Trump Is A Liar
The claim that Donald Trump is a liar is supported by an unprecedented evidentiary record. The Washington Post Fact Checker logged 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first term, and PolitiFact rated roughly 76% of his checked statements as Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire - the worst record of any major American politician they have tracked.
What we know
Donald Trump's record of public dishonesty has been documented at a scale unprecedented for a U.S. political figure. The Washington Post Fact Checker team, led by Glenn Kessler, tracked every verifiably false or misleading statement Trump made during his first term and recorded 30,573 such claims over four years - a database that grew to roughly 5 million words. The pace accelerated dramatically: about 6 false claims per day in his first year, rising to 39 per day in his final year. On November 2, 2020 alone, the day before the election, he made 503 false or misleading claims in a single day. By the same methodology, Joe Biden's first term accumulated 78 such claims.
PolitiFact reached a separate milestone of 1,000 rated fact-checks of Trump. About 76% of his statements earned ratings of Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire, and his median rating across all 1,000 checks is simply 'False.' More than 18% are rated Pants on Fire - not just untrue, but actively ridiculous. No major peer comes close: Obama, Clinton, and Biden each had a median of Half True, while Cruz and Gingrich had Mostly False. PolitiFact also named Trump 'Lie of the Year' in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Two of his most consequential lies are the COVID-19 downplay and the 2020 stolen-election narrative. On March 19, 2020, Trump privately told Bob Woodward he 'wanted to always play it down' while publicly comparing the virus to seasonal flu. After his 2020 loss, the Big Lie of widespread election fraud was rejected by more than 60 courts, by his own Justice Department, and by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which called the election 'the most secure in American history.'
Common claims
- Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading public statements as president.Supported - 30,573 documented by WaPo Fact Checker
- Trump lies more frequently than other major U.S. politicians.Supported - median PolitiFact rating is False, worst on record
- Trump knowingly downplayed COVID-19 in public while privately acknowledging its severity.Supported - admitted to Bob Woodward on tape
- Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen is true.False - rejected by 60+ courts and federal authorities
- Trump never tells the truth.Overstated - he is rated true sometimes; the pattern is that lies dominate
Evidence hierarchy
All sources
- Trump's false or misleading claims total 30,573 over four yearsThe Washington Post · 2021
- How The Fact Checker tracked Trump's claims (methodology)The Washington Post · 2021
- What PolitiFact learned in 1,000 fact-checks of Donald TrumpPolitiFact · 2024
- Lie of the Year: Coronavirus downplay and denialPolitiFact · 2020
- 10 of Donald Trump's big falsehoods about COVID-19PolitiFact · 2020
- Fact-checking Trump's false claims about voter fraud and rigged electionsPBS NewsHour · 2024
- US election 2020: Donald Trump's speech fact-checkedBBC News · 2020
- No evidence for systematic voter fraud: A guide to statistical claimsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) · 2021
- Tracking Trump's false or misleading coronavirus claimsThe Washington Post · 2020
- Latest False Fact-checks on Donald Trump (live list)PolitiFact · 2024