Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump peppers his public remarks with fictional stories.
This is not an ordinary political speech, the kind of manipulation of statistics and exaggeration of achievements that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Instead, the Republican presidential candidate is telling colorful lies that have no connection with reality.
Trump’s inflammatory remarks about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he baselessly accused during the September presidential debate of eating people’s dogs and cats, have garnered the most attention. But Trump’s recent, less-publicized public appearances, such as rallies and interviews, have also featured entirely imaginary stories.
Here are 11 more examples from just the last month.
Harris and military conscription
At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed that his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was considering forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, draft your child and put them in a war that should never have happened.”
This is completely false. Harris is not talking about bringing back conscription at all.
At a Fox News event in Pennsylvania in early September, Trump claimed Harris “had notes” to help him during her CNN interview in late August. He even did an impersonation of Harris looking at those notes.
In fact, she had no grades.
Transgender Children and Schools
At an event hosted by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that schools are sending their children to undergo gender reassignment surgeries without their parents knowing. He said: “The transgender thing is unbelievable. Think about it. Your child goes to school and comes home a few days later with surgery. The school decides what happens to your child.”
The Trump campaign later made clear to CNN that it had found no examples of such a thing happening in the United States. Parental consent is required for gender reassignment surgeries; schools have not performed or approved these surgeries on minors without their parents’ knowledge.
Even after the Trump campaign demonstrated that it could not substantiate this story, he repeated it days later at a rally in Wisconsin in early September.
Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Trump told a startling story on Fox News in late August that President Joe Biden had sent Harris to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was sent “to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said — she made her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story during the September debate.
But this story is also totally false.
Biden never sent Harris to negotiate with Putin — in fact, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin had never spoken — and Harris did not travel to Russia just before the invasion. Instead, Harris went to a conference in Germany to meet with U.S. allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
At a convention of black journalists in late July, Trump claimed that Harris had “only” promoted her Indian heritage and then “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a black person.” To defend this claim, Trump reiterated during the September debate that Harris had “implied” at one point that she “wasn’t black.”
None of this is true.
Harris, who grew up in a black community and graduated from a historically black university, has embraced her black identity since she was young. While she has also spoken fondly of her South Asian heritage, she has never “made it known” that she is not black.
Trump has repeatedly claimed over the past month that Harris was so unpopular when she ran for president in 2019 that she was the first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic primary. “She was one of 22 people who ran. She was the first one to drop out,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania in late August.
Not even close.
In fact, 13 other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race before Harris — including the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Faced with harsh criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in 2022, Trump invented a narrative that the unpopular decision was in response to the wishes of “everybody” — including “all Democrats.”
“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade repealed and sent back to the states,” Trump said on Fox News in late August.
This is not even remotely accurate.
The Roe decision has been consistently supported by a majority of the American public and has been overwhelmingly popular among Democrats – with 80% or more support among Democrats in many polls.
At a September press conference in California, Trump said, “If I ran with an honest poll watcher in California, I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” He gave an even more colorful version of that statement in a late August interview, saying, “If Jesus came down and was the poll watcher, I would win California, okay?”
More bullshit.
The votes are counted fairly in California, as in every other state; Trump loses California because it is a Democratic-majority state that has not had a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He lost the state in 2020, fairly and squarely, by over five million votes and over 29 percentage points.
Since 2016, Trump has lied about being named Michigan’s “Man of the Year” before entering politics. Media outlets, including CNN, have repeatedly pointed out that Trump never received such an award and that it doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at an event in Michigan on Tuesday that he has now been exonerated.
“The press said, ‘Oh, that never happened.’ And then it did. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “But it was 15 years ago, it was a beautiful place, but nobody remembered it; nobody remembered it at all. All of a sudden, like a miracle, they found out it existed.”
This is a lie on top of another lie. The media has not uncovered any evidence that Trump received the Michigan Man of the Year award.
His campaign did not respond Wednesday to a request for clarification on what he was talking about.
Migrants, prisons and the “Congo”
For months, Trump has been talking about how “Congo” deliberately emptied prisons to entice its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners from Congo have been released to Africa, brutal prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At a rally in Pennsylvania the following week, he said: “In Congo, in Africa: 22 people were dropped off in our country. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘From Congo.’ ‘Where in Congo?’ ‘From prison.’”
But Trump has presented no evidence that Congo has actually emptied prisons for immigration purposes. Government officials in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN that the claim is fiction, experts in both countries have said they have seen no evidence of its veracity, and Trump’s campaign has ignored requests for evidence.
After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of employment data showed the economy created about 818,000 fewer jobs than originally reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump recounted how the government had planned to announce the downward revision “after November 5,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of a “whistleblower” — “a patriot who leaked.”
Yet another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases revised preliminary data in August, and it had revealed the precise date of this particular data release—August 21—several weeks in advance.
William Beach, a conservative economist appointed by Trump to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For those who think the big revision to BLS jobs numbers was ‘leaked’ and was supposed to be released after the election, remember that the BLS always announces its revision plans in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It’s important to check the facts.”
