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This Is How Many False Claims On Average Trump Makes Each Day

by Chris Tognotti
Ralph Freso/Getty Images News/Getty Images

President Donald Trump passed a truly dismal milestone in early August, according to The Washington Post. Namely, he made his 1,000th false or misleading claim since entering office back on Jan. 20. In other words, he's spewing out falsehoods at an absolutely breakneck pace, having been in office for just seven months. It's enough to make you wonder: how many lies does Trump tell in a day?

The answer, according to the paper's fact checkers, is a whopping 4.9 falsehoods per day ― you know what, why not just round that up to five? So, Trump tells almost five falsehoods per day, a pace which would amount to more than 1,800 false statements over the span of a calendar year, or more than 7,000 over the course of a full four-year term.

Of course, that assumes he maintains such an epic rate of public dishonesty. To be clear, the Post also includes blatant flip-flops and position reversals in the tally, so it's not all him pointing to the sky and calling it red, or pointing to a white supremacist demonstration and saying some "very fine people" were involved.

Conveniently, the Post also released the following video on Tuesday, marking the occasion of Trump's 1,000th false or misleading claim with a rundown of his top five most-repeated ones.

Trump's most frequent false or misleading claims, as detailed by the Post, are regarding NATO, the ongoing independent investigation into his campaign's alleged ties to Russia, the production cost of the (hyper-expensive and largely useless) F-35 fighter jet, the various deals he claims to have cut with major businesses, and the ongoing health and stability of the Affordable Care Act.

At the time of this writing, according to the Post's analysis, these five topics account for 146 of the 1,055 false or misleading claims he's made as president, more than ten percent of his total figure.

The question, of course, is whether Trump will continue to spread as much misinformation as he has thus far. It's important to remember, especially with Trump making as much noise about "fake news" as he has, that journalistic outlets do get things wrong sometimes too.

But when they do, and they're called to account, they're expected to correct the record. One of the defining characteristics of Trump's political career, on the other hand, has been never acknowledging any past mistakes or misstatements. And more than seven months into his first term, there's no reason to assume that's going to suddenly change.