Trump’s untruths pile up. Biden gets facts wrong too. Do voters care?
Election 2024
James Rainey April 12, 2024 Former
President Trump was on another one of his screeds about how Democratic prosecutors were persecuting him,
saying
he’d been “investigated by the Democrats more than Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Al Capone combined.”
The crowd at a 2022 rally in North Carolina seemed to eat if up, having a hearty laugh when Trump concluded: I think Im perhaps the most honest human being that God ever created. The crowd broke into applause.
As Trump campaigns to retake the White House, polls suggest Republicans have become increasingly willing to accept his pronouncements, even as a cottage industry of
fact-c
heckers suggests reality lies elsewhere. That’s because his grievances and complaints about an America under siege feel true in the guts of a vast segment of the population, who therefore view
Trump
as a truth-teller, said Steve Schmidt, a long
–
time Republican political consultant.
So Trump is two things at once, said Schmidt, who writes a blog on national politics that portrays the 45th president as a demagogue and a threat to democracy. He is simultaneously the most prolific liar in the history of American politics, and he is the most honest president we have ever had.
Donald Trump ‘is simultaneously the most prolific liar in the history of American politics, and he is the most honest president we have ever had.’
Several major media outlets had created fact-checking teams before Trump rose to prominence. In 2016
, t
he New York Times made what then was depicted as a momentous step when it called then-candidate Trumps
claim
that President Obama was not born in America a lie.
But
once the former reality show host won the presidency, fact-check outfits went into overdrive.
The Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims by Trump during his
presidency.
Many were repeat offenses, such as the more than 800 claims about election fraud, which were roundly rejected in the courts. After its 1,000th
fact-checking on of
Trump this year, PolitiFact
.com
reported he was entirely or mostly wrong more than three-quarters of the time.
It’s not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up, reported PolitiFact, which did not let President Biden off the hook finding 41% of nearly 300 of his statements entirely or mostly wrong. But American
fact-checkers
have never encountered a politician who shares Trumps disregard for factual accuracy.
Trumps core supporters show no sign of being put off.
A case in point came this month, when Trump used a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., to renew his long-running crusade against undocumented migrants.
Trump is exploiting Ruby Garcia’s death to depict immigrants as ‘animals’
Trump told the story of Ruby Garcia, whose alleged killer was in the country illegally. Trump called her a
beautiful … i
ncredible young woman. He said he spoke to some of her family about her tragic death.
But Garcias sister soon told Ken Kolker of the local NBC News affiliate that Trump hadnt spoken to anyone in the Garcia family. And Mavi Garcia didnt appreciate the former president turning her 25-year-old sisters death into a political talking point.
He did not speak with any of us,” Mavi Garcia told Target 8.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests from The Times and other news outlets to discuss the discrepancy.
The episode
once
might have been a showstopper in American politics, a
former
and perhaps future president called out by an everyday American. But no signs emerged of supporters objecting to the error,
and
the Garcia incident quickly became part of the ambient noise of a campaign that promises to get louder and uglier.
A recent Washington Post survey found Republicans less likely than they were in the midst of Trump’s presidency to acknowledge his untruths.
Asked whether Trump regularly makes misleading statements, the share of Republicans who say he does dipped by 10 percentage points, to 38
%,percent,
compared to 2018. And the percentage of Republicans who say Trump usually makes flat-out false claims dipped down to 8
%percent
from 14
%.percent. Trump is about to go on trial in New York. Here’s what to expect
The coverage of Trump’s Ruby Garcia claims also pointed out other dubious comments by him that day.
PolitiFact, run by a Florida-based journalism education outfit, the Poynter Institute, focused on Trumps inflammatory, and untrue, claim that Venezuela was emptying its prisons and sending criminals to the U
nited States
. It also noted that, “overall, violent crime and homicides have declined under Joe Bidens presidency.”
FactCheck.org, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, focused on how Trumps statements about immigration were misleading, noting that apprehensions at the
[S]
outhwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trumps final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in. Apprehensions hit a record high at the end of 2023, during Biden’s tenure.
On Fox News, anchor Bret Baier asked about Trumps claim being rejected by Garcias sister. But commentator Charles Hurt never addressed the apparent falsehood, justifying Trumps remarks as being about something that matters deeply to people. Hurt shifted the subject to another family whose daughter was killed in an accidental shooting committed by a man who migrated illegally from Mexico.
Contrast the sharply divergent news coverage given to Trump
and Ruby Garcia to reports of an earlier Biden misstatement about where he was the day after
the
9/11.
In September of last year, it was President Biden being called out for a falsehood, when he said on the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that he had visited Ground Zero
in the
day after the World Trade Center towers were destroyed
in
2001. In fact, he
had
joined a congressional delegation there nine days later.
Why Biden is getting little credit for the economy, especially in California
Many outlets, including MSNBC, NBC, CNN,
and
PolitiFact mentioned Bidens misstatement. A Wall Street Journey story asked, Was that a gaffe born out of fatigue, an honest mistake or an exaggeration from a president with a penchant for dropping himself in the middle of the action?
The Washington Post,
the
New York Times and
the
Los Angeles Times did not report the episode, though the Post cited a critic who attacked Biden for marking the anniversary in Alaska.
Fox devoted a good portion of its prime time to roasting Biden for lying about being at Ground Zero on Sept
.
12, with Sean Hannity inviting several guests to trash the president for commemorating 9/11 at a locale other than New York City, the Pentagon or Shanksville, P
a. enn.
Though Biden spoke from a U.S. airbase that responded to the attacks, the Fox commentators
called
his behavior shameful.
Generally, Biden has been less prone to the sort of unscripted moments that
fact-c
heckers feast on, said PolitiFact
Editor-in-Chief Editor in Chief
Katie Sanders, explaining, in part, why so many of Trump’s statements have been scrutinized.
When a politician is speaking off-the-cuff, without carefully prepared remarks in front of them, they tend to be less accurate,” Sanders said.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar on political communication and co-founder of FactCheck.org, said the reactions to misstatements tend to fit into well
–
worn narratives. Bidens critics belittle the 81-year-olds memory and mental capabilities. Trumps critics note his history of lying.
Column: Biden’s memory is failing. So is Trump’s. The question is whose flaws are more dangerous Trump himself boasted in his 1987 memoir that he had mastered the art of hyperbole. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole,” Trump wrote. “It’s an innocent form of exaggeration and a very effective form of promotion.”
Whether any of the campaigns untruths make a lasting impression on voters depends on many factors, including whether they become the subject of ads, a memorable debate moment or a campaign trail meme, Jamieson said.
became a recurring character in the 2008 presidential campaign when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Ohio pressed then-Illinois S en. Barack Obama about whether his tax plan would hurt small businesses. Arizona Sen. John McCain, Obama’s Republic an opponent, brought Wurzelbacher to future campaign events and made sure his view was featured in the final debate between the candidates.
Jamieson said confirmation bias always has been a hallmark of political true believers, but it has only intensified in the Trump era, on both sides.
Its a way of understanding virtually everything, Jamieson said, explaining how people sometimes process unfavorable messages. They are already inside their tribe, so if there is a dissonant message, the way to reduce the dissonance is to say it doesnt matter, or it doesnt change that candidates fidelity on a core issue.
Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
