Here’s The Authoritative List Of Lies Joe Biden Has Told As President: 355 And Counting

Surely with thousands of lies Mikey could name a few. 

Here’s a start:

Showing 50 out of 30,573 claims

JAN 19 2021

“We also got tax cuts, the largest tax cut and reform in the history of our country, by far.”

Repeated 296 times

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This is Trump’s second favorite falsehood, and his remarks at his departure ceremony at Andrews Air Force base marks the 296th time he said it. Even before Trump’s tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history – bigger than Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth largest tax cut in 100 years.

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JAN 19 2021

“We just got seventy five million votes. And that’s a record in the history of in the history of sitting presidents.”

Repeated 19 times

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When the counting was finished, Trump had received 74 million votes, not 75 million as he often claims — but Biden earned more than 81 million. That’s a margin of 4.5 percentage points. Biden’s margin in the popular vote is larger than Barack Obama’s victory in 2012 and George W. Bush’s victory in 2004. Trump ignores the fact that more Americans voted in the 2020 election — two-thirds of the voting eligible population — than in any other in 120 years. A big reason is Trump himself. Trump was the most polarizing president in modern political history, inspiring fierce loyalty from Republicans and deep hostility from Democrats. In 2016, a lot of voters were indifferent about both Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton. After the past four years, few Americans don’t have strongly held opinions about Trump, helping power record turnout for his 2020 general-election opponent.

JAN 19 2021

“One of the things we’re very, very proud of is the selection of almost three hundred federal judges and three great Supreme Court justices.That’s a very big number. That’s a record-setting number.”

Repeated 84 times

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Contrary to his boasts, Trump did not achieve a record for appointing the most appeals court and district court judges. Bill Clinton has the record, with 367 judicial appointments in his two terms, followed by Ronald Reagan with 358 and then George W. Bush with 322. Through his four years, 226 judges nominated by Trump were confirmed by the Senate. (That is still behind Jimmy Carter, who had 261 judges confirmed in his single term.) George Washington appointed 39 judges during his presidency. Trump appointed 54 judges to the federal appeals court, behind Carter’s 59 appeals-court appointments. Trump ranks second, after Carter, in terms of the number of district judges. (He just edged out Clinton and George W. Bush.) Trump often said he would appoint nearly 300 judges but he ended up well short of that number.

JAN 19 2021

“Our first lady has been a woman of great grace and beauty and dignity. And so popular with the people, so popular with the people.”

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In reality, Melania Trump leaves the White House with the worst popularity rating for any first lady at the end of her term in polling history. “The latest CNN/SSRS poll had Trump’s favorable rating at 42% to a 47% unfavorable rating,” CNN reported. “The 47% is the highest unfavorable rating we ever recorded for Trump. It’s also amazingly high from a historical perspective.”

JAN 19 2021

“That’s why [regulation cuts] we have such good, and have had such good, job numbers. The job numbers have been absolutely incredible.”

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Leaving aside Trump’s claim about the impact of his regulation cuts, which is dubious, Trump leaves office as the first president since World War II to have fewer people employed than when he took office. Even before the pandemic struck, the manufacturing sector was in a technical recession.

JAN 19 2021

“When we started, had we not been hit by the pandemic, we would have had numbers that would never have been said already. Our [employment] numbers are the best ever. If you look at what happened until February a year ago, our numbers were at a level that nobody had ever seen before.”

Repeated 96 times

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Before the coronavirus pandemic, more people were working than ever before as a consequence of steady population growth, but the labor force participation rate was below levels seen in the 1990s and 2000s. The unemployment rate had declined, before the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, but had not achieved record lows under Trump. (The unemployment rate has only been consistently recorded since 1948.) Sometimes, Trump refers to an average unemployment rate over the course of a presidency, but while before the coronavirus pandemic struck, he was off to a good start, his overall record was spoiled in his last year.

JAN 19 2021

“What we’ve done has been amazing by any standard. We rebuilt the United States military.”

Repeated 250 times

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Trump often falsely claims he’s “totally rebuilt” the U.S. military. The military budget had declined in recent years, as a result of decreases in funding for Overseas Contingency Operations as both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came to a close, not because it’s been so gravely depleted. Trump frequently says his military budgets are biggest in history, but adjusted for inflation his administration’s budgets lag some years during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The biggest defense budget was in 2010, and in inflation-adjusted dollars it is nearly ten percent larger than Trump’s 2020 budget.

JAN 19 2021

“We took care of the vets, 91 percent approval rating.”

Repeated 57 times

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This 91 percent figure is based on an independent survey conducted in 2013, when President Barack Obama was in office. Veterans strongly endorsed VA health care, with 91 percent offering positive assessments of inpatient care and 92 percent for outpatient care,” according a news release from the Department of Veterans Affairs announcing the survey results in 2014, when Obama was still in office. A VFW survey in 2019, by contrast, found 82 percent satisfaction of VA by veterans. In a Military Times poll of 1,018 active-duty troops conducted this summer, nearly half had an unfavorable view of Trump. The poll also showed a slight preference for Biden among respondents.

JAN 19 2021

“Our beautiful vets, they were very badly treated before we came along. And, as you know, we get them great service and we pick up the bill, and they can go out and they can see a doctor if they have to wait long periods of time.”

Repeated 217 times

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Trump does not mention “VA Choice” but he is referring to the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act that was signed by President Barack Obama in 2014, in the wake of the Phoenix VA scandal. The law allows veterans to seek private medical care, with costs covered, in cases where VA wait times exceed a certain period. One of the lead authors was the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). This is one of Trump’s most insidious falsehoods. Not only did he take more and more credit for the 2014 law as his term progressed, in public remarks, he would often erase the roles that Obama and McCain played. (“McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets and the VA, and they knew it,” he said in 2019.) Trump signed the Mission Act in 2018, an update and expansion of the Choice program.

JAN 19 2021

“We got it so that we can sadly get rid of people that don’t treat our vets properly. We had we didn’t have any of those rights before when I came on.”

Repeated 119 times

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The Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 was an important measure for accountability and whistleblower protection at the VA. But this law builds on firing authority given to the VA secretary through the Choice, Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 in response to the 2014 Phoenix VA scandal. Trump frequently claims that before the law, no one could be fired, but the agency fired about 2,000 people a year before the law was enacted. The baseline rate of firing in the VA, before the law, was about 220 people a month — and under Trump it has increased to about 290 people a month.

Fact Checker rating:

JAN 18 2021

“We also built the greatest economy in the history of the world…Powered by these policies, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world.”

Repeated 493 times

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This is Trump’s favorite false claim, so there should be no surprise he said it twice in his farewell address. (In this database, we only count a falsehood once per venue.) By just about any key measure in the modern era, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton presided over stronger economic growth than Trump. The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the postwar boom in the 1950s or the 1960s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953. (After the novel coronavirus tanked the economy, Trump jacked up his claim even more, falsely saying it had been the greatest economy in the history of the world.) This marks the 493rd time that Trump used a variation of this line, meaning he said it on average every other day.

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JAN 18 2021

“We passed the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history.”

Repeated 296 times

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Trump’s tax cut amounts to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it is far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth largest tax cut — and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.

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JAN 18 2021

“All Americans were horrified by the assault on our capital. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.”

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This statement is not especially credible in light of the president’s actions on Jan. 6. “Trump at first hesitated to tell his supporters to stand down when they stormed the Capitol. He was captivated by the spectacle playing out on live television and entranced by the notion that the rioters were fighting for him, people with knowledge of the events said,” The Washington Post reported. Trump resisted advice from aides to call for an end to the violence. When he finally issued a video that afternoon telling the rioters to “go home,” he also declared his support for them by saying, “We love you.” Then, for several days, Trump refused to lower Americans flags in honor of two U.S. Capitol police officers who died after the violent riot by his supporters. He finally relented after enormous public pressure.

JAN 18 2021

“Together with millions of hardworking patriots across this land, we built the greatest political movement in the history of our country.”

Repeated 17 times

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Trump has been questioned about this claim. The abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the anti-fascist movement during World War II, the anti-Apartheid movement and the global human rights movement all come to mind, just to name a few. Trump’s case would be stronger had he won the popular vote in 2016 — or was re-elected in 2020.

JAN 18 2021

“Our agenda was not about right or left. It wasn’t about Republican or Democrat, but about the good of a nation.”

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This is a line that actually never appeared in Trump’s campaign speeches. Instead, he constantly attacked Democrats as a force of evil. “Remember this it’s all Democrat run cities, radical left Democrats, Democrats,” he said at Oct 31 rally. “You look at what’s going on all Democrat run cities. Republicans have no problems, our cities are doing great.” At a Jan. 4 rally, Trump declared that Democrats will “turn our entire country into one giant sanctuary for criminal aliens, setting loose tens of thousands of dangerous offenders and putting MS-13 gang members straight into your children’s schools.” On Nov. 4, Trump said: “Joe Biden is a globalist who spent 47 years outsourcing your jobs, opening your borders, and sacrificing American blood and treasure on ridiculous, endless foreign wars. Most of you have never even heard of some of these countries…. A vote for Biden is a vote to give control of government over to the globalist, Communist, Socialist, the wealthy, liberal, hypocrites who want to silence, censor, cancel, and punish you.”

JAN 18 2021

“We slashed more job killing regulations than any administration had ever done before.”

Repeated 200 times

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Trump may have grounds to brag about his efforts to peel back regulations, but his claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified and appears to be false. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits. A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said that Trump Administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book, and it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data are examined.

JAN 18 2021

“We imposed historic and monumental tariffs on China….Billions and billions of dollars were pouring into the U.S.”

Repeated 248 times

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Trump regularly brags that the United States reaps billions of dollars from tariffs he has imposed on other countries, such as China But tariffs — essentially a tax — are generally paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, who in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use Chinese materials in their products. So, ultimately, Americans are footing the bill for Trump’s tariffs, not the Chinese. The president is fooling himself if he thinks otherwise. Moreover, the China tariff revenue has been greatly reduced by payments the government has made to farmers who lost business because China stopped buying U.S. soybeans, hogs, cotton and other products in response. As of December 2018, the government said it will cut nearly $9.6 billion in checks, including $7.3 billion to soybean farmers, $580 million to pork farmers and $554 million to cotton farmers; at the time, only about $8 billion had been collected on Chinese goods. Trump then announced an additional bailout for farmers of $16 billion in 2019, for a total of $28 billion. Through Jan. 13, 2021, the Trump tariffs have garnered about $75 billion on products from China, according to Customs and Border Protection.

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JAN 18 2021

“NATO countries are now paying hundreds of billions of dollars more than when I arrived just a few years ago. It was very unfair. We were paying the cost for the world. Now the world is helping us.”

Repeated 137 times

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During the 2016 presidential election, Trump consistently inflated the U.S. contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Once he became president, his inaccuracy has persisted, but with a twist. Nearly 150 times, he has claimed that “hundreds of billions” of dollars have come into NATO because of his complaints. In this speech, he even suggests this money might be coming to the United States. Instead, NATO members have increased defense spending as a share of their economies — a process that was started before Trump even announced his candidacy. In terms of direct funding of NATO, the United States paid the largest share — about 22 percent. Germany is second, with about 15 percent, though Trump sought an agreement to make the payments equal. Trump sometimes suggests NATO members “owe” money to the United States or are “delinquent” but that is simply not the case. NATO members are supposed to meet a guideline of spending at least two percent of their gross domestic product on defense by 2024. He also claims NATO spending was at a low point when he came into office, but that’s also not true. It had fallen after the end of the Cold War but had started rising sharply after 2014, after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine. NATO estimates that European NATO and Canada will add $130 billion in cumulative defense spending through 2020, in 2015 dollars, as an increase over 2016 spending. NATO also estimates the cumulative figure will rise to $400 billion through 2024. 

JAN 18 2021

“Perhaps most importantly of all, with nearly three trillion dollars, we fully rebuilt the American military, all made in the USA.”

Repeated 117 times

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This is false. Trump is adding up four fiscal years of military funding, but the money is not all spent, only a portion of it is destined for new equipment, and the equipment is not all built. The actual amount spent on military equipment since he became president is much less, about 20 percent of the total. The rest was spent on things like personnel, operations and maintenance, and research and development. Trump’s spending on military equipment is not particularly new or unusual.

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JAN 18 2021

“The Abraham Accords opened the doors to a future of peace and harmony, not violence and bloodshed.”

Repeated 36 times

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Trump’s reference to “violence and bloodshed” is misleading. Unlike Jordan and Egypt, the Arab and North African nations extending diplomatic recognition to Israel during his presidency have never been at war with the Jewish state. The source of much of the violence remains the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — an issue that Trump largely ignored. Helping win diplomatic recognition for Israel from Arab states is certainly a noteworthy achievement. Trump sometimes add that the deals came with “no cost.” In reality, the Trump administration made a number of deals to coax Middle Eastern and North African leaders into recognizing Israel, such as weapons sales and upending U.S. policy toward the Western Sahara region claimed by Morocco.

JAN 18 2021

“I am especially proud to be the first president in decades who has started no new wars.”

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Trump appears to be referring to Jimmy Carter as the last president with no new wars, but this is highly debatable. It depends on whether one counts Barack Obama’s intervention in Syria as a “new war” or an extension of the conflict in Iraq started under George W. Bush. (The Islamic State terror group emerged in the aftermath of that war.) Obama did not not deploy any troops to Libya when NATO began a campaign in Libya aimed at saving civilians in Benghazi threatened by Libyan government forces. Meanwhile, Trump ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria initially to fight ISIS (while also launching airstrikes on Syria for chemical weapons), added troops in Afghanistan, and escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Iranian General Qasem Solemani. Trump said that strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.

JAN 18 2021

“[We] renegotiated the one-sided South Korea deal.”

Repeated 16 times

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Trump touts this as a major trade deal. It was not. The Trump administration negotiated mostly cosmetic changes to the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (known as KORUS), originally negotiated under George W. Bush, such as removing some red tape and lifting a cap on car exports to South Korea that automakers were not even meeting. Most of the original 24 chapters were untouched, noted The Economist, which headlined its article on the deal: “The trade deal between America and South Korea has barely changed.”

JAN 18 2021

“We replaced NAFTA with the groundbreaking USMCA — that’s Mexico and Canada — a deal that’s worked out very, very well.”

Repeated 158 times

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Trump keeps claiming that he significantly overhauled the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It’s not a total trade revolution, as Trump promised, but USMCA does make changes to modernize trade rules in effect from 1994 to 2020, and it gives some wins to U.S. farmers and blue-collar workers in the auto sector. Economists and auto experts think USMCA is going to cause car prices in the United States to rise and the selection to go down. Some elements of the deal were borrowed from the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal Trump scrapped at the start of his term. (Note: As of early December, 2019, the agreement was altered in order to win the votes of House Democrats. Previously, the agreement was 95 percent the same as the old NAFTA; now it’s more like 85 to 90 percent. “The bottom line is Trump didn’t burn up NAFTA,” wrote our colleague Heather Long. “He made some modest tweaks.”) The U.S. International Trade Commission, which is tasked with evaluating the impact of trade agreements, calculated the new deal would have a relatively minor impact: The USMCA would raise U.S. real gross domestic product by $68.2 billion (0.35 percent) and U.S. employment by 176,000 jobs (0.12 percent). (The report actually said USMCA will cause growth to decline by 0.12 percent, but then made some assumptions about investment and an end of policy uncertainty to achieve positive growth. Some analysts found those assumptions dubious.)

JAN 18 2021

“America outperformed other countries economically because of our incredible economy and the economy that we built.”

Repeated 29 times

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This is false. Several measures of economic recovery show that the U.S. has fallen behind China and several other major countries during the coronavirus pandemic. The United States had an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent in October, compared to an average of 7.4 percent for other developed countries, whose jobless rate averages 7.4 percent, according to the latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. (Netherlands, Germany, South Korea and Japan had unemployment rates of 4.6 percent to 3 percent.) China leads the world with reported growth in gross domestic product of 11.5 percent last quarter over the same quarter last year. The U.S. lags far behind, at minus 9 percent. Inflation in the U.S., a measurement of price increases for consumers, stands at 4.6 percent, compared to an average of 3.9 percent for other OECD countries. And while Trump constantly brags about the stock market, Japan’s stock market, as reflected by the Nikkei index, has done better in 2020. Trump sometimes adds the U.S. had the smallest contraction of “any major Western country. The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden did better and are certainly major Western countries. Taiwan and South Korea were by far the best performers but maybe Trump does not consider them “Western”? We’re not sure, but either way, he’s spinning.

JAN 18 2021

“We also unlocked our energy resources and became the world’s number one producer of oil and natural gas.”

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Trump takes too much credit. The energy boom he’s referring to began during the Obama administration. The United States has led the world in natural gas production since 2009. Crude oil production has been increasing rapidly since 2010, reaching record levels in August 2018, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. In September 2018, the United States passed both Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the largest global crude oil producer. It is expected to hold that position, according to predictions from the International Energy Agency.

JAN 18 2021

“We passed nearly four trillion dollars in economic relief, saved or supported over 50 million jobs and slashed the unemployment rate in half.”

Repeated 19 times

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50 million jobs saved is a dubious number cooked up by the Trump administration. (The state numbers that Trump tosses around — 1 million or more — are also dubious.) In fact, officials told Reuters that the number referred not to jobs saved, but the total number of workers reported by businesses approved for a loan under the program. “The PPP likely did not save 51 million jobs, or anywhere close to it, Reuters concluded after interviews with economists and an analysis of the program’s data. “Half a dozen economists put the number of jobs saved by the initiative at only a fraction of 51 million – ranging between one million and 14 million.” Moreover, the Washington Post dug into the data behind the 51-million-figure, collected by the Small Business Administration, and found “half a dozen businesses that said they had fewer employees than the SBA reported the businesses had retained. Bankers also said employment figures for hundreds of businesses had been incorrectly reported by the SBA.” For instance, Fire Protection Systems, a sprinkler system installer in Kent, Wash., retained more than 500 jobs using its PPP funds, according to the data. But the company says it has only 20 employees.

JAN 18 2021

“[We] stood up to Big Pharma in so many ways, but especially in our effort to get favored nations clauses added, which will give us the lowest prescription drug prices anywhere in the world.”

Repeated 85 times

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Trump is hyping a largely toothless executive order. In a move widely regarded as a political play seven weeks before the election, Trump announced he had signed an executive order aiming to lower drug prices in the Medicare program through what is known as “the most favored nation policy.” If implemented, such an order would require drugmakers to accept the lowest price from the government for medicines paid by comparably wealthy countries in Europe and elsewhere — an aggressive move the pharmaceutical industry is fighting vociferously. Trump doesn’t need to issue executive orders for his administration to start experimenting with new Medicare payments — but he clearly wanted to be able to claim he’s doing something on drug prices ahead of Nov. 3. (After the election, Trump announced HHS had issued an “interim final rule,” meaning the Trump administration skipped the normal rulemaking process, which requires weeks for public comment. That could make it difficult for the Biden administration to defend the policy in court if the pharmaceutical industry sues over the rule. Indeed, in late December a federal judge issued a nationwide injunction that prevented the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, from carrying out the so-called “most favored nations” rule as scheduled on Jan. 1. The judge wrote in her temporary order that CMS had failed to follow required procedures for notice and comment before imposing such sweeping changes.)

JAN 18 2021

“We passed VA choice.”

Repeated 217 times

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Trump constantly pretends he passed the VA Choice bill, in what The Washington Post called a “false sense of accomplishment.” Trump actually signed the MISSION Act, which was only a modest update of the VA Choice law passed by Obama in 2014. So it’s ridiculous for him to often claim that it took 40 years to pass the law — and for him to suggest Obama failed to act to help veterans. (Sometimes Trump says 44, 45 or even 48 years.) Despite Trump’s claims, it’s not clear that veterans are facing shorter wait times. The MISSION Act only took effect in 2019, but before its implementation Trump often acted as if it already had achieved results.

JAN 18 2021

“We appointed nearly 300 federal judges to interpret our Constitution as written for years.”

Repeated 84 times

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Contrary to his boasts, Trump did not achieve a record for appointing the most appeals court and district court judges. Bill Clinton has the record, with 367 judicial appointments in his two terms, followed by Ronald Reagan with 358 and then George W. Bush with 322. Through his four years, 226 judges nominated by Trump were confirmed by the Senate. (That is still behind Jimmy Carter, who had 261 judges confirmed in his single term.) George Washington appointed 39 judges during his presidency. Trump appointed 54 judges to the federal appeals court, behind Carter’s 59 appeals-court appointments. Trump ranks second, after Carter, in terms of the number of district judges. (He just edged out Clinton and George W. Bush.) Trump often said he would appoint nearly 300 judges but he ended up well short of that number.

JAN 18 2021

“The American people pleaded with Washington to finally secure the nation’s borders. I am pleased to say we answered that plea and achieved the most secure border in U.S. history.”

Repeated 68 times

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Trump keeps bragging about border apprehensions that dropped sharply in April because of the coronavirus outbreak. But since then, the numbers have jumped significantly even if Trump’s rhetoric has remained unchanged. September southwest border apprehensions were nearly 58,000, the highest for the month since 2006, during the Bush administration. Then the numbers soared even higher in the next two months, with more than 140,000 undocumented migrants apprehended at the southern border in October and November combined, the highest numbers for those months in almost a decade. As the numbers got worse, Trump in his rallies stopped citing statistics and instead started to use phrases such as “the most secure border in US history.” Moreover, unauthorized migration “had been generally declining” from 2000 to 2017, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Then it spiked in the latter half of Trump’s term, despite years of harsh rhetoric and draconian measures to stop migrants from entering the United States.

JAN 18 2021

“We proudly leave the next administration with the strongest and most robust border security measures ever put into place. This includes historic agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador…”

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The regional asylum agreements Trump negotiated with these four countries have encountered significant roadblocks in U.S. courts. The Trump administration wanted a system in which asylum applicants no longer were released into the United States while they awaited immigration hearings, but instead remained in Mexico or Guatemala. Trump’s strict new asylum rules were set to take effect last week, but they were blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco.

JAN 18 2021

“…along with more than 450 miles of powerful new wall.”

Repeated 112 times

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As of mid-January 2020, only 40 miles of Trump’s border barrier had been built on land where there had been no previous barrier. The rest of the $15 billion project — roughly 450 miles at the end of Trump’s administration — was replacement for primary or secondary fencing. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so the project evolved into the replacement of smaller, older barriers with steel bollard fencing. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Trump sometimes asserts he’s completed the “wall” but his plans had called for an additional 250 miles — which Biden said he will not build.

JAN 18 2021

“The world respects us again. Please don’t lose that respect.”

Repeated 81 times

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Polls by Gallup and the Pew Global Attitudes Project show worldwide views of the United States and its president have become more negative since Trump took office. The Washington Post and others have reported that world leaders and allied nations often are baffled or upset by Trump’s moves and pronouncements. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus especially tannked the U.S. reputation. “For instance, just 41% in the United Kingdom express a favorable opinion of the U.S., the lowest percentage registered in any Pew Research Center survey there,” according to Pew. “In France, only 31% see the U.S. positively, matching the grim ratings from March 2003, at the height of U.S.-France tensions over the Iraq War. Germans give the U.S. particularly low marks on the survey: 26% rate the U.S. favorably, similar to the 25% in the same March 2003 poll.”

JAN 13 2021

“It has been a great honor to rebuild our military and support our brave men and women in uniform. $2.5 trillion invested, including in beautiful new equipment—all made in the U.S.A.”

Repeated 117 times

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This is false. Trump is adding up three (or sometimes four) fiscal years of military funding, but the money is not all spent, only a portion of it is destined for new equipment, and the equipment is not all built. The actual amount spent on military equipment since he became president is much less, about 20 percent of the total. The rest was spent on things like personnel, operations and maintenance, and research and development. Trump’s spending on military equipment is not particularly new or unusual.

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JAN 12 2021

“Like all of you, I was shocked and deeply saddened by the calamity at the Capitol last week.”

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This statement, made in a video released after Trump was impeached a second time on the grounds of inciting the Capitol riot, is not especially credible in light of the president’s actions on Jan. 6. “Trump at first hesitated to tell his supporters to stand down when they stormed the Capitol. He was captivated by the spectacle playing out on live television and entranced by the notion that the rioters were fighting for him, people with knowledge of the events said,” The Washington Post reported. Trump resisted advice from aides to call for an end to the violence. When he finally issued a video that afternoon telling the rioters to “go home,” he also declared his support for them by saying, “We love you.” Then, for several days, Trump refused to lower Americans flags in honor of two U.S. Capitol police officers who died after the violent riot by his supporters. He finally relented after enormous public pressure.

JAN 11 2021

“We’re going to the southern border. As you know, we’ve completed the wall.”

Repeated 112 times

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As of mid-January 2020, only 40 miles of Trump’s border barrier had been built on land where there had been no previous barrier. The rest of the $15 billion project — roughly 450 miles at the end of Trump’s administration — was replacement for primary or secondary fencing. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so the project evolved into the replacement of smaller, older barriers with steel bollard fencing. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Trump sometimes asserts he’s completed the “wall” but his plans had called for an additional 250 miles — which Biden said he will not build.

JAN 11 2021

“It’s been tremendously successful, far beyond what anyone thought. We’re stopping, in large numbers, the drugs coming into the country for many, many years and decades.”

Repeated 102 times

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Most drugs come into the United States across the southern border with Mexico. But a wall would not limit this illegal trade, as much of it travels through legal borders or under tunnels unaffected by any possible physical barrier. Even if the wall could curb illicit drug trafficking, it would have a minimal impact on the death toll from drug abuse. Prescription drug overdoses claim more lives than cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. Drug seizures along the southern border actually declined from 2018 to 2020, despite the addition of Trump’s border barrier, according to Customs and Border Patrol statistics.

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JAN 11 2021

“We’re stopping a lot of illegal immigration. Our numbers have been very good.”

Repeated 68 times

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Trump keeps bragging about border apprehensions that dropped sharply in April because of the coronavirus outbreak. But since then, the numbers have jumped significantly even if Trump’s rhetoric has remained unchanged. September southwest border apprehensions were nearly 58,000, the highest for the month since 2006, during the Bush administration. Then the numbers soared even higher in the next two months, with more than 140,000 undocumented migrants apprehended at the southern border in October and November combined, the highest numbers for those months in almost a decade. As the numbers got worse, Trump in his rallies stopped citing statistics and instead started to use phrases such as “the most secure border in US history.” Moreover, unauthorized migration “had been generally declining” from 2000 to 2017, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Then it spiked in the latter half of Trump’s term, despite years of harsh rhetoric and draconian measures to stop migrants from entering the United States.

JAN 11 2021

“There does seem to be a surge now because people are coming up. Some caravans are starting to form because they think there’s going to be a lot in it for them.”

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Trump without evidence suggests a “surge” at the border emerged because Biden won. The numbers had been climbing for months before the election. Moreover, the caravans had not stopped despite new restrictions and increased security.

JAN 11 2021

“So if you read my speech — and many people have done it, and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television — it’s been analyzed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate….they’ve analyzed my speech and words and my final paragraph, my final sentence, and everybody, to the T, thought it was totally appropriate.”

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Trump’s Jan. 6 speech was almost universally condemned in television and news reports as being the trigger for the Capitol riot. Trump was also criticized for not seeking to immediately call for an end to the violence, and then only doing so in a half-hearted manner.

JAN 11 2021

“If you look at what other people have said — politicians at a high level — about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle, in various other — other places, that was a real problem — what they said.”

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Trump does not name the “other people” but in his campaign rallies he falsely made this claim about Joe Biden. Biden was not silent. He repeatedly condemned violent protests. In a May 31 post on his blog shortly after George Floyd’s death, he wrote, “Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not.” At a speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 2, he said, “There’s no place for violence, no place for looting or destroying property or burning churches or destroying businesses …we need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction.” There are numerous, other examples.

JAN 11 2021

“The impeachment hoax is a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of our country.”

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Trump associates the drive to impeach him after the Capitol riot with the Russia investigation and the probe of his call to the Ukrainian president that led to his first impeachment. But they are not related — and the second impeachment was with a bipartisan vote that included ten Republicans, including the number three House Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

JAN 11 2021

“Looking at our wall, we reformed our immigration system and achieved the most secure southern border in U.S. history. It is at a level that it’s never been before.”

Repeated 68 times

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Trump keeps bragging about border apprehensions that dropped sharply in April because of the coronavirus outbreak. But since then, the numbers have jumped significantly even if Trump’s rhetoric has remained unchanged. September southwest border apprehensions were nearly 58,000, the highest for the month since 2006, during the Bush administration. Then the numbers soared even higher in the next two months, with more than 140,000 undocumented migrants apprehended at the southern border in October and November combined, the highest numbers for those months in almost a decade. As the numbers got worse, Trump in his rallies stopped citing statistics and instead started to use phrases such as “the most secure border in US history.” Moreover, unauthorized migration “had been generally declining” from 2000 to 2017, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Then it spiked in the latter half of Trump’s term, despite years of harsh rhetoric and draconian measures to stop migrants from entering the United States.

JAN 11 2021

“They even promised a wall. If you remember, about 10 years ago, they promised a wall but they couldn’t get it built.”

Repeated 35 times

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Sen. Charles Schumer and many Democrats (though not Rep. Nancy Pelosi) voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was signed by President George W. Bush and authorized building a fence along nearly 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It passed 283-138 in the House, with 64 Democrat votes, and 80-19 in the Senate, with 26 Democrat votes. But the fence they voted for is not as substantial as the wall Trump is proposing. Trump himself has called the 2006 fence a “nothing wall.” To Trump, opposing the wall is tantamount to not wanting any border security at all. But Democrats have offered support for $1.67 billion in security enhancements. That doesn’t include funding for Trump’s wall, but it includes 65 miles of pedestrian fencing along the Southeast Texas border with Mexico, similar to what already exists.

JAN 11 2021

“Getting it built was even tougher. All the different chains of title and all the different things we had to go through — very, very complex and very difficult, but we got it done.”

Repeated 112 times

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As of mid-January 2020, only 40 miles of Trump’s border barrier had been built on land where there had been no previous barrier. The rest of the $15 billion project — roughly 450 miles at the end of Trump’s administration — was replacement for primary or secondary fencing. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so the project evolved into the replacement of smaller, older barriers with steel bollard fencing. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Trump sometimes asserts he’s completed the “wall” but his plans had called for an additional 250 miles — which Biden said he will not build.

JAN 11 2021

“In every region that we’ve built the wall, illegal crossings and drug smuggling have plummeted. Absolutely plummeted. In the Rio Grande Valley, crossings have dropped nearly 80 percent. In Yuma, Arizona, illegal entries have been slashed by 90 percent.”

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Trump, as usual, appears to be cherry-picking his data. Customs and Border Patrol statistics show increases from 2020 to 2021, despite the border barrier.

JAN 11 2021

“Nationwide, ICE and Border Patrol have seized over 2 million pounds of fentanyl, heroin, meth, and other deadly narcotics, saving thousands and thousands of lives.”

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Speaking about the border, Trump suddenly offers a “nationwide” statistic. Drug seizures along the southern border actually declined from 2018 to 2020, despite the addition of Trump’s border barrier, according to Customs and Border Patrol statistics.

JAN 11 2021

“We’ve arrested nearly 500,000 illegal aliens with criminal records, some with very serious criminal records of the type you don’t want to know about, like murder.”

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It’s unclear where Trump is getting this figure. For fiscal 2020, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported 103,603 administrative arrests, down 28 percent from 2019. That’s far from half a million. ICE added that 90 percent of the administrative arrests involved people with a prior conviction, and the agency said it contributed to 4,360 criminal arrests in 2020. Trump often suggests, as in these remarks, that everyone arrested by ICE has committed a violent crime, “like murder,” but many have only immigration or nonviolent offenses on their records.

JAN 11 2021

“We removed nearly 20,000 gang members from the United States, including 4,500 members of MS-13 — probably the worst gang of them all.”

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At a July 15, 2020 news conference, Trump had proclaimed: “In the last three years, ICE has deported over 16,000 gang members and arrested over 2,000 members of MS-13. Think of those numbers: 16,000 and arrest