WASHINGTON—Donald Trump has obliterated his weekly dishonesty record. The U.S. president made 132 false claims last week, 19 per day, almost five times his average. That shatters his previous record of 103 false claims in a week, which he set in June.Trump might have been expected to set a new record. He has grown steadily more dishonest over the course of his term, and he held three campaign rallies last week, the type of event where he is most prone to frequent lying. But Trump was also extremely dishonest the week prior, during which he gave speeches but did not hold rallies. He made 76 false claims that week, good for fourth-most of his term. July was Trump’s most dishonest month yet, with 280 false claims in all. His previous monthly record: 268, for June.The false claims last week included many of his usual exaggerations and major new lies about a startling variety of subjects. Among the whoppers: he claimed that Americans need photo identification to “buy groceries” or to “buy anything” (obviously not), that car plants are opening in Pennsylvania (none are), that Justice Neil Gorsuch was number one in his class at Harvard Law School (Gorsuch wasn’t close), that the European Union refused to talk trade with Barack Obama (the EU engaged in three years of trade negotiations with Obama), that he is surrounding the U.S. with missile defence systems (U.S-based interceptor missiles are located only in California and Alaska), that a Democratic senator who explicitly opposes the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement supports the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that Bill Clinton was silenced for two weeks by Hillary Clinton after the ex-president made a controversial campaign comment about Obamacare (Bill Clinton did two speaking events the very next day and two the day after that), and that NATO was “essentially going out of business” before his presidency because of a decline i ...
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