Together with Donald Trump’s presidency from the rear-view mirror, there is a natural human inclination to sort of uncertainty about what he did to the country’s highest office. Let us look to the future — and all that.
But it’s very important to keep reminding ourselves of these several manners that Trump sough to essentially undermine and redefine the presidency. Or put more simply: How unbelievably abnormal the previous four decades were compared to, well, each other contemporary presidency.
That brings me to a new analysis from The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog — breaking down the false and misleading claims made by the Trump and present President Joe Biden within their first 100 days in office.
The comparison is striking. Biden made 67 untrue or misleading claims in that interval in comparison with Trump’s 511, according to the Post’s tally. That, if you do the mathematics, means that Trump stated over seven times as most misleading or outright untrue matters than Biden did during the crucial first 100 days of every one of the presidencies. SEVEN occasions!
“Following four decades of a presidency that amuses Americans using a gusher of untrue and misleading claims, the Joe Biden age has provided a return to a typical pattern in regards to a commander in chief and his connection with all the truth — one which includes regular spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, together with the occasional canard,” concluded the Post’s Glenn Kessler, Adrian Blanco and Tyler Remmel.
Sit with this for a moment. Then think about that: Trump’s speed of mistruths — and blatant lies — quickly picked up as his expression went . His first 100 days has been the very truthful time period throughout his entire presidency. “In 2017, Trump averaged 2.9 false promises each day. By 2018, it was 8.3 false claims each day. … Trump’s 2017 dishonesty tended to become impromptu ad-libbing. His 2018 dishonesty was considerably cuter; he utilized sequential lying as a deliberate approach from the midterm elections. He then utilized sequential lying as a deliberate plan in his 2019 Ukraine scandal. He then utilized sequential lying as a deliberate approach in his reaction to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic — holding so tremendously unethical that wanted me to move on TV shortly then to debunk the crap viewers had just discovered.”
And naturally, none of that takes into consideration the fact that Trump proceeds to disperse the Big Lie — which the 2020 election was fraudulent or stolen despite no evidence of wrongdoing. (Much as I type, Arizona’s state Senate Republicans are running a”recount” of their ballots at Maricopa County which is baffling at best.) Polling indicates Republican voters favor Trump’s falsehoods into the objective truth. A Quinnipiac University survey released in February revealed 75 percent of self-identified Republicans agreeing with the announcement there was”widespread fraud at the 2020 election”
Biden’s fact-check functionality has returned the standard we anticipate from presidents and politicians: Truth-stretching and exaggerating in the primary, together with the occasional whopper thrown in but seldom replicated. The question is if Trump’s pattern of dishonesty implies no matter what Biden does, we might never return to”normal.”
Trump might no longer be president and he might never run for president . But if he makes the decision to take a pass on conducting in 2024, Trump’s effect not only on politics but on our civilization is enormous — and nowhere can it be larger (or more debatable ) than when it has to do with his tried erasure of facts and truth.