HE'S #1!!!*

while the democrats are in their third day of presenting their arguments on the second article of impeachment, it might be helpful to their case as to why he should be removed from office if they could bring up this one little tidbit:  as of january 20th, the third anniversary of his inauguration, the man who once promised on his campaign that he would 'never lie' to the american people is guilty of 16,642 false or misleading claims.  that averages out to 15 per day.  while it can and has been said 'all politicians lie', this definitely sets an all-time record for political falsities. 

the washington post began the record keeping as part of their reporting on his first 100 days in office.  at that time the tally was 492, a mere 5 per day, and since then the tallies have increased at an unprecedented rate, reaching 1,999 in 2017 alone and then adding another 5,689 in '18.  in '19 he surpassed those totals (combined) with 8,155.  looking at it another way that comes down to an average-per-year of 6, 16, 22 respectively.  he, however, surpassed those averages just before the 2018 midterms when on november 3rd he totaled 128 claims and november 5th a whopping 139.  the reason for the major uptick comes right at the time of his 'perfect call' to the president of the ukraine, with about 1,000 false or misleading claims (hell, can't we just call them lies?), relating to the ukraine, the infamous 'favor' and it's aftermath.  these included almost 70 times he mentioned the whistleblower as being 'inaccurate' and about 100 where he directly mentions the 'perfect call' where he did nothing wrong, even as people directly associated with the call were alarmed enough to note it and/or report it by raising objections up their chain of command.

one of his favorite bragging points is the economy.  while he's correct in saying that, under him, the economy is doing fairly well, it's a stretch to say he is directly responsible, especially since many areas are being adversely affected by his ongoing international trade disputes.  he really runs into trouble with his claims of the economy being 'the best in history' since it performed better under eisenhower, lyndon johnson and bill clinton...even under ulysses grant.

it should come as little surprise that about 20% of his lies (there, i said it!!) came from his compulsion to say what he wants via twitter, whether directly tweeting or retweeting something he sees and likes on someone else's feed, sometimes more than once.    this includes times he has shared the same lie, or a variation thereof, sometimes three or more times.

NOTE:  these figures do not include anything said or tweeted during the past few days  i think it would be only fair to assume we could add at least a dozen more to the total.

*thanks to the washington post fact checker and salvador rizzo.