“President Trump made 16,241 false or misleading claims in his first three years” - Headline/ Washington Post January 20, 2020
What are we to make of the above headline? That Trump says a lot of things that just ain’t so. Then again, politicians exaggerate, lie and mislead all the time. Take Bernie Sanders. FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, attributed 18 “factual distortions”* to Sanders during his 124 minutes of speaking time** at the Democrat debates through this month. That’s roughly nine factual distortions per hour of talking. How does Sanders’ rate of untruth-telling compare to Trump’s record?
The Washington Post hasn’t been so diligent about tracking Sanders’ false or misleading claims over the past three years. However, extrapolating from the Democrat debates, I’d say Sanders is just as bad as Trump in the factual distortion department. Here’s how I arrived at that conclusion: assuming an average of 12 hours of public communication per week (e.g., speeches, interviews, social media posts) over the last three years and a rate of nine factual distortions per hour, that’s 16,848 false or misleading claims. Right up there in Trump territory.
Of course, this counting exercise says nothing about how trivial or egregious the false or misleading claims were, or how much the fact checkers themselves have been distorting the truth.
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* FactCheck.org Links
Fact Check January 2020 Democratic Debate
Fact Check December 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check November 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check October 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check September 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check July 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check June 2019 Democratic Debate
Fact Check February 2020 Democratic Debate
** Sanders Debate Time Links:
Sanders Debate Time February 2020
Sanders Debate Time January 2020
Sanders Debate Time December 2019
Sanders Debate Time November 2019
Sanders Debate Time October 2019
Sanders Debate Time September 2019