Every year the fact checkers at Politifact look review the past year to determine the single biggest “Lie of the Year.” This year, it’s Donald Trump’s body of lies.
Donald Trump. His name, to many, evokes memories of huge and ugly lies.
Politifact, which every year determines the largest or most impactful “Lie of the Year,” has determined that Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric is the deserving target this year.
“Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down,” Politifact writes today. “Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.”
Trump has “perfected the outrageous untruth as a campaign tool,” Florida A&M philosophy professor Michael LaBossiere told Politifact. “He makes a clearly false or even absurdly false claim, which draws the attention of the media. He then rides that wave until it comes time to call up another one.”
Just four weeks ago, NCRM looked at Politifact’s reviews of the top Republican and Democratic presidential candidates’ comments. Â
We found Politifact had rated 74 percent, or nearly three out of every four statements of Trump’s they checked, were false to some degree.
At that time, Politifact had checked 136 of Clinton’s claims, almost exactly twice as many as Trump’s. Just 28 percent were to some degree false. The majority, 51 percent, were rated “True”or “Mostly True.” Another 21 percent were “Half True.”
Today, Politifact reports this year they have “rated 76 percent” of Trump’s statements “Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire, out of 77 statements checked. No other politician has as many statements rated so far down on the dial.”
“When it comes to inaccurate statements, the Donald was on fire,” Politifact reports:
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• “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down,” he said at a Nov. 21 rally in Birmingham, Ala. “And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” Pants on Fire. There is no video of thousands of people in Jersey City cheering. Weeks later, Trump continues to stand by his claim but has not been able to point to evidence to back it up. Public safety officials on the ground in New Jersey say it never happened.
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• “The Mexican government … they send the bad ones over.” Pants on Fire. There’s no evidence to show the Mexican government encourages criminals to cross the border. Most illegal immigration comes from people seeking work. Recent estimates show illegal immigration from Mexico dropped off dramatically during the recession and has remained low.
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• “Whites killed by whites — 16%. Whites killed by blacks — 81%,” said an image he shared on Twitter. Pants on Fire. Most people are killed by someone they know, and someone of the same race. The correct number for whites killed by whites was 82 percent in 2014, while the number of whites killed by blacks was 15 percent.
The Politifact report details a great many more.
Sadly, the more Trump lies, the higher his poll numbers jump.Â
Which says a lot more about the people supporting Trump than Trump himself.
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Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr and a CC license