The Washington Post in an analysis piece published Monday alleged that President Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims during his time in office as of August 5, pointing specifically to Trump’s comments on immigration and the economy.
According to the newspaper, Trump has averaged 20 false claims per day since April 26, when he crossed the 10,000 lie mark during his White House tenure. For the duration of his presidency, the Post says Trump has average averaged about 13 misleading or false claims per day.
{mosads}Approximately one-fifth of Trump’s misleading or false claims are about immigration, according to the newspaper. He has claimed 190 times that a wall along the U.S. and Mexico border, one of his central campaign promises, is being built. However, the Trump administration has reportedly only replaced portions of already existing border fencing and other barriers.
He has received funding from Congress for 205 miles of barrier.
Trump has blasted fact-checkers in the past, calling them “some of the most dishonest people in media” at a campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, in February. He has also been a frequent critic of the Post, often deriding it as “Fake News” and frequently criticizing Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, which owns the newspaper.
The Post also pointed at the president’s comments on the U.S. economy, trade and Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election. These each made up about 10 percent of Trump’s false or misleading statements.
The news outlet says Trump has said 186 times since June 2018 that the country’s economy is the best in history, but the paper reported that according to numerous economic indicators, the economy is not doing as well as it did during the administrations of Presidents Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Clinton or Grant.
Trump has also claimed 162 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in American history, but the paper points out that President Reagan’s tax cut in 1981 amounted to 2.9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and Trump’s was 0.9 percent, making it just the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years, according to the paper.
More than 18 percent of the incorrect statements Trump made that The Washington Post identified came from his Twitter account.