The Serial Confabulator is Still Lying: Imagine That
“Well, actually . . .” is not the best way to correct other people’s misconceptions about important but complicated topics. But in case you feel compelled to go all “well actually” when someone repeats elements of the Big Lie to you, here’s a reminder of how often #P01135809 lies and how shamelessly his supporters repeat his lies.
You could print segments of this on index-card-size pieces of paper to pass out when someone near you claims that these lies are factual. That will make you very popular and welcome in all social gatherings.
Trigger Warning: Because I am quoting an article and other sources about the former president, I will actually be using his name throughout this article. You were warned.
As we anticipate seeing Defendant #P01135809 in a New York courtroom on Monday, let’s remember why his attorneys won’t put him on the stand.
First, we need a bit of historical context. This is what Wikipedia says about the Big Lie.
A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique. The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic.
According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder. Herf further argues that the Nazis' big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged nation striking back at "international Jewry", which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held outsized and secret power in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.
In the 21st century, the term has been applied to attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election by Donald Trump and his allies, specifically the false claim that the election was stolen through massive voter and electoral fraud. The scale of the claims resulted in Trump supporters attacking the United States Capitol. Later reports indicate that Trump knew he had lost the election while promoting the narrative.
Scholars say that constant repetition across many different forms of media is necessary for the success of the big lie technique, as is a psychological motivation for the public to believe the extreme assertions.
We are so accustomed to the reality that #P01135809 lies ALL THE TIME that we stop paying attention to it. When even his defenders acknowledge that he lies for political advantage (but plan to vote for him anyway), we are definitely in dangerous Big Lie territory.
The biggest “Big Lie” is the claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Rather than go into all of the court cases and other legal proceedings that have proven that the election was not in fact “stolen,” here’s a link to a Snopes summary of fact checks about this claim. https://www.snopes.com/tag/election-fraud/
Note: A few years ago, I took an Osher class focused on the problem of misinformation and “fake news.” When the instructor recommended using various fact-checking sites like Snopes to discern truth from fiction, one of the class members objected, saying that fact-checkers had a liberal bias because they identified more lies from the political right than from the political left. He was serious when he made this statement. This was met with knowing chuckles from most of the other class members. The instructor was kind and did not make fun of the person who lodged the complaint.
I thought it would be useful to summarize his lies. This information is from a March 14, 2024 article in the Washington Post. Here’s a free link to read this article; I recommend it so you can access the details that illustrate why each of these claims is a lie.
First, the article summarizes his frequent lies about his achievements while he was in office. The Post notes that it has repeatedly fact-checked these claims (the parentheticals are the newspaper’s comments on each claim:
He created the greatest U.S. economy in U.S. history (not by any metric).
He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).
He did more for Black people than any president but Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).
He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).
He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced U.S. tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).
He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (False).
But #P01135809 does not lack creativity when he gets going at a political rally. Here are some lies he has added to his repertory in recent months.
Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case
“He’s [Biden] at great jeopardy, really, but they said: ‘Look, he’s incompetent to go to court but he can be president.’ Figure that one. In other words, he can’t represent himself at court because he’s incompetent.” (Fox News town hall, Feb. 20)
“Well, Joe Biden had more boxes than any human being ever, and they let him off. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be let off that way. They say: ‘He’s incompetent, we’ll let him off.’” (rally in Richmond, March 2)
“He has no clue, like with the documents hoax. How about that? He’s not competent to stand trial, but he’s allowed to be the president.” (rally in Rome, Ga., March 9)
This all harkens back to the extraneous statements made by special counsel Robert Hur in his report on the documents President Biden had retained after he left office. In a statement that had no purpose but to tarnish President Biden, Hur wrote that a conviction in a case brought against Biden would not be successful because the jurors probably would view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” MAGA has seized on this statement as if it were the primary conclusion of Hur’s report. It was not. His primary conclusion was that Biden did not willfully retain the documents and cooperated fully in their return. Hur in fact went out of his way to document the differences between the cases against Biden and #P01135809, explaining why one man is facing criminal charges and the other is not.
The United States is a Third World country
We have a country that a political person uses weaponization against his political opponent never happened here. It happens in other countries, but they’re Third World countries. And in some ways, we’re a Third World country. We’re a Third World country at our borders, and we’re a Third World country at our elections, and we have to stop that.” (remarks after Super Tuesday, March 5)
The United States is an economic powerhouse, and its currency, the U.S. dollar, is dominant. But Trump frequently reaches for a dated Cold War-era term used to refer to poor or developing countries. Sometimes, he also calls the United States a “banana republic.”
“Third World” is an all-purpose phrase used to falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged by Democrats — and to claim that Biden is personally directing federal, state and local prosecutions of Trump, not to mention a civil defamation lawsuit that he lost. There is no evidence that Biden is involved in any of these cases. And it’s simply silly to claim the United States is a Third World country.
Prisons are being emptied around the world to flood U.S. borders
“The prison population all over the world is at the lowest point it’s been in many decades because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.” (Richmond)
“When you look at the people that are being allowed to come all over the world, they’re emptying their prisons. They’re emptying their mental institutions into the United States of America.” (Rome, Ga.)
This claim is an echo of Trump’s notorious comment in his 2015 speech announcing he would run for president — that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Illegal immigration by Mexicans has fallen sharply, so now Trump claims the entire world is sending criminals to the southern border. Sometimes he even riffs that it’s a cost-saving maneuver by world leaders — “nothing more expensive than storing a prisoner in a jail for 60 years.”
This is poppycock. Immigration experts know of no such effort by other countries. As someone who came to prominence in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered hundreds of refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.
Helen Fair, research associate at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research in Britain, which tracks the world prison population (except for a handful of countries), says the numbers keep growing. In 2013, 10.2 million people were in prison — and that had grown to 10.77 million in 2021. A preliminary estimate for February 2024, not ready to be published, indicates the population has grown even more. “In short, I would disagree with Donald Trump’s assertion,” she said.
Imagine that. An expert disagrees with the former President.
Congo has released murderers into the United States
“Last night they had four from the Congo. Where in the Congo do you live? I wonder what beautiful place do you live in the Congo? ‘We are from prison.’ What did you do? ‘Murder.’ They’re in the United States right now, right? This is what they’re allowing.” (Richmond)
“The Congo — very big population coming in from the jails of the Congo.” (speech at Eagle Pass, Tex., Feb. 29)
“The other day from Africa, the Congo, they had numerous prisoners caught from the Congo.” (Rome, Ga.)
As part of his falsehood on prisons being emptied, Trump often conjures up another bit of fiction — that a conflict-riven country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is shipping murderers to the United States. Fair says no such decline in Congo’s prison population is shown in the data. Instead, the DRC’s prison population keeps growing.
When Trump was president, he greatly restricted refugee admissions, stranding Congolese who had been waiting in camps seeking to reunite with relatives already in the United States. Still, Customs and Border Protection data show that during his presidency there was a surge in undocumented arrivals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2017 and 2018, no one from Congo sought to cross either the southern or northern border, but in 2019 and 2020, that changed, with 614 and 267 encounters, respectively.
15 million migrants have entered the United States under Biden
“They’ve let in 15 million people … and I think it’s going to be 18 million by the time we get the worst president in our history out of office.” (Richmond)
“I think the number is 15 million people already, I think it’ll be 18 to 20 million people by the time we get rid of this guy. Think of it, that’s bigger than New York state. I think it’s going to be close to 20 million people.” (Rome, Ga.)
“This is the worst invasion probably. We’ve never had anything like it. No country has ever had anything like it. The number today could be 15 million people, and they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.” (Super Tuesday remarks.)
Trump never met a number that he could not double, triple or quadruple. Here, he manages to take a real number — 4 million to 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it threefold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.
Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 8.5 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through December of last year. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (about 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of COVID-related rules that have since ended.
CBP has released more than 2.3 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through September, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to between 4 and 5 million.
That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.
The inflation rate under Biden is 50 percent
“But the fact is, under Biden, we have a three-year inflation rate of almost 50 percent. Under me, you had no inflation. You had no inflation.” (Rome, Ga.)
“We have cumulative inflation of over 50 percent. That means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50 percent more over a fairly short period of time to stay up.” (interview on CNBC, March 11)
The monthly inflation headlines are often about the year-over-year inflation rate, as measured by changes in the consumer price index. It reached a high of 9 percent during Biden’s presidency, largely because of supply chain issues after the pandemic. Annualized inflation has dropped since then. The year-over-year figure in February was 3.2 percent.
Cumulative inflation measures the total increase in the price of goods and services over a specific period of time. But of course Trump nearly triples the real number. Since Biden took office, cumulative inflation is 18.5 percent. Moreover, Trump is wrong when he says there was “no inflation” when he was president. Cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency was nearly 8 percent.
My Note: Careful statisticians and commentators unsnarl the effects of COVID at the end of the former president’s term from the effects felt before COVID emerged. We should do the same.
Wages have also gone up under Biden, helping to mitigate the impact, though many workers have not seen their paychecks keep up with inflation. Average hourly earnings are up 15.5 percent during Biden’s presidency and the Employment Cost Index is up 14 percent. Since early 2023, wage growth began to outpace inflation, with the gap expected to fully close sometime this year.
Native-born Americans have lost 1 million jobs to immigrants
“In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared. Think of that. You lost a million jobs. Black people, that’s who lost the jobs. Hispanic people, that’s who lost the jobs.” (Rome, Ga.)
Here, Trump seizes on a confusing (and exaggerated) number to make a misleading claim. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report shows that the number of native-born workers with jobs fell from 129.8 million in January to 129.3 million in February 2024, for a decline of about 500,000. So Trump doubled the actual figure. Meanwhile, the number of foreign-born workers, meaning people who were not citizens at birth, grew from nearly 30 million to 31 million — an increase of more than 1 million.
But that does not mean that U.S. citizens have “lost” those jobs to immigrants. Monthly changes in employment don’t tell you much — and this report is not seasonally adjusted, meaning temporary holiday hiring and a winter slowdown in construction can affect the numbers at the start of the year. The BLS report shows the unemployment rate is lower for native-born Americans — 4.0 vs. 4.7 percent. That’s the more important figure. Moreover, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the share of prime-age (ages 25-54) employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) for U.S.-born individuals was 81.4 percent in 2023, up from 80.7 percent in 2019 — for its highest rate since 2001. Indeed, native-born workers have gained more than 6 million jobs during Biden’s presidency — as have foreign-born workers.
I’ve added some more lies that were not covered in the Washington Post article:
Democrats are in favor of late-term abortion, even executing babies after they are born.
“It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month,” on Truth Social, April 8, 2024
“The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth — and that’s exactly what it is, the baby is born, the baby is executed after birth — is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.” on Truth Social, April 8, 2024
The reality is that Trump and his party are oversimplifying a complex issue, labeling it a “late-term abortion” to rile up voters, despite the political buzzword having no medical basis. Pregnancy terminations after the first trimester are already extremely rare in the U.S., so much so that less than 1% of abortions in 2020 were carried out at 21 weeks or later. The subset of abortions after 26 weeks — the third trimester — is even smaller, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The few cases of abortion in the third trimester, which are not at the moment of birth, as Republicans allege, also usually involve specific factors that are difficult to accommodate in advance, such as severe fetal anomalies that would leave the baby with no chance of survival, conditions that threaten the pregnant person’s life and delays in care due to legal restrictions on abortion access.
“It’s disgusting and [a] blatantly false accusation that Donald Trump is making to try to distract from his own unpopular policies,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a press call. “We know that the president has stated his position time and again, that he believes that Roe got it right.”
Democrats Want Open Borders
"Not one more American life should be lost to migrant crime. We can't have another Laken...When I'm President of the United States, we will demand justice for Laken on day one. My administration will terminate every open border policy of the Biden administration," Dayton, Ohio, March 16 rally.
According to Axios, the southern border is more fortified than it’s ever been.
Reality check: Since 1992, the U.S. has quadrupled the number of Border Patrol agents — from less than 5,000 to nearly 20,000 today.
Barriers, walls, and fences have been erected along portions of the 1,951-mile U.S.-Mexico border, in addition to new Border Patrol outposts and high-tech surveillance systems.
The Border Patrol regularly breaks border arrest records, highlighting the difficulty of entering the country illegally.
Most recently, Biden decided to go forward with a border wall in South Texas.
Lines at ports of entry have gotten longer because of new requirements to enter the U.S., putting pressure to expand hours at newer ports of entry like the one in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
In a review of news stories, Axios found that the “open border” language took off during the Obama administration as conservatives worked to thwart planned immigration reform.
Obama pulled back from nominating Thomas Saenz, who is now the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to run the Justice Department's civil rights division after conservative pundits falsely claimed he was "an open-borders extremist."
Obama was routinely attacked for supporting open borders, though he stepped up deportations and was labeled by immigrant advocates as the "deporter-in-chief."
Zoom out: Today, GOP presidential candidates repeat the false claim that President Biden supports open borders.
In two presidential debates, candidates Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence alluded to open borders with little evidence.
Upset over Biden's decision to lift a Trump-era policy, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott denounced Biden for having open border policies, though he didn't define what that was.
What they're saying: "We don't have open borders because the U.S. government is attempting to stop as many people who cross the border as they can," David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, tells Axios.
“In fact, the Biden Administration is now deporting migrants to Mexico even if they aren't from Mexico.”
Note: I’m not sure we should be celebrating this, by the way. “My guy is as bad as your guy” is not a good message for Biden’s campaign.
"If the administration was pursuing any kind of open border policy, the number of people being arrested would be dropping. And that's not the case. They're arresting and expelling as many people as ever."
And let’s not forget this oldie but goodie about the Mueller Report:
This is not what the Mueller Report concluded. Here are some clips from the congressional hearing where Mueller testified:
And here’s what the Mueller Report conclusion noted:
In addition, this is what the Mueller Report said about obstruction of justice involving the president:
Volume I of the special counsel's report dealt with Russia's attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Volume II focused solely on the issue of obstruction of justice. In the latter, Mueller highlighted 11 issues related to potential obstruction of justice by Trump.
Each of the following listed items is linked to the relevant portion of Mueller's report:
The campaign's response to reports about Russian support for Trump.
Conduct involving FBI Director James Comey and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The president's reaction to the continuing Russia investigation.
The president's termination of Comey.
The appointment of a special counsel and efforts to remove him.
Efforts to curtail the special counsel's investigation.
Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence.
Further efforts to have the attorney general take control of the investigation.
Efforts to have White House Counsel for U.S. President Donald Trump Don McGahn deny that the president had ordered him to have the special counsel removed.
Conduct towards Flynn and Trump's 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
Conduct involving Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen.
This doesn’t even address the variety of business and financial fraud he has engaged in throughout his life. Several of the ongoing legal cases confronting him provide ample evidence that truth is not important to him – what’s important is “winning.”
There’s more that can be said, but I’m done for today. I have outrage fatigue.