蘑菇视频

Dec 31, 2018 4 min read

聽If there’s anything that exemplifies President Trump’s presidency – it’s his lies.

The Washington Post keeps a running tally of his “false or misleading” claims.

As of December 21st, they’ve counted 7,546 lies in Trump’s 700 days in office.

And what he lacks in truthfulness, he makes up for in incoherence.

But we’re not going to go there today.

We’ll just rely on the fact-checkers to guide us through the more outrageous lies of 2018.

There were lots of them.

Politifact.com ranks Trump’s statements as: “True,” “Mostly True,” “Half True,” “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants on Fire.”

Over the years, PolitiFact has rated 70 percent of Trump’s statements Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.

He really doesn’t tell the truth that much, according to PolitiFact.

This year was no exception.

Trump kicked off the year in January by telling the whopper that there’s “substantial evidence of voter fraud.”

He had claimed that there had been widespread voting by illegal immigrants during the 2016 presidential election.

The fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than three million votes caused Trump to form a voter fraud commission, that he sent on a wild goose chase for bad votes.

The commission disbanded without finding a single illegal vote.

Yet, Trump still claimed otherwise.

Thus, PolitiFact rated that statement “False.”

On February 19th, Trump claimed, “I never said Russia did not meddle in the election.”

That earned him PolitiFact’s pitiable “Pants on Fire” rating.

Trump had been accorded PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award for making the same claim in 2017.

That’s because he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”

Well, it wasn’t a made-up story.

And it was an example why, in February, when he indicated that he never said Russia didn’t meddle in the (2016) election, he was telling a lie.

“The state of California is begging us to build walls in certain areas. They don’t tell you that,” he said when he visited the U.S. – Mexico border in March.

That one was also given PolitiFact’s “Pants on Fire” rating because nobody at PolitiFact could find a single California official who said they want to build a wall.

Does he just pull these statements out of thin air?

Do they come to him in a dream?

And why, after statements have been proven false, does he continue to repeat them, anyway?

We’ll never know.

We do know that in August he fibbed about the state of the country’s steel industry.

“U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills,” he claimed at a campaign rally.

Not true.

PolitiFact rated that statement “False.”

“If you buy a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID. The only thing you don’t is if you’re a voter in the United States,” Trump told a crowd on November 16th.

“Pants on Fire,” PolitiFact replied.

If anything, the voter ID to buy cereal claim was one of Trump’s more ridiculous statements of 2018.

But there’s a recent statement that rivals the voter ID/cereal nonsense.

During his post-Christmas visit to Iraq, he told the troops, “You haven’t gotten one (a pay raise) in more than 10 years.

America’s fighting men and women have gotten pay raises for just about every year for the past 30.

He also lied and told the troops that their pay raise will be 10 percent when it’ll really only be 2.6 percent.

Sigh!

He’ll also be beside himself when he discovers another set of ratings.

The Gallup organization just announced the “Most Admired Man and Woman” of 2018.

Barack and Michelle Obama now top Gallup’s annual polls.

With Michelle Obama’s rise to Most Admired Woman, it’s the first time in 17 years that Hillary Clinton didn’t top that list.

Barack Obama has been the Most Admired Man for 11 straight years. That ties him with Dwight Eisenhower for that honor.

Donald Trump is the second Most Admired Man behind Obama.

He can’t win for losing.

Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.