For the record

On Thursday, PolitiFact published its 1,000th fact check of a claim made by Donald Trump. The publication, which usually refrains from wading into political discussions or weighing in on a politician’s overall character, took the opportunity to release an analysis of those years of work. Its finding? Trump lies a lot.

“American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy,” the authors wrote. “Ever since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, we have encountered a firehose of claims.”

The analysis found in particular that Trump’s immigration-related claims tended toward inflammatory falsehoods and that more than 70 percent of PolitiFact’s checks on immigration, foreign policy, crime, COVID, and health care were largely false. It concluded, also, that “Trump’s falsehoods have fueled threats to democracy.”

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Donald Trump makes so many patently false claims that are recycled from earlier claims, but with some slight variation. How do you decide whether it’s worth it to fact-check these kinds of endless falsehoods?

Our friendly rivals, the Washington Post Fact Checker, did something like “37,000 questionable claims by Trump” and counted repeated claims in that. And they started to do what they call a “bottomless Pinocchio,” for when somebody repeats something so often... Slate

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HCR:

"...Since Saturday’s shooting, it has been notable that there has not been a medical review of Trump’s injuries, although he has said he was injured by a bullet that ripped through his ear. This matters not only because of the extent of his injuries, but also because Trump has made the story part of his identity without any fact check, and the media appears simply to be letting it go on Trump’s say-so, something that adds to the sense that media outlets are treating Trump and Biden differently.

Last night, Trump perhaps tried to address this lack by recounting last Saturday’s shooting. Interestingly, he did not say he was hit by a bullet, but that when he felt the injury he thought, “it can only be a bullet.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo today noted a report from local Pennsylvania television station WPXI that four motorcycle officers standing within feet of Trump suffered minor injuries from flying debris. Trump has likely cut off further discussion of the topic by saying it is too painful to tell the story again.

With that story behind him, Trump hit the theme of unity, saying he would bring the country together. “The discord and division in our society must be healed, we must heal it quickly. We are bound together by a single fate, a single destiny,” he said. “We rise together. Or we fall apart…. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America. So tonight, with faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States.”

But that was just in the first ten minutes. Then Trump ignored the teleprompter and things veered far off course, reflecting the candidate that has stayed in the safe spaces of Mar-a-Lago and rallies of his loyalists for years. Trump rambled for more than 90 minutes, making it the longest acceptance speech in U.S. history and outlasting the interest of the audience, some of whom fell asleep.

He went on to recite his usual litany of lies: that Democrats cheated in the 2020 presidential election (they did not), that crime is going up (it’s plummeting), that inflation is the worst we’ve ever had (it’s around 3%; the worst was around 23%), that Democrats want to quadruple people’s taxes (CNN fact checker Daniel Dale calls this “imaginary”), and so on. Dale called it “a remarkably dishonest acceptance speech.”

Journalist James Fallows posted: “Of the maybe 10,000 political speeches I've heard over the years, this was overall the worst.”

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Heather Cox Richardson, 7.19.24

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"...I will not, WILL NOT pretend there is anything normal about Trump or his "speech" last night. It was crazy.

It. Was. Crazy. And the collection of miscreants, racists, & felons assembled to take the stage this week was an embarrassment to the nation & before the world.

Does that make his supporters "forgotten Americans"who feel looked down upon & disrespected? Then they should make their conduct, their words, their values worthy of respect. Enough." 

Sherrilyn Ifill