REUTERS / Carlos Barria Former President Donald Trump
Last Friday, Glenn Kessler, head of the Washington Post “Fact Checker” operation, published his latest post-mortem examination of the Trump presidency, saying that during his presidency, Trump generated ’30, 573 false or misleading allegations’.
It’s a staggering number, which Kessler writes ” has been a lie detector for centuries, cited worldwide as a measure of Trump’s presidency. ‘
Four years is 1,460 days. It therefore occurs in more than 20 lies per day, although of course the views may differ exactly from where the line lies between a slip of a tongue, an exaggeration, a lie or an ordinary liar who just slaps the gums .
Of course, during the Trump years, there were other fact checks, which I really appreciate. But Kessler and his team regained my trust early on and never lost it. I will therefore pass on a link to his final report in which he announces that his team will no longer conduct regular fact checks of Trump’s statements.
Personally, I was really and utterly shocked at Trump’s discomfort. The lies were so frequent, so blatant. And yet, despite my expectation that no president’s credibility or efficiency could survive under such a steady stream of falsehoods, I was secondly shocked that Trump’s approval does not seem to be changing. It was a bad rating – usually about 40 percent approval. And I thought it must have been much lower. But after the early days of his term, it remained steady. It actually hurt me to see that a president is lying so much and apparently has little or no deterioration in his follower.
I am someone who greatly appreciates the factual accuracy. It’s a professional habit. In my 30 years at the Star Tribune, the ombudsman caught me in two factual errors (in one of which I accurately quoted a very well-known source who said something that was not true, but I should have checked it). Yet they both stabbed. Journalists of my generation regarded factual accuracy as the North Star, the first and most sacred necessity.
Maybe it changed me, or maybe it’s just the way I am, but during the early Trump years, I kept waiting for him to lose followers, which would be measured by a declining approval rating, just because he was such a regular and was blatant liar. But it never happened. When I saw that it shocked me, it hurt me at first. Then I became relatively numb about it, but not all that numb. And I never got very far to understand whether his loyal approvers were not aware that he was constantly lying to them, or knew it, but just did not care.
The new media, cable TV and online environment – in which more and more citizens can easily and generally turn to sources of information who share their prejudices and perhaps turn their eyes away from those who can tell them that Trump was the biggest liar in presidential history – must surely be a factor. But the whole thing creeps up on me. We’ll see if this is the new normal. Quite a few prospective successors to Trump seem to accept a similar disregard for factual accuracy.
According to the Post Fact Checker operation, the rate of Trump’s forgeries has actually increased, with nearly half of his forgeries in his last year in office. I do not take it too literally. Of course, views can differ on what lies or lies are. But there is no doubt in my mind that Trump has erased the norm that it is a big deal for a president to lie to the American people, and that he will pay a hefty price for constant lies. Maybe it can be repaired. It’s also higher than my salary.
Here’s a brief preview of Kessler’s final Trump report:
For more than ten years, The Fact Checker has been assessing the accuracy of the claims of politicians in both parties, and the practice will continue. But Trump, with his extraordinarily blatant disregard for facts, posed a new challenge, as so many of his claims do not deserve full-fledged fact-checking. What started as a weekly feature – ‘What Trump Got Wrong on Twitter This Week’ – has become a project for Trump’s first 100 days. In response to reader requests, the Trump database is maintained for four years, despite the increasing burden of keeping it up to date.
The database has become a lie detector over the centuries, cited worldwide as a measure of Trump’s presidency – and as of Wednesday afternoon, it has officially retired.
Fact Checker Kessler’s full farewell to Trump-and-his-falsehoods is here. Please leave it not the new becomes normal.