Trump lies like all politicians, but hes almost a compulsive...

Trump lies like all politicians, but hes almost a compulsive liar.

Supposedly something like 30,000 lies during his last term in office, who even says 30,000 things in 4 years

We shouldnt condone lying the way we do from our leaders, they need to be held to account

The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day.^[1][5][6][7] The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6 per day.^[2] Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics,^[13] and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities.^[14] Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.^[15]
By June 2019, after initially resisting, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies".^[16] The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation.^[17] Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."^[18][19]
As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election.^[7] Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of Hitler's "big lie" propaganda technique.^[20]
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on one count of making "false statements and representations", specifically by hiding subpoenaed classified documents from his own attorney who was trying to find and return them to the government.^[21] In August 2023, 21 of Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election were listed in his Washington, D.C. indictment,^[22] while 27 were listed in his Georgia indictment.^[23]
Veracity and politics
Many academics and observers who study the American political scene have called Trump unique or highly unusual in his lying and its effect on political discourse. "It has long been a truism that politicians lie," wrote Carole McGranahan for the American Ethnologist in 2017, but "Donald Trump is different". He is the most "accomplished and effective liar" to have ever participated in American politics; moreover, his lying has reshaped public discourse so that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented".^[9]
Historian Douglas Brinkley stated that U.S. presidents have occasionally "lied or misled the country," but none were a "serial liar" like Trump.^[24] Donnel Stern, writing in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal," because Trump "lies as a policy," and "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.^[25]
Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described how lies have "always been an integral part of politics". However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale", during his campaign and presidency. Skjeseth commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.^[10]
"Fabrications have long been a part of American politics," wrote Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times in 2017, as presidents in the previous 50 years have occasionally lied. Stolberg cited that Dwight Eisenhower lied about a U.S. spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, Lyndon Johnson lied to justify policies on Vietnam, and Bill Clinton lied to conceal his sexual affair. Meanwhile, Stolberg recounts that Richard Nixon was accused of lying in the Watergate scandal, while George W. Bush was accused of lying about the need for the Iraq War (with Trump being one accuser of Bush lying). However, Stolberg states that "President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called 'the conflict between truth and politics' to an entirely new level ... Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis."^[26] Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times described in 2017 that presidents "of all stripes" have previously misled the public, either accidentally or "very purposefully". Barabak provided examples of Ronald Reagan, who falsely stated he had filmed Nazi death camps, and Barack Obama, who falsely stated that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" under his Affordable Care Act. However, Barabak stated that "White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations" is unparalleled.^[27]
Jeremy Adam Smith wrote that "lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency".^[28] Thomas B. Edsall wrote "Donald Trump can lay claim to the title of most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency."^[28] George C. Edwards III wrote: "Donald Trump tells more untruths than any previous president. There is no one that is a close second."^[28]
Use of repetition
Trump is conscious of the value of repetition to get his lies believed. He demonstrated this knowledge when he instructed Stephanie Grisham, his White House press secretary, to use his method of lying: "As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn't matter what you say."^[29]
Trump effectively uses the Big lie technique's method of repetition to exploit the illusory truth effect, a tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.^[30] Research has studied Trump's use of the effect.
New research published in Public Opinion Quarterly reveals a correlation between the number of times President Donald Trump repeated falsehoods during his presidency and misperceptions among Republicans, and that the repetition effect was stronger on the beliefs of people who consume information primarily from right-leaning news outlets.^[31]
The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio," for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to the Post Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.^[17]
Some examples of his use of repetition are: falsely claiming there had been massive election fraud and that he won the 2020 election;^[7] The Apprentice was the top-rated television program in America;^[32] he was of Swedish descent;^[33][34][35] claiming in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% "isn't reflective [of reality] ... I've seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment";^[36] that the US would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it";^[37] that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act;^[38] that he and his campaign did not collude or cooperate with Russia, even though Mueller found cooperation and explained that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination";^[39] and characterizing the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.^[40] Some studies have analyzed his language patterns on Twitter to predict with around 75% accuracy whether a tweet was telling a truth or not.^[41]