"Do Trump’s tweets contain lies? Galli (Christianity Today article condemning Evangelicals who support Trump) himself gives no examples, but the Washington Post on December 16 carried an article, “President Trump Has Made 15,413 False or Misleading Claims over 1,055 Days.”
What exactly are these alleged lies?
Strongest economy? The Washington Post article contains a link to their “Track Checker” webpage, where the “lies” are listed by category. The most common one (repeated 242 times) is Trump’s claim that that the US economy is now “perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history.” But the Post says this is a lie because “By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton – or Ulysses S. Grant.”
What the Post doesn’t tell you is that it depends on what you are measuring. The total economic output of the United States in Eisenhower’s last year (1960) as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for inflation, reached a record high of $3.26 trillion. By 1968 (Lyndon Johnson’s last year) it had risen to $4.8 trillion. In Bill Clinton’s last year (2000), GDP was up to $13.1 trillion. The current projection for 2019 is that GDP under President Trump will reach $21.4 trillion. Therefore, judging by the total economic output of the United States, it is completely true to say that we are currently living in “the strongest economy in our country’s history.” Trump is not lying, but the Post is using some other measurement (such as percentage growth rate) in order to claim that Trump has told this lie 242 times."
One of my liberal Democrat relatives is supposed to be a whiz in math, yet he too makes this common mistake. Doesn’t adjust for inflation or doesn’t distinguish among rate, percentage, or number. It’s easy to lie for the fact checkers, too.
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