Inaugural crowd Trump's presidency began with falsehoods originating from Trump. On the day after
his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the crowd. He then exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary
Sean Spicer backed up his claims. When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,
Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's
Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by saying he merely presented
alternative facts. Todd responded by saying, "Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods." In September 2018, a government photographer admitted he, at Trump's request,
2016 presidential election Trump went on to claim his
electoral college victory in 2016 was a landslide; that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had "serious voter fraud"; and that he didn't win the popular vote because Clinton received 3–5 million illegal votes. Trump made his
Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice twice refuted. In January 2018, Trump claimed texts between FBI employees
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but
The Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded they "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.
Denial of Russian hacking and election interference Trump frequently denied or sowed doubt that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and interfered in the 2016 election. He made many different claims, such as that there was no hacking, other countries than Russia did it, or the DNC hacked itself and that
Seth Rich was involved. He has said Russia did not try to get him elected and often called allegations of Russian meddling "a hoax". "Trump is fond of tossing out conspiracy theories, even if just to add a sliver of doubt. His supporters have embraced his conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to Mueller's investigation." The Russia investigation conclusively proved Russian intelligence was behind the hackings.
Robert Mueller, who led a
Special Counsel investigation, concluded Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he
indicted 26 Russian citizens and 3 Russian organizations. The investigation led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans. The
Mueller report, made public in April 2019, examined contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or associates.
Denial of collusion with Russia Trump repeatedly claimed he and his campaign did not collude with Russia, and Republicans and many otherwise reliable sources have repeated that false claim even though Mueller said that he
did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim that there was no collusion has been described as a myth. In a January 2019 interview, Trump's attorney,
Rudy Giuliani undermined Trump's claim when he "claimed Wednesday night that he 'never said there was no collusion' between President Trump's campaign and Russia leading up to the
2016 presidential election." After his comments, Giuliani made statements that
NPR described as an "apparent reversal" from his TV interview: He said "'there was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form' and that he had 'no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign'." The investigation found there were at least 140 contacts between Trump or 18 of his associates with Russian nationals and
WikiLeaks or their intermediaries, though the contacts were insufficient to show an illegal "conspiracy".
Dismissal of FBI director On May 9, 2017, Trump
dismissed James Comey, the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorney general
Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general
Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentioned the issue of an FBI investigation into the
links between Trump associates and Russian officials, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the
Hillary Clinton email controversy, a rationale seconded by Sessions. On May 11, Trump said in an
NBC News interview: "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story". On May 31, Trump tweeted, "I never fired James Comey because of Russia!" In 2018, Trump told reporters on
Air Force One that he did not know about a payment of $130,000 that Cohen made to
porn actress Stormy Daniels or where Cohen had obtained the money from. as Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen. On May 30, 2024, a
New York City jury found Trump
guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal these reimbursement payments. In 2021, several lawyers who had previously worked with Trump, reportedly declined to assist him in asserting executive privilege over the subpoenas served by the
House Select Committee on January 6. One of these was William Burck, who had represented 11 Trump associates regarding the
Mueller investigation. When Trump was asked about the refusal of his former lawyers to involve themselves in his legal battle, he said: "I don't even know who they are... I am using lawyers who have been with us from the beginning."
Spygate conspiracy theory In May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false
Spygate conspiracy theory alleging that the
Obama administration planted a spy inside
Trump's campaign to help Clinton win the 2016 election, specifically to gather information on the Trump campaign and share it with the Clinton campaign team. Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both main parties dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false. A December 2019
Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any
Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."
2018 California wildfires During the 2018 California wildfires which ultimately caused $3.5 billion (~$ in ) in damages and killed 103 people, Trump misrepresented a method that Finland uses to control wildfires. After speaking with
President of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Trump reported in November 2018, that Niinistö had called Finland a "forest nation" and "they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem." Trump's comments sparked
online memes about raking leaves. Niinistö clarified there is "a good surveillance system and network" for forest management in Finland and he did not recall having mentioned raking.
Special counsel investigation In March 2019, Trump asserted that the
Mueller special counsel investigation was "illegal". Previously in June 2018, Trump argued that "the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" However, in August 2018,
Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the
DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the
Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019. The
Mueller Report asserted that Trump's family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of falsehoods from Trump himself, whether unintentional or not, to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis. Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General
William Barr's summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION". However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against the President. In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department. Trump, Republicans, and many otherwise reliable sources have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Mueller
found "no collusion", even though Mueller said that he
did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim has been described as a myth. As of March 2019, Trump's most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency more than a hundred times, were that a U.S.
trade deficit would be a "loss" for the country, that his
tax cuts were the largest in American history, that the economy was the strongest ever during his administration, and that the wall was being built. By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the U.S. or other NATO members. Trump claimed during the campaign GDP could grow at "5 or even 6" percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 3%, the same rate as 2015 under Obama. Obama's advisers described growth limits as "sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire". Trump claimed in October 2017 he would eliminate the federal debt over eight years, even though it was $19 (~$ in ) trillion at the time. However, the annual deficit (debt addition) in 2018 was nearly $800 billion, about 60% higher than the
CBO forecast of $500 billion when Trump took office. The CBO January 2019 forecast for the 2018–2027 debt addition was 40% higher, at $13 trillion, rather than $9.4 trillion when Trump was inaugurated. Other forecasts place the debt addition over a decade at $16 trillion, bringing the total to around $35 trillion. Rather than a debt to GDP ratio in 2028 of 89% had Obama's policies continued, CBO estimated it at 107%, assuming Trump's tax cuts for individuals are extended past 2025. Trump sought to present his economic policies as successful in encouraging businesses to invest in new facilities and create jobs. In this effort, he took credit on several occasions for business investments that began before he became president. Trump repeatedly claimed that China or Chinese exporters were bearing the
burden of his tariffs, not Americans, a claim
PolitiFact rated as "false". Studies indicate U.S. consumers and purchasers of imports are bearing the cost and that tariffs are essentially a
regressive tax. For example, CBO reported in January 2020 that: "Tariffs are expected to reduce the level of [U.S.] real GDP by roughly 0.5 percent and raise consumer prices by 0.5 percent in 2020. As a result, tariffs are also projected to reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020." While Trump has argued that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit, it expanded to a record dollar level in 2018. Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China before his presidency; the actual deficit never reached $400 billion prior to his presidency. The following table illustrates some of the key economic variables in the last three years of the Obama Administration (2014–2016) and the first three years of the Trump Administration (2017–2019). Trump often claimed the economy was doing better than it was, after he was elected.
E. Jean Carroll sexual assault accusation In June 2019, writer
E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a department store in the mid-1990s. In an official statement, Trump said that (1) he had "never met [Carroll] in my life" although she provided a photograph of them socializing in 1987, and (2) the store shared security footage debunking the claim though in his 2022 deposition for the case, he denied having reached out to the company. Trump was also criticized for saying in 2019 that Carroll was "not [his] type" but in his deposition confusing her in the aforementioned photograph for his
Marla Maples.
Article II and unlimited executive power In July 2019, during a speech addressing youth at
Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit in Washington,
The Washington Post reported that, while criticizing the
Mueller investigation, Trump falsely claimed
Article Two of the U.S. Constitution ensures, "I have the right to do whatever I want as president." The
Post clarified that "Article II grants the president 'executive power'. It does not indicate the president has
total power".
Hurricane Dorian on August 29, 2019. This map was later altered to show the hurricane impacting Alabama. As
Hurricane Dorian approached the Atlantic coast in August 2019, Trump presented himself as closely monitoring the situation, tweeting extensively as
The New York Times reported he was "assuming the role of meteorologist in chief". On September 1, Trump tweeted that Alabama, among other states, "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated". By that time, no forecaster was predicting Dorian would impact Alabama and the eight
National Hurricane Center forecast updates over the preceding 24 hours showed Dorian steering well away from Alabama and moving up the coast. The
Birmingham, Alabama office of the
National Weather Service (NWS) contradicted Trump 20 minutes later, tweeting that Alabama "will NOT see any impacts from Dorian." After ABC News reporter
Jonathan Karl reported the correction, Trump tweeted it was "Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter @jonkarl". On September 4, in the Oval Office, Trump displayed a modified version of an August 29 diagram by the National Hurricane Center of the projected track of Dorian. The modification was done with a black marker and extended the
cone of uncertainty of the hurricane's possible path into southern Alabama. Modifying government weather forecasts is illegal in the U.S. Trump was known to use a Sharpie to write on documents, as well as speech notes and on the campaign trail. A White House official told
The Washington Post Trump had altered the diagram with a
Sharpie marker. Trump said he did not know how the map came to be modified and defended his claims, saying he had "a better map" with models that "in all cases [showed] Alabama was hit". Later on September 4, Trump tweeted a map by the
South Florida Water Management District dated August 28 showing numerous projected paths of Dorian; Trump falsely asserted "almost all models" showed Dorian approaching Alabama. A note on the map stated it was "superseded" by National Hurricane Center publications and that it was to be discarded if there were any discrepancies. The incident became known as sharpiegate. On September 5, after Fox News correspondent
John Roberts reported about the story, Trump summoned him to the Oval Office. Roberts later characterized Trump as "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk—even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet". Trump's
Homeland Security Advisor Peter Brown issued a statement asserting Trump had been provided a graphic on September 1 showing tropical storm force winds touching the southeastern corner of Alabama; a White House source told CNN that Trump had personally instructed Brown to issue the statement. NOAA then tweeted a statement by an unnamed spokesman disavowing the Birmingham NWS tweet, asserting "the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama", adding that the Birmingham tweet "spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time". The president of the NWS Employees Organization responded, "the hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight". Former senior NOAA executives were sharply critical. That evening, Trump tweeted a video of a CNN hurricane forecast from the Wednesday before his Sunday tweet in which the forecaster mentioned Alabama could be affected by Dorian—with the video altered to show "Alabama" being repeated several times; the video ended with a CNN logo careening off a road and bursting into flames. Trump continued to insist he was correct through September 7, asserting "The
Fake News Media was fixated" and tweeting forecast maps from at least two days before his original Sunday tweet, as the media dubbed the episode "Sharpiegate". Commentators expressed bafflement that Trump chose to insist he was correct about what might otherwise have passed as a minor gaffe. On September 9, NWS director Louis Uccellini said the Birmingham NWS had not tweeted in response to Trump's tweet, but in response to phone calls and social media contacts they had received in response to Trump's tweet. "Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments started coming to their office, did they learn the sources of this information", he said.
Robert Reich called Trump's behavior irrational. "I think we have to face the truth that no one seems to want to admit. This is no longer a case of excessive narcissism or grandiosity. We're not simply dealing with an unusually large ego [...] The president of the United States is seriously, frighteningly, dangerously unstable. And he's getting worse by the day."
Timothy L. O'Brien called Trump "unstable" and said "the world is in danger". "NOAA, an agency built on science and data engineered to provide reliable, impartial information and serve the public interest, wound up purging science and data from its public profile to cover for Trump. This is how good government decays when it's compromised by a cult of personality." On September 6,
NOAA published an unsigned statement which supported Trump's initial claim that Alabama was a target of the storm and criticized the Birmingham NWS office for denying it. It was later revealed that NOAA had been ordered to issue such a statement by
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, This direct White House involvement raised questions about political influence over NOAA, and is under investigation by multiple agencies including NOAA's acting chief scientist, the inspector general of the Commerce Department, and the House of Representatives committee which oversees NOAA.
Meeting with Iran On September 16, 2019, Trump tweeted that "the fake news" was incorrectly reporting that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions. Trump had said in July 2018 and June 2019 that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions, and secretary of state
Mike Pompeo and treasury secretary
Steven Mnuchin confirmed this to be Trump's position during a White House press briefing five days before Trump's tweet.
U.S military pullout from Kurdistan After Trump ordered the pullout of U.S soldiers from
Kurdistan in October 2019 ahead of an expected
Turkish military assault, Trump said the
Kurds "didn't help us in the Second World War", which was false as
Kurdish soldiers fought for allied forces, notably Britain and the
Soviet Union.
Obamagate conspiracy theory Trump and some of his supporters allege that Obama and his administration conspired to politically surveil
Trump's presidential campaign and
presidential transition through inappropriate investigations by the
Department of Justice, the
U.S. Intelligence Community, and the
U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Trump nicknamed the series of events, which he called a major scandal, "Obamagate". Trump's critics called it an unfounded
conspiracy theory. On May 10, 2020—one day after former president Barack Obama criticized the Trump administration's handling of the
COVID-19 pandemic—Trump posted a one-word tweet: "OBAMAGATE!" On May 11,
Philip Rucker of
The Washington Post asked Trump what crime former president Barack Obama committed. Trump's reply was: "Obamagate. It's been going on for a long time ... from before I even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened.... Some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again." When Rucker again asked what the crime was, Trump said: "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours." On May 15, Trump tweeted that Obamagate was the "greatest political scandal in the history of the United States". This was the third time Trump claimed to be suffering from a scandal of such magnitude, after previously giving
Spygate and the
Russia investigation similar labels. Also on May 15, Trump linked Obamagate to the "persecution" of
Michael Flynn, and a missing 302 form. Trump called for Congress to summon Obama to testify about "the biggest political crime". Senator
Lindsey Graham, chair of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he did not expect to summon Obama, but would summon other Obama administration officials. Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr stated that he did not "expect" Obama to be investigated of a crime. or possibly the "unmasking" by outgoing Obama officials to find out the name of a person who was reported in intelligence briefings to be conversing with the Russian ambassador. In a May 2020 op-ed at the news website
RealClearPolitics,
Charles Lipson, professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Chicago analyzed the content of "Obamagate". He claimed that the concept refers to three intertwined scandals: (1) The Obama administration conducted
mass surveillance through the NSA; (2) the Obama administration used surveillance against Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and (3) the Obama administration did not transfer power seamlessly to the new Trump administration. Lipson further claimed that "these abuses didn't simply follow each other; their targets, goals, and principal players overlapped. Taken together, they represent some of the gravest violations of constitutional norms and legal protections in American history". The AP in May 2020 addressed Obamagate in a fact check, stating that there was "no evidence" of Trump's suggestion that "the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics." AP stated that there is not only "nothing illegal about unmasking", but also that the unmasking of Flynn was approved using the National Security Agency's "standard process." Unmasking is allowed if officials feel that it is needed to understand the collected intelligence. AP further pointed out that the Trump administration was conducting even more unmasking than the Obama administration in the final year of Obama's presidency. In May 2020, attorney general
Bill Barr appointed federal prosecutor
John Bash to examine unmasking conducted by the Obama administration. The inquiry concluded in October with no findings of substantive wrongdoing. By October 2020, the complex "Obamagate" narrative served as an evolution and rebranding of the
"Spygate" conspiracy.
Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory Trump repeatedly advocated a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that television host
Joe Scarborough was involved in the 2001 death of a staffer Lori Klausutis, who worked for Scarborough while the latter was a member of
Congress. Trump labeled the woman's death an unsolved "
cold case" in one of multiple tweets and called on his followers to continue to "keep digging" and to "use forensic geniuses" to find out more about the death. Scarborough's wife and
Morning Joe co-host
Mika Brzezinski called the president a "cruel, sick, disgusting person" for his tweets and urged Twitter to remove Trump's tweets. Scarborough called Trump's tweet "unspeakably cruel". Lori Klausutis was a constituent services coordinator in one of Scarborough's congressional offices in
Fort Walton Beach, Florida. An autopsy by medical examiner Michael Berkland revealed a previously undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity,
floppy mitral valve disease, that caused a
cardiac arrhythmia that in turn halted her heart, stopped her breathing, and caused the 28-year-old to lose consciousness, fall, and hit her head on the edge of a desk. Klausutis' cause of death was determined at the time of death to be due to
natural causes, and local authorities have never attempted to re-investigate because there was no evidence of an alternative explanation for her death. Scarborough was in
Washington, D.C. at the time of her death in Florida. In May 2020, Klausutis's widower, Timothy Klausutis, called for the removal of Trump's tweets. He wrote a letter to
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of
Twitter, saying: "I'm asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him—the memory of my dead wife—and perverted it for perceived political gain". Twitter refused to take down Trump's false tweets, and the White House Press Secretary,
Kayleigh McEnany, only stated that her heart was with the family. Twitter stated that statements by the President, even false ones, are newsworthy.
Advances for black Americans In 2020, Trump claimed multiple times that he or his administration had "done more for the black community than any president", in some cases compared to all presidents, and in other cases to all presidents "since
Abraham Lincoln" (who
abolished slavery in the U.S.). Prominent historians instead pointed to
Lyndon B. Johnson as the president who did most for the black community since Lincoln, for his
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his
Voting Rights Act of 1965. The historians also highlighted that the presidencies of
Harry S. Truman,
Ulysses S. Grant,
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama had done much for the black community. Trump's own achievements were dismissed as minor, while Trump was faulted for
racially divisive rhetoric and attacks on voting rights.
Republican Party approval rating tweets After Trump took office in 2017, he routinely tweeted an approval rating between 94% and 98% in the Republican Party without citing a source. Trump tweeted these approval ratings almost weekly, with a percentage around 96%. For example, a tweet from June 16, 2020, by Trump says "96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!" Another tweet from August 23, 2019, says "94% Approval Rating within the Republican Party. Thank you!" Trump's approval rating in the Republican Party was found to be around 88% in a Fox News poll, 90% in a Gallup poll and 79% in an AP-NORC poll, with no evidence to support his tweets of approval ratings around 96%. In 2020, the Pew Research Center reported an average approval rating of 87% amongst Republicans.
Ilhan Omar In 2019, Trump falsely accused
Ilhan Omar of praising
al-Qaeda, describing remarks Omar made in 2013 about how one of her college professors acted when he discussed al-Qaeda. In 2021, Trump stated without evidence that Omar married her brother, committed "large-scale immigration and election fraud", and wished "
death to Israel".
COVID-19 pandemic Trump denied responsibility for his administration's disbanding of the Pandemic Response Team headed by Rear Adm.
R. Timothy Ziemer in 2018. Trump made false, misleading, or inaccurate statements related to the
COVID-19 pandemic, such as "We have it under control. It's going to be just fine" (January 22, 2020); "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away" (February 10), and "Anybody that wants
a test can get a test" (March 6). Trump repeatedly claimed the pandemic would "go away", even as daily new cases rose. On February 24, Trump tweeted: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA", and the next day Trump said, "I think that whole situation will start working out. We're very close to
a vaccine", when none was known to be near production. In late February, the Trump Administration stated that the outbreak containment was "close to airtight" and the virus is only as deadly as the
seasonal flu. The administration also stated that the outbreak was "contained"
in early March even as the number of U.S. cases continued to increase, regardless of being publicly challenged. While on
Fox News, Trump contradicted the
World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that the global mortality rate for
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is 3.4%, saying. "Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number—and this is just my hunch—but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild, they'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people", and said his "hunch" is that the real figure is "way under 1%". Trump speculated that "thousands or hundreds of thousands" of people might have recovered "by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work but they get better", contradicting medical advice to slow
disease transmission. On March 17, Trump stated, "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."
Anthony Fauci, director of
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a
Science interview that before press conferences, the task force presents its consensus to Trump "and somebody writes a speech. Then (Trump) gets up and
ad libs". Trump made 33 false claims about Covid in the first two weeks of March, per CNN analysis. Trump made other incorrect Covid statements. One false claim was that the U.S. had the highest rate per capita of
COVID-19 testing, which it did not, compared to South Korea, Italy, and Germany. Trump's misrepresentations attempted to paint the federal response in an excessively positive light, such as claiming hospitals "even in the really hot spots" were "really thrilled" with the level of medical supplies, when in fact hospitals were concerned about shortages of medications,
personal protective equipment, and ventilators. An
NBC News/
Wall Street Journal poll conducted in April, found 36% of Americans trusted Trump for information on COVID, and 52% distrusted him. On April 14, Trump said he had "total" authority to reopen states, then said the next day that governors had to make decisions on when to reopen. On April 16, Trump said "Our experts say the
curve has flattened, and the peak...is behind us." Trump added that "Nationwide, more than 850 counties, or nearly 30 percent of our country, have reported no new cases in the last seven days." The 30% of counties represented 6% of the population. Cases were added in counties where 94% of the population lived. On April 28, while discussing his own response to the pandemic, Trump falsely suggested that in late February, Fauci had said that the American COVID outbreak was "no problem" and was "going to blow over". Contrary to Trump's claims, Fauci had said in a February 29 interview that "now the risk is still low, but this could change...You've got to watch out because although the risk is low now...when you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread ... this could be a major outbreak." Fauci had stressed "we want to underscore that this is an evolving situation". On May 19, Trump tweeted a statement claiming the WHO had ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in December 2019, including from
The Lancet.
The Lancet rejected Trump's claims, saying "
The Lancet published no report in December 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China. The first reports the journal published were on January 24, 2020". On July 4, 2020, Trump falsely stated that "99 percent" of cases are "totally harmless". In March 2020, the WHO had estimated 15% of COVID cases become severe and 5% become critical. As the U.S. daily new case count increased from about 20,000 on June 9 to over 50,000 by July 7, Trump repeatedly insisted the increase was a function of increased
COVID-19 testing. On August 5, 2020, Trump asserted that children should go back to school and learn in an in-person setting. He said, "If you look at children, children are almost, I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So few. Hard to believe. I don't know how you feel about it but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. They don't have a problem." According to the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children account for about 7% of COVID cases. A study reported in
Science Magazine showed that "children under age 14 are between one-third and one-half as likely as adults to contract the virus." Facebook took action against Trump's claim that children are "almost immune", removing a video of him claiming this posted on his account. Twitter took action against a similar tweet made by Trump's campaign, stating the account would be restricted from tweeting until the tweet was removed. The account removed the tweet that day. Trump noted New Zealand's success in dealing with COVID while referring on August 18, 2020, to a "big surge in New Zealand"—on a day when New Zealand had 13 new reported cases, a cumulative total of 1,643 COVID cases and a cumulative total of 22 COVID-related deaths, with no new COVID-related deaths reported since May 2020. Commentators in New Zealand called Trump's terminology into question—Deputy Prime Minister
Winston Peters noted: "The American people can work out that what we have for a whole day, they have every 22 seconds of the day [...]." (New Zealand has a population about 1.5% of the U.S.) In 18 interviews from December 5, 2019, to July 21, 2020, between Trump and
Bob Woodward, Trump admitted he deceived the public about the severity of the pandemic. On February 7, he told Woodward, "This is deadly stuff. You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." On March 19, he said, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Audio recordings of these interviews were released on September 9, 2020. Legal analyst
Glenn Kirschner argued that Trump should be charged with manslaughter for deaths resulting from him intentionally lying to the public about the danger posed by COVID.
The military and veterans In 2014, a bipartisan initiative for veterans' healthcare, led by Senators
Bernie Sanders and
John McCain, was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The
Veterans Choice program enables eligible veterans to receive government funding for healthcare provided outside the
VA system. In 2018, Trump signed the VA MISSION Act to expand the eligibility criteria. Over the next two years, Trump falsely claimed over 150 times that he had created the Veterans Choice program itself. When reporter
Paula Reid questioned him about this in August 2020, noting that he repeatedly made a "false statement" in taking credit for the program, Trump abruptly walked out of the news conference. In a speech given at
Al Asad Airbase to US military personnel on Christmas 2018, Trump boasted that the military had not gotten a raise in ten years, and that he would be giving them a raise of over 10 percent. In fact, American military personnel received a pay hike of at least one percent for the past 30 years, got a 2.4 percent pay increase in 2018, and would receive a 2.6 percent pay increase for 2019. On January 3, 2020, Trump stated in a speech "Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world,
Qasem Soleimani." Trump's act of changing the reasons for killing Soleimani were questioned and analyzed by fact-checkers, and
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper contradicted Trump's claim that the Iranians were planning to attack four embassies.
Voting by mail President Trump repeatedly made false, misleading or baseless claims in his criticism of
voting by mail in the U.S. This included claims that other countries would print "millions of mail-in ballots", claims that "80 million unsolicited ballots" were being sent to Americans, and claims that Nevada's presidential election process was "100% rigged". Another claim was alleging massive voter fraud. In September 2020, FBI Director
Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed by Trump, testified under oath that the FBI had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise".
2020 presidential election reported that through June 9, 2021, Trump had issued 132 written statements since leaving office, of which "a third have included lies about the election"—more than any other subject. During his
2020 presidential campaign, Trump claimed his opponent
Joe Biden would "destroy" Americans' "protections for pre-existing conditions", while Trump's administration has said the entire
Affordable Care Act, which created such protections, should be struck down. On November 4, Trump delivered a speech inside the White House falsely claiming he had already won the
2020 presidential election. He made numerous false and misleading statements to support his belief that vote counting should stop and that he should be confirmed as the winner. After
Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed Biden had won through ballot fraud against him. He repeated and tweeted false and misleading claims about vote counting,
Dominion Voting Systems, poll watchers, alleged voting irregularities, and more. During the two-month transition period to the Biden administration, according to a
Huffington Post count of his false claims, Trump said the election was rigged (he made this claim 68 times), stolen (35 times), determined by fraudulent or miscounted votes (250 times), and affected by malfunctioning voting machines (45 times). Following the election, Trump continued to claim he had won it and that it was a rigged election.
Anthony Scaramucci, a longtime Trump associate who was briefly White House communications director before breaking with Trump, said in July 2022 that the former president knew the election had not been stolen. Scaramucci said that during the 2016 campaign Trump had asked him and others why people didn't realize he was playacting and 'full of it' at least half the time, "so he knows that this is all a lie." Years later, Trump persists in the false claim about the 2020 election. For example, on August 29, 2022, he demanded on
Truth Social that the nation "declare the rightful winner or ... have a new Election, immediately!" In October 2022, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that Trump and allies participated in a "
knowing misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court". Specifically, the judge wrote that "President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public". The judge also found that related emails "are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States" that the
crime-fraud exemption voids Trump's lawyer's claim of
attorney–client privilege. On April 25, 2023, CNN reported that Trump had told a new lie about the 2020 election: "Trump pointedly noted that Biden got more votes than Trump in fewer than a fifth of US counties in 2020. Trump then said, 'Nothing like this has ever happened before. Usually, it's very equal, or—but the winner always had the most counties.'" The statement was described as "complete bunk". Both "Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, carried a minority of counties in each of their victories."
William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, said: On July 18, 2023, when responding to
Sean Hannity at a town hall meeting in Iowa, Trump told a new lie: "I also have to say something else, 'cause the one thing a lot of people, including you, don't talk about: they also create phony ballots, and that's a real problem. That's my opinion. They create a lot of phony ballots." The claim was described as "pure fiction".
January 6 attack During the January 6, 2021, attack, minutes after
Mike Pence had been rushed off the Senate floor, Trump tweeted that "Mike Pence didn't have the courage" to refuse to certify the election results, implying Pence had the Constitutional power to do so—a claim dismissed by the federal judges in the final two of 62 election-related lawsuits. In a January 7, 2021, White House video, Trump claimed, falsely, that he had "immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders". In late March 2021, Trump said the rioters "were ushered in by the police" which is false in view of the 140 assaults on police officers in hours-long battles involving police engaging in hand-to-hand combat to try to keep rioters out of the building. In a July 11, 2021, interview on Fox News, Trump called the events of January 6 a "lovefest" and said that it was "not right" that the rioters were "currently incarcerated"—conflicting with his January 7 statement telling rioters, "You will pay." the Associated Press reported it as "several thousand." Investigators estimated that "more than 2,000 people" entered the Capitol. On December 10, 2021, Trump told Fox News that the attack was "a protest" and that "the insurrection took place on November 3" (election day), while in fact about 140 police officers were assaulted and the peaceful transfer of power was violently interrupted in an attack that involved thousands of alleged crimes, and the election was neither rigged nor fraudulent. When warned, Trump is said to have angrily responded: Some protestors were armed with guns, stun guns, knives, batons, baseball bats, axes, and chemical sprays. In January 2022, the Justice Department made an official statement that over 75 people had been charged with entering a restricted area with "a dangerous or deadly weapon". In a February 5, 2022, rally, Trump said that if he runs again in 2024, "we will treat those people from January 6 fairly... And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly"—the claim of unfairness being unsupported by evidence. Trump's claim echoed his September 16, 2021, written statement that "Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election". ==See also==