Alternative facts. Lies. Distortions. Exaggerations. Misstatements. Half truths. Call it what you want, but there's one indisputable fact: Donald Trump does a stunning amount of it. According to a count maintained by The Washington Post's Fact Checker and updated Tuesday morning, Trump has now made 1,628 false or misleading claims in his 298 days in office. That's an average of 5.5 a day. Five and a half misleading or outright false statements for each day -- including weekends! -- that Trump has been president. By the Fact-Checker's estimates, Trump -- if he keeps up his current pace -- will blow past 2,000 misstatements and/or untruths in his first year in office. Stop. Go back and read that last sentence. Then read it again. The President of the United States has misled or lied more than 1,600 times since January 20. That's so important I am going to repeat it -- and underline it: The president of the United States has misled or lied more than 1,600 times since January 20. . . . Unfortunately, we as a country can't agree on the facts anymore. Fact and opinion have become conflated. Lots of people confuse the two -- or have no clue where one ends and the other begins. It feels like New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous dictum -- "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts" -- comes from another time. Hell, it feels like it came from another universe. Not all of this lies at the feet of Donald Trump. But the President sets the tone. And this President has -- from the moment he announced his presidential bid in June 2015 -- shown a total lack of concern for facts. Not only that, he has flaunted his lack of adherence to established facts as a sort of badge of honor -- a symbol of his lack of commitment to politics as usual. Telling the truth isn't politics as usual, however. It's just plain decency. And Trump violates that, on average, 5.5 times a day. Every day.
Alternative facts. Lies. Distortions. Exaggerations. Misstatements. Half truths. Call it what you want, but there's one indisputable fact: Donald Trump does a stunning amount of it. According to a count maintained by The Washington Post's Fact Checker and updated Tuesday morning, Trump has now made 1,628 false or misleading claims in his 298 days in office. That's an average of 5.5 a day. Five and a half misleading or outright false statements for each day -- including weekends! -- that Trump has been president. By the Fact-Checker's estimates, Trump -- if he keeps up his current pace -- will blow past 2,000 misstatements and/or untruths in his first year in office. Stop. Go back and read that last sentence. Then read it again. The President of the United States has misled or lied more than 1,600 times since January 20. That's so important I am going to repeat it -- and underline it: The president of the United States has misled or lied more than 1,600 times since January 20. . . . Unfortunately, we as a country can't agree on the facts anymore. Fact and opinion have become conflated. Lots of people confuse the two -- or have no clue where one ends and the other begins. It feels like New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous dictum -- "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts" -- comes from another time. Hell, it feels like it came from another universe. Not all of this lies at the feet of Donald Trump. But the President sets the tone. And this President has -- from the moment he announced his presidential bid in June 2015 -- shown a total lack of concern for facts. Not only that, he has flaunted his lack of adherence to established facts as a sort of badge of honor -- a symbol of his lack of commitment to politics as usual. Telling the truth isn't politics as usual, however. It's just plain decency. And Trump violates that, on average, 5.5 times a day. Every day.