Shocking figures show how many ‘dishonest statements’ Trump made while in office

A tally of every single false or misleading claim made by Donald Trump throughout his presidency has been finalised, with nearly half coming within his final year in office.

The Washington Post has been tracking Trump’s falsehoods over the past four years, and have estimated 30,573 dishonest statements had been made by the former president during that period.

His fourth and final year as president saw him ramp up falsehoods, with 39 made every single day.

And nearly half of the claims were made during his campaign rallies, or on his now-suspended Twitter account.

The presidential election at the end of last year appeared to send Trump in a spiral, with the month of October - ahead of the vote - tracking 3,917 false claims.

Other events that led to a spike in untruths included the 2018 Midterm elections, and the 2019 unsupported conspiracy that suggested corrupt activities between Ukraine and former vice president Joe Biden.  

Then came the Covid pandemic which saw a fresh barrage of untruths, and by the end of 2020, Trump had made more than 2,500 virus-related claims.

The fact-checker showed that Trump lied about all things, big and small, and repeated some false claims up to 296 times, including having built  the “greatest economy in the history of the world”.

Some of the former president’s other favourite untruths included achieving the “largest tax cut and reform in the history” of the US, and having been involved in the “two greatest scams in American history, the Russian hoax and stolen election”.

All 30,573 claims were meticulously disproved by Washington Posts’ Fact Checker editor Glenn Kessler, who wrote: “It took [Trump] 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and another 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.

“What began as a relative trickle of misrepresentations, including 10 on his first day and five on the second, built into a torrent through Trump’s final days.”