March 2, 2016

Calculating the lies of Donald Trump

Washington Post - PolitiFact found that 78 percent of the 96 Trump statements it reviewed were either “mostly false,” “false” or “pants-on-fire” false, the highest percentage by far in the current field of presidential candidates. (By comparison, 66 percent of Ted Cruz’s statements fell into those categories; 42 percent of Marco Rubio’s; 32 percent of Bernie Sanders’s; and 27 percent of Hillary Clinton’s. Trump’s is the highest they’ve ever recorded for a major candidate.) Among others, PolitiFact dinged Trump for claiming that blacks kill 81 percent of white homicide victims and for saying that Obama is pushing refugees to states with Republican governors.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column has awarded Trump four Pinocchios — its lowest rating for honesty — 63 percent of the time it has looked at one of his statements, also by far the worst percentage (others: Cruz, 21 percent; Rubio, 18; Sanders and Clinton 14). A recent four-Pinoc: Trump’s claim that a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would cost $8 billion.

In naming Trump the “King of Whoppers” in its annual review last year, FactCheck.org, an organization at the University of Pennsylvania, observed: “In the 12 years of FactCheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While I have no doubt that Trump issues false statements near constantly, I was really surprised that they found Sanders slightly less honest then Clinton. Clinton has such low ratings with the public and dishonesty is one of her big problems. To me this is a red flag, because Hillary is frequently caught in falsehoods. Although Clinton is more likely to issue "mostly false" statements instead of Trump's "pants on fire" sort of lies, she isn't nearly as honest as this article would suggest. Most of what Sanders says, when I do my own fact checking, comes out as at least "mostly true" if not better, which makes me wonder if the Tampa Bay Times, which is Politifact's home, is cherry picking statements and data with Clinton and Sanders, to make Clinton appear less dishonest.