Fact Checker
Analysis

A term of untruths

The longer Trump was president, the more frequently he made false or misleading claims

By
Glenn Kessler, 
Meg Kelly, 
Salvador Rizzo, 
Leslie Shapiro and 
Leo Dominguez

The Washington Post Fact Checker started tracking President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims as a first-100-days project but in response to reader requests continued to add to the database through his entire term.

By the time Trump left office, he had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

Trump made about six false or misleading claims a day in his first year as president, 16 a day in his second year, 22 a day in his third year — and 39 a day in his final year.

[Explore the Fact Checker’s database of false claims made by President Trump while in office]

Put another way, it took Trump 27 months to reach 10,000 false or misleading claims and another 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.

Scroll the timeline below to see how the president’s daily false statements added up to a tsunami of untruths that kept rising during his presidency.

Jan. 19, 2021: In a farewell address, Trump repeats many of his favorite falsehoods, some of which he has said hundreds of times.

Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him, tweeting at him, or sending him a message on Facebook.
Meg Kelly is a video reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team.
Salvador Rizzo is a reporter for The Fact Checker. He previously covered New Jersey politics and Gov. Chris Christie, with stints at the Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record and the New York Observer.
Leslie Shapiro has been a Graphics Reporter for The Washington Post since 2016, focusing on data visualization and new media storytelling.
Leo Dominguez is a designer and web developer for The Washington Post.