(Caricature of a dishonest Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)Yesterday, Trump tossed away his prepared speech and launched into a bevy of lies. He said that in the immigrant caravan heading for the U.S. women "are being raped at numbers never seen before, said millions of voters in California voted many times in the 2016 election, said other nations send us their worst people, said he did not know his lawyer had paid Stormy Daniels $130,000, said he didn't know why his lawyer had paid her, and said the money to pay her had not come from him.
It was a day full of lies. But that was just the norm. He told over 2,000 lies in his first year in office, and continues to add to that total. The sad fact is that lying is the norm for Trump, and it's an unusual day when he limits his lies to only one or two. Most of his lies are reckless and easily disproved, and one might wonder why he tells them. It's to satisfy his base. He knows they will believe any outrageous thing he says, so he tells them what they want to hear.
This is a major reason why he remains upside-down in his job approval and favorability numbers. While his base revels in his lies, most Americans don't. And a majority of Americans know he is dishonest and untrustworthy (see chart below).
Considering the number of lies he tells and the outrageous nature of those lies, Trump would have to go down as the most dishonest president in American history. Other presidents have lied -- but not nearly as much as Trump.
The chart below contains info from the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 1st and 3rd of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,246 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3 points, and for registered voters is 2.9 points.
