The New York Times has clearly turned a corner on its Donald Trump coverage, now fully embracing the word "lie" to describe the geyser of falsehoods that gush from him. Between Sept.15-21, its reporters counted what the paper called his "Week of Whoppers" and found 31 biggies. But that was clearly a generous undercount.
This total excludes dozens more: Untruths that appeared to be mere hyperbole or humor, or delivered purely for effect, or what could generously be called rounding errors. Mr. Trump’s campaign, which dismissed this compilation as “silly,” offered responses on every point, but in none of the following instances did the responses support his assertions.
Among the 31 that made the cut, Trump most frequently lied about his Iraq War position (five times) and mischaracterized Hillary Clinton's (and President Obama's) immigration policies (four times). Here's one example:
He said Mrs. Clinton is calling for “total amnesty in the first 100 days,” including “a virtual end to immigration enforcement” and for unauthorized immigrants to receive Social Security and Medicare.
In other words, Trump’s desperate need to be right (about the war) and his efforts to rally racists and xenophobes to his side dominate his lie-fests.
Next up: The Times should try counting how many truths Trump actually tells in any given speech. If you take away his outright lies, his exaggerations and hyperbole, and his policy pronouncements that are clearly impossible to accomplish (i.e. deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants), my suspicion is that his lies would consistently outnumber his truths in any given speech.