Washington
CNN
—
In a speech final week to the Nationwide Guard Affiliation of the US, former President Donald Trump claimed that he was the president who “created” the Veterans Alternative well being care program, and received it “handed in Congress,” after others had needed to take action “for 57 years.”
In actuality, President Barack Obama was the president who signed this system into regulation in 2014. The regulation Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, expanded the Veterans Alternative program however didn’t create it.
I may fact-check this Trump lie half-asleep – as a result of he’s been telling it for more than six years.
Trump’s mendacity is most distinctive in its relentlessness, a unending avalanche of wrongness that may bury even the most devoted fact-checkers. But it surely’s additionally notable for its repetitiveness. He has discovered his hits, and he’ll maintain taking part in them regardless of what number of instances they’re debunked.
As Trump enters the post-Labor Day sprint of his 2024 marketing campaign for the presidency, his commentary is crammed with most of the identical false claims he made as president from 2017 to 2021. He’s even repeating a few of the false claims he used throughout his 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
As a fact-check reporter for CNN, I watch or learn the transcript of each public look by Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Whereas Harris’ marketing campaign remarks to this point have been heavy on thematic rhetoric and light-weight on assertions of reality, with a smattering of false or misleading claims, Trump’s 2024 interviews and speeches are plagued by previous falsehoods I’ve come to name “the repeats” – assertions I’ve fact-checked as false time and again for years.
For instance, Trump falsely claimed on a podcast final week that persons are saying world warming will trigger the oceans to rise simply “an eighth of an inch in 355 years.” He was saying near-identical nonsense in 2019. (Sea ranges are already rising greater than an eighth of an inch per 12 months.)
Trump falsely claimed at a rally final month that his tariffs on imported Chinese language items are paid by China, not People, and that no earlier president had generated even “10 cents” from tariffs on Chinese language items. He was saying the identical in 2018. (The tariff funds are made by US importers, not Chinese language exporters, and the US authorities was already generating billions per year from such tariffs earlier than Trump took workplace.)
Trump falsely claimed in a speech in mid-August that he had warned the US to not invade Iraq. That claim was a key a part of his marketing campaign pitch in 2015 and 2016. (Trump expressed tentative support for the 2003 invasion about six months earlier than it occurred, didn’t categorical a agency opinion on an invasion about two months earlier than it occurred, and solely got here out as an opponent of the struggle post-invasion.)
Trump’s false claims within the podcast interview final week that some NATO members have been “delinquent” and “owed … big quantities of cash” earlier than he took workplace have been additionally staples of his 2016 run. (NATO members didn’t owe anybody money even when they weren’t assembly the alliance’s voluntary 2%-of-GDP guideline for their very own protection spending.)
Trump’s common false claims of a “rigged” 2020 election echo his language from both his 2016 campaign and 2020 campaign. (The claims have been baseless then and are baseless now.)
And fewer importantly, when Trump declared in June, July and again on Thursday that he had been named “Man of the 12 months” in Michigan lengthy earlier than he entered politics, it was the third straight presidential election he had told this silly lie he debuted in 2016. (There’s no evidence the award even exists, not to mention that Trump, who has by no means lived in Michigan, obtained it.)
How the repetition works for Trump – and doesn’t
No person actually is aware of how a lot of Trump’s deployment of previous lies is strategic and the way a lot is mere drive of behavior. Regardless, his persistence produces a transparent profit for him.
Information retailers are likely to give attention to new materials. Whereas some retailers could also be inclined to fact-check a false Trump declare the primary, second, third and even tenth time he utters it, they’re far much less more likely to dedicate treasured assets to a declare on the a centesimal or 150th utterance – particularly as a result of he’s always mixing in dozens of new lies that require time and assets to deal with. And so, by advantage of shameless perseverance, Trump usually manages to outlast many of the media’s willingness to right any explicit falsehood, finally getting that declare into information protection and social media clips practically uncorrected.
That’s to not say his mendacity is an unmitigated victory.
Numerous polls have found for years {that a} clear majority of voters do not see Trump as sincere; from speaking to People across the nation since 2015, I do know there are lots of people who mistrust nearly something he says. I’ve little doubt that his insistence on persevering with to say dozens of issues folks have already realized are false is a part of the explanation why.
Nonetheless, I strive to match Trump’s tirelessness in mendacity with my very own tirelessness in difficult the lies. The separation of reality from fiction is central to journalists’ function within the democratic course of, and there are all the time residents on the market who’re listening to even the stalest of deceptions for the primary time.
So so long as Trump or every other main political determine retains reviving their previous nonsense, we should always maintain debunking that nonsense. Even when we already did it eight years in the past.