News
Isobel van Hagen
Sep 16, 2020
AFP via Getty
Donald Trump may have just set his own record for the number of lies told in just one sentence.
According to CNN’s Daniel Dale - a journalist who has been fact-checking Trump throughout his presidency - a tweet from the president over the weekend was potentially record-breaking in its falsities.
“Was Andy McCabe ever forced to pay back the $700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife’s political campaign, by Crooked Hillary Clinton while Hillary was under FBI investigation, and McCabe was the head of the FBI??? Just askin’?” Trump tweeted, referencing the 2016 election (here we go again) making good use of the question mark key.
Dale, who has 1 million followers on Twitter, responded with an article fact-check and said, “Possible new record: Trump made four false claims in one sentence.”
The CNN article published on Monday meticulously goes through the tweet, examining each falsehood.
Regarding the "$700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife's political campaign...", Trump seems to be referring to money that was donated to the unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of McCabe's wife - not McCabe himself, Dale wrote. The funds were also not illegal. So, two lies just in the first 14 words.
Trump then references “crooked Hillary Clinton” for giving McCabe those funds (which he did not receive). Fact-check! Also, not true.
Finally: “McCabe was the head of the FBI???"
Unfortunately for the president, McCabe was not the head of the FBI:
“Andrew McCabe was not "head of the FBI" in 2015. Rather, he ran the bureau as acting director for nearly three months in 2017 -- long after the donations and his wife's defeat -- after Trump fired director James Comey,” Dale explains.
While this amount of blatant disregard for the truth might seem astonishing, it is not unusual for this particularly president.
The Washington Postreported, for example, as of July the president had made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims since he took office, or an average of 12 falsehoods a day.
Still, four lies in just one sentence is an achievement for him.
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