Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_ ... nald_Trump
Donald Trump has made many false or misleading statements, including thousands during his presidency.[4] Commentators and fact-checkers have described this as "unprecedented" in American politics,[5][6][7][8] and the consistency of these falsehoods has become a distinctive part of both his business and political identity.[9] Trump is known to have made controversial statements and subsequently denied having done so,[10][11] and by June 2019, many news organizations had started describing some of his falsehoods as lies.[12] The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of false claims amounts to a campaign based on disinformation.[13] According to writer and journalist Nancy LeTourneau, the debasing of veracity is a tactic.[14] By September 3, 2020, The Washington Post's Fact Checker database had counted 22,510 false or misleading statements.[1]
"It has long been a truism that politicians lie," wrote Carole McGranahan for the American Ethnologist journal in 2017. However, "Donald Trump is different" from other politicians, stated McGranahan, citing that Trump is the most "accomplished and effective liar" thus far to have ever participated in American politics. McGranahan felt that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented" as a result of Trump.[6]
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University stated that past U.S. presidents have indeed "lied or misled the country," but none of them were a "serial liar" like Trump.[15] Donnel Stern, writing in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues journal in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal," because Trump "lies as a policy," and he "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.[16]
Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described lies having "always been an integral part of politics and political communication". However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale" in U.S. politics, both during his presidential campaign and during his presidency. Skjeseth also commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.[17]
"Fabrications have long been a part of American politics," wrote Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times in 2017, as several presidents in the previous 50 years have lied. Stolberg cited that Dwight Eisenhower lied about a U.S. spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, Lyndon Johnson lied to justify U.S. policies regarding Vietnam, and Bill Clinton lied to conceal his sexual affair. Meanwhile, Stolberg recounts that Richard Nixon was accused of lying in the Watergate scandal, while George W. Bush was accused of lying about the need for the Iraq War (with Donald Trump being one accuser of Bush lying). However, Stolberg states that "President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called 'the conflict between truth and politics' to an entirely new level ... Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis."[18]
Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times has described in 2017 that U.S. presidents "of all stripes" have previously misled the public, either accidentally or "very purposefully". Barabak provided examples of Ronald Reagan, who falsely stated that he had filmed Nazi death camps, and Barack Obama, who falsely stated that "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it" under his Affordable Care Act. However, Barabak goes on to state that "White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations" is unparalleled.[19]
