An earlier version of this graphic included an incorrect total for the number of days Donald Trump told a lie during his first two months as president. It was 20, not 25.
Trump's Lies
DAVID LEONHARDT and STUART A. THOMPSON JUNE 23, 2017
Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump's lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.
Jan. 21 "I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq." (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)Jan. 21 "A reporter for Time magazine - and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine." (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)
Jan. 23 "Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote." (There's no evidence of illegal voting.)
Jan. 25 "Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive." (Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)
Jan. 25 "Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)" (The report never mentioned voter fraud.)
Jan. 25 "You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore." (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.)
Jan. 25 "So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that." (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.)
Jan. 26 "We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't." (Vetting lasts up to two years.)
Jan. 26 "I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better." (Most of the cuts were already planned.)
Jan. 28 "The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the Times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers." (It never apologized.)
Jan. 29 "The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote." (There is no support for this.)
Jan. 30 "Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage." (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days later.)
Feb. 3 "Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" (There is no evidence of paid protesters.)
Feb. 4 "After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!" (It never apologized.)
Feb. 5 "We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully." (About 60,000 people were affected.)
Feb. 6 "I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35." (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.)
Feb. 6 "It's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it." (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.)
Feb. 6 "The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!" (It didn't apologize.)
Feb. 6 "And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn't have been in Iraq, but we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed." (The group's origins date to 2004.)
Feb. 7 "And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years." (It was higher in the 1980s and '90s.)
Feb. 7 "I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35." (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.)
Feb. 9 "Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service' in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!" (It was part of Cuomo's first question.)
Feb. 9 Sen. Richard Blumenthal "now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?" (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.)
Feb. 10 "I don't know about it. I haven't seen it. What report is that?" (Trump knew about Flynn's actions for weeks.)
Feb. 12 "Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!" (The media did cover it.)
Feb. 16 "We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan." (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.)
Feb. 16 "That's the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports." (Delta's problems happened two days later.)
Feb. 16 "Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives." (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.)
Feb. 16 "When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they're not giving classified information." (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.)
Feb. 16 "We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision." (The rollout was chaotic.)
Feb. 16 "They're giving stuff - what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates." (It was widely covered.)
Feb. 18 "And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing." (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.)
Feb. 18 "You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?" (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.)
Feb. 24 "By the way, you folks are in here - this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks." (There was no evidence of long lines.)
Feb. 24 "ICE came and endorsed me." (Only its union did.)
Feb. 24 "Obamacare covers very few people - and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them - it was taken away from them." (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.)
Feb. 27 "Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges." (Many fewer pulled out.)
Feb. 27 "On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use." (Much of the price cut was already projected.)
Feb. 28 "And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that." (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.)
Feb. 28 "The E.P.A.'s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands." (There's no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.)
Feb. 28 "We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials." (They can't lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.)
March 3 "It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet." (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.)
March 4 "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)
March 4 "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)
March 7 "122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!" (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.)
March 13 "I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn't I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them." (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)
March 13 "First of all, it covers very few people." (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.)
March 15 "On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times." (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)
March 17 "I was in Tennessee - I was just telling the folks - and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company." (There's at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.)
March 20 "With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million." (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)
March 21 "To save taxpayer dollars, I've already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government - saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets." (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)
March 22 "I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems." (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.)
March 22 "NATO, obsolete, because it doesn't cover terrorism. They fixed that." (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.)
March 22 "Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong - in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people." (There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.)
March 29 "Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!" (It didn't apologize.)
March 31 "We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I - if I didn't win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone." (These investments were already planned.)
April 2 "And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn't but you've seen that it is now improving." (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)
April 2 "Now, my last tweet - you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps - was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true." (There is still no evidence.)
April 5 "You have many states coming up where they're going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It's already happened in Tennessee. It's happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left." (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.)
April 6 "If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we've been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment - saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it's many billions of dollars - I think we've had a tremendous success." (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)
April 11 "I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve." (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.)
April 12 "You can't do it faster, because they're obstructing. They're obstructionists. So I have people - hundreds of people that we're trying to get through. I mean you have - you see the backlog. We can't get them through." (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.)
April 12 "The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized." (There were separate headlines for print and web, but neither were altered.)
April 12 "The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism." (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.)
April 12 "Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they've been fighting it for many months and so many more people died." (The campaign was expected to take months.)
April 16 "Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!" (There's no evidence of paid protesters.)
April 18 "The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.' I haven't changed my stance." (He did.)
April 21 "On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725 million." (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)
April 21 "When WikiLeaks came out … never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it." (He criticized it as early as 2010.)
April 27 "I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare." (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.)
April 28 "The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it's $17 billion trade deficit with Canada." (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.)
April 28 "She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he's for open borders - lots of crime." (Those are not Jon Ossoff's positions.)
April 28 "The F-35 fighter jet program - it was way over budget. I've saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation." (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)
April 29 "They're incompetent, dishonest people who after an election had to apologize because they covered it, us, me, but all of us, they covered it so badly that they felt they were forced to apologize because their predictions were so bad." (The Times did not apologize.)
April 29 "As you know, I've been a big critic of China, and I've been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped." (China stopped years ago.)
April 29 "I've already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation." (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)
April 29 "We're also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They've begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe." (The deal was struck in 2014.)
April 29 "When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they - as soon as I got elected, they stopped." (China stopped in 2014.)
April 29 "I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars." (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.)
April 29 "I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it." (There's still no evidence Trump's phones were tapped.)
May 1 "Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it'll be every good - bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare." (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.)
May 1 "The F-35 fighter jet - I saved - I got involved in the negotiation. It's 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price." (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)
May 1 "First of all, since I started running, they haven't increased their - you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign." (China stopped years ago.)
May 2 "I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really - I have cut billions - I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here." (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)
May 4 "Number two, they're actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I've been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped." (China stopped years ago.)
May 4 "We're the highest-taxed nation in the world." (We're not.)
May 4 "Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters." (Polls show most Americans do care.)
May 8 "You know we've gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we're getting. All because of me." (The deal was struck in 2014.)
May 8 "But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high - highest rating. The highest rating he's ever had." (Colbert's "Late Show" debut had nearly two million more viewers.)
May 8 "Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows - there is ‘no evidence' of collusion w/ Russia and Trump." (Clapper only said he wasn't aware of an investigation.)
May 12 "Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election." (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.)
May 12 "When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" (Clapper said he wouldn't have been told of an investigation into collusion.)
May 13 "I'm cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed." (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.)
May 26 "Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs." (He's referencing an arms deal that's not enacted and other apparent deals that weren't announced on the trip.)
June 1 "China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020." (The agreement doesn't allow or disallow building coal plants.)
June 1 "I've just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs." (Trump's figures are inflated and premature.)
June 4 "At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!'" (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.)
June 5 "The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C." (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.)
June 21 "They all say it's 'nonbinding.' Like hell it's nonbinding." (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding - and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.)
June 21 "Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world." (We're not.)
All the President's Lies
Trump told a public lie
Didn’t tell a public lie
Jan. 2017
Feb.
March
April
May
June
Inauguration
Trump told a public lie
Didn’t tell a public lie
Jan. 2017
Feb.
March
Inauguration
April
May
June
President Trump's political rise was built on a lie (about Barack Obama's birthplace). His lack of truthfulness has also become central to the Russia investigation, with James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., testifying under oath about Trump's "lies, plain and simple."
There is simply no precedent for an American president to spend so much time telling untruths. Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers. No other president - of either party - has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.
We have set a conservative standard here, leaving out many dubious statements (like the claim that his travel ban is "similar" to Obama administration policy). Some people may still take issue with this standard, arguing that the president wasn't speaking literally. But we believe his long pattern of using untruths to serve his purposes, as a businessman and politician, means that his statements are not simply careless errors.
We are using the word "lie" deliberately. Not every falsehood is deliberate on Trump's part. But it would be the height of naïveté to imagine he is merely making honest mistakes. He is lying.
Trump Told Public Lies or Falsehoods Every Day for His First 40 Days
The list above uses the conservative standard of demonstrably false statements. By that standard, Trump told a public lie on at least 20 of his first 40 days as president. But based on a broader standard - one that includes his many misleading statements (like exaggerating military spending in the Middle East) - Trump achieved something remarkable: He said something untrue, in public, every day for the first 40 days of his presidency. The streak didn't end until March 1.
Told a public lie
Told a public falsehood
Didn’t tell a public lie or falsehood
First day without
a public lie
or falsehood
Jan. 2017
Feb.
March
Visited a Trump property
and told no public
lie or falsehood
April
May
June
Told a public lie
Told a public falsehood
Didn’t tell a public lie or falsehood
First day without
a public lie
or falsehood
Jan. 2017
Feb.
March
Visited a Trump
property and told no
public lie or falsehood
April
May
June
Since then, he has said something untrue on at least 74 of 113 days. On days without an untrue statement, he is often absent from Twitter, vacationing at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, or busy golfing.
The end of May was another period of relative public veracity - or at least public quiet - for the president. He seems to have been otherwise occupied, dealing with internal discussions about the Russia investigation and then embarking on a trip through the Middle East and Europe.
Visited a Trump
property and told
no public lies
or falsehoods
May
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Washington Post reports Trump shared highly classified intelligence with Russians
15
16
17
New York Times reports Trump hoped Comey would “let this go,” referring to the Flynn investigation
Special counsel appointed in investigation of Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Trump’s trip
overseas
Visited a Trump
property and told
no public lies
or falsehoods
May
1
2
3
4
5
6
10
7
8
9
11
12
13
14
Washington Post reports Trump shared highly classified intelligence with Russians
15
16
17
Special counsel appointed in investigation of Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign
New York Times reports Trump hoped Comey would “let this go,” referring to the Flynn investigation
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Trump’s trip
overseas
Trump's Public Lies Sometimes Changed With Repetition
Sometimes, Trump can't even keep his untruths straight. After he reversed a campaign pledge and declined to label China a currency manipulator, he kept changing his description of when China had stopped the bad behavior. Initially, he said it stopped once he took office. He then changed the turning point to the election, then to since he started talking about it, and then to some uncertain point in the distant past.
When Trump said China stopped manipulating its currency
April 21
“from the time I took office”
April 29
“during the election”
April 30
“as soon as I got elected”
May 1
“since I started running”
MAY 4
“since I’ve been talking about
currency manipulation”
The Public's Mistrust of Trump Grows
Trump has retained the support of most of his voters as well as the Republican leadership in Congress. But he has still paid some price for his lies. Nearly 60 percent of Americans say the president is not honest, polls show, up from about 53 percent when he took office.
Would you say Donald Trump is honest?
60%
No
Inauguration
55
50
45
40
Yes
35
Dec.
2017
Feb.
March
April
May
June 7
Source: Quinnipiac
Would you say Donald Trump is honest?
60%
No
55
50
Inauguration
45
40
Yes
35
Dec.
2017
Feb.
March
April
May
June 7
Source: Quinnipiac
David Leonhardt is a New York Times columnist. Stuart A. Thompson is the graphics director for the Opinion section.
Sources: Politifact; Factcheck.org; The Washington Post Fact Checker; The Toronto Star
Correction: June 23, 2017
