Trump on track to tell 30,000 lies by the end of his presidency

The president’s most repeated lies are about the economy and jobs

Donald Trump is on track to have told 30,000 lies by the time he leaves office in January, according to fact checkers.   

The Washington Post reported in its Fact Checker column that Mr Trump has already told 29,508 misleading or false claims as of 5 November, 2020.  

That number excludes almost all of his misleading statements alleging election fraud, which will almost certainly ensure he pushes past the 30,000 mark.  

The president's lies ramped up in October as the 2020 election approached. The fact checkers reported that he lied 4,000 times that month.  

According to Glenn Kessler, who edits the column, his October lies were "double what he said in all of 2017." Mr Kessler noted that this ramp up still occurred despite the president being sick for a week with Covid-19 during that month. 

Then, on the eve of the election 2 November, the president set his one day lie record, telling 504 falsehoods in the span of 24 hours.  

Between the start of Mr Trump's presidential term and 20 January, he had told 16,241 lies. Mr Kessler said the president is set to "nearly double that in one year."  

The most widely repeated of the president's lies is that he has built "the greatest economy" in US history. The economy was better in the past under the administrations of Dwight D Eisenhower, Lyndon B Johnson, Ulysses S Grant and Bill Clinton. About 1 in every 5 of Mr Trump's lies is about the economy or jobs.  

Mr Trump was most recently caught in an hour long, lie-laden phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger regarding the election.  

The call - which was recorded and leaked to The Washington Post - featured the president rambling through a litany of false claims about the general election results in Georgia.  

The claims ranged from conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems moving machines and swapping their parts to allegations that votes were being dumped.  

Mr Trump's arguments were a mixture of right wing media talking points and QAnon conspiracy theories.  

The Georgia Secretary of State pushed back on the claims, and ultimately refused to play ball with Mr Trump, who asked him to find "11,780 votes" in an effort to overturn the election.