the same time,” Schmidt said. Schmidt writes a blog about national politics and portrays the 45th president as a demagogue and a threat to democracy. “He is the most prolific liar in American political history, but also the most honest president ever.”
Donald Trump is “the most prolific liar in American political history, but also the most honest president we have ever had.”
— Steve Schmidt, Republican political consultant
Even before the rise of President Trump, several major media outlets were creating fact-checking teams. In 2016, the New York Times called then-candidate Trump's claim that President Obama was not born in the United States a “lie,” achieving what was then portrayed as a momentous step.
But when the former reality TV host was elected president, the fact-checking movement heated up.
The Washington Post tallied 30,573 “false or misleading claims” made by Trump during his presidency. More than 800 claims of election fraud, many of which were repeat offenses, were dismissed outright by the courts. After fact-checking President Trump for the 1,000th time this year, PolitiFact reported that the president was completely or mostly wrong more than three-quarters of the time.
“It's not uncommon for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate, or fabricate things,” PolitiFact reported, not leaving President Biden alone and listing nearly 300 statements made by President Biden. Of those, 41% turned out to be completely or mostly wrong. “But American fact-checkers have never met a politician with the same contempt for factual accuracy as President Trump.”
Trump's core supporters show no signs of faltering.
A case in point is this month, when President Trump used a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to renew his longstanding crusade against illegal immigration.
President Trump told the story of Ruby Garcia, an alleged murderer who was living in the United States illegally. President Trump called her a “beautiful…incredible young woman.” He said he had “spoken to some of her family” about her tragic death.
However, Garcia's sister quickly told local NBC News affiliate Ken Kolker that Trump had not spoken to anyone in the Garcia family. And Mavi Garcia didn't appreciate the former president turning his 25-year-old sister's death into a political topic.
“He didn't talk to any of us,” Mavi Garcia told Target 8.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests from the Times and other news outlets to discuss the discrepancies.
Once upon a time, this episode may have been the center of attention in American politics, with a former president, and perhaps a future president, being called out by ordinary Americans. But there was no sign that supporters would object to the error, and the Garcia incident soon became part of the ambient noise of a campaign that is sure to get louder.
A recent Washington Post poll found that Republicans are now less likely to approve of Trump's falsehoods than they were during Trump's term in office.
When asked whether President Trump regularly makes misleading statements, the percentage of Republicans who said President Trump makes misleading statements decreased by 10 points from 2018 to 38. %. And the share of Republicans who say Trump usually makes outright false statements has dropped to 8%. From 14%.
Reports on Trump's Ruby Garcia claims also pointed to other questionable comments he made that day.
PolitiFact, run by the Florida-based journalism education organization Poynter Institute, highlights President Trump's inflammatory falsehoods and claims that Venezuela is emptying its prisons and sending criminals to the United States. . It also noted that “overall violent crime and homicides have decreased under President Joe Biden's administration.”
FactCheck.org, run by the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, highlighted “the government's concerns” about how President Trump's statements about immigration are misleading. [S]The population west of the border was 14.7% higher in the final year of President Trump's term than in the last year before he took office. ” Anxiety reached an all-time high at the end of 2023 during Biden's tenure.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked about Garcia's sister's rejection of Trump's claims. But commentator Charles Hart made no mention of the obvious falsehoods, justifying Trump's comments by saying they were about “something very important to people.” Hart then turned to another family whose daughter was killed in an accidental shooting by a man who was an illegal immigrant from Mexico.
Compare the vastly different coverage given to Trump and Ruby Garcia with earlier reporting of Biden's false statements about where he was the day after 9/11.
Last September, on the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Biden was accused of lying when he said he had visited Ground Zero the day after the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001. In fact, he was joining the Congressional delegation there nine days later.
Many media outlets, including MSNBC, NBC, CNN, and PolitiFact, cited Biden's false statements. The Wall Street Journey article asked, “Is it a gaffe born of fatigue, an honest mistake, or the exaggeration of a president prone to throwing himself in the middle of actions?”
The Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times did not report on the event, but the papers cited commentators who attacked Biden for marking the anniversary in Alaska.
Fox spent a good portion of prime time accusing Biden of “lying” about being at Ground Zero on September 12, and Sean Hannity invited several guests to visit New York City. He criticized the president for commemorating 9/11 elsewhere. Biden spoke from the U.S. Air Force base where he responded to the attack, and Fox commentators criticized his actions as disgraceful.
PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief Katie Sanders said that in general, Mr. Biden is less likely to have the kind of unscripted moments that fact-checkers would appreciate, explaining in part why so much of Mr. Trump's statements come under scrutiny. did.
“When politicians say things off the top of their heads without carefully preparing their statements in front of you, those statements tend to be less accurate,” Sanders said.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communication scholar and co-founder of FactCheck.org, said reactions to false statements tend to fit well-worn narratives. Biden's critics have downplayed the 81-year-old's memory and mental abilities. Trump's critics have focused on his history of lying.
Trump himself boasted in his 1987 memoir that he had mastered the art of “exaggeration.”
“People want to believe that something is the biggest, best, most spectacular thing. I call that an exaggeration of the truth,” President Trump wrote. “This is harmless hyperbole and a very effective form of advertising.”
Whether a campaign falsehood leaves a lasting impression on voters depends on many factors, including whether it becomes the subject of an ad, a memorable debate moment or a campaign meme, Jamison said. He said it depends on.
“Joe the Plumber” was written in 2008 when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Ohio pressed then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama about whether his tax plan would hurt small businesses. He became a recurring character in the presidential election campaign. Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, brought Mr. Wurselbacher with him on upcoming campaign trips, ensuring that his views were featured in the final debate between the candidates.
Jamieson said “confirmation bias” has always been a hallmark of political true believers, but it has become even stronger in the Trump administration on both sides.
“This is how we make sense of virtually everything,” Jamison said, explaining how people sometimes process objectionable messages. “They're already in the tribe, so if there's a dissonant message, the way to reduce the dissonance is to say it doesn't matter or it won't change that candidate's fidelity to the core issues.”
timesrResearcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
