Trump as president commits over 5,000 false, misleading claims

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has so far made over 5,000 false or misleading claims since assuming his office in January 2017, says The Washington Post.

“On Sept 7, President Trump woke up in Billings, Mont [Montana], flew to Fargo, N.D. [North Dakota], visited Sioux Falls, S.D. [South Dakota], and eventually returned to Washington. He spoke to reporters on Air Force One, held a pair of fundraisers and was interviewed by three local reporters.

In that single day, he publicly made 125 false or misleading statements — in a period of time that totalled only about 120 minutes. It was a new single-day high,” a report published in the prestigious US newspaper says.

“The day before, the president made 74 false or misleading claims, many at a campaign rally in Montana. An anonymous op-ed article by a senior administration official had just been published in the New York Times, and news circulated about journalist Bob Woodward’s insider account of Trump’s presidency,” it added.

“Trump’s tsunami of untruths helped push the count in The Fact Checker’s database past 5,000 on the 601st day of his presidency. That’s an average of 8.3 Trumpian claims a day, but in the past nine days — since our last update — the president has averaged 32 claims a day,” says The Washington Post.

According the news paper, the 5,000th claim was fittingly a tweet about the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller: “Russian ‘collusion’ was just an excuse by the Democrats for having lost the Election!”

It mentions that on nearly 140 occasions, the US president has falsely claimed that the Russia investigation was made up or a hoax. But the information on Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election was developed by the intelligence community and published in a declassified report, in which the agencies said they had “high confidence” it was correct.

“The president’s 5,001st claim was another tweet: He claimed that the administration “did an unappreciated great job” dealing with Hurricane Maria when it struck Puerto Rico in 2017.”

It also cited Trump as saying on Oct 3, 2017, “Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here and what is your death count? Sixteen people, versus in the thousands,” he said on Oct. 3, 2017. “You can be very proud.