Trump and his assault on truth by the Fact Checking staff at the Washington Post. Fact checker column for support in the post back in 2007 and was focused then on the 2008 president ial campaign. The column was revived as a primitive feature in 2011 by Glenn Kessler. And became famous for falsehoods with pinocchios. It was one pinocchio for understanding the fact were for for outright lies. But nothing had quite prepared this truth squatting effort for the sheer scale and brazenness of trumps audacity during the past few years. By the posts latest counts theyve made more than 19000 statements since making office and they havent knew Fact Checking team examines a number of the president s most frequent distortions and most dangerous deceptions. In their book, lecter reporting, provides an essential resource for all of us trying to keep her own eyes on the truth and avoid being blinded by trumps a blatant and repeated disregard for it. Today, Glenn Kessler remains the fact checker editorinchief writer bradys own journalism career has spanned more than three decades including 11 years with newsday, and 22 years with the post in which she has covered foreign policy, economic policy, white house, congress, politics, airlines and safety wall street wide range of experience and has contributed to glenns ability to keep tabs on many subjects with the fact checker. I watched glenn operate up close and he and i overlapped at the post and can attest to his great reporting skills, particularly his key attention to detail and abiding sense of fairness. The fact checker long ago ceased to be simply a oneman operation. Also here this evening with glenn are two other members of the team. Salvador riza who joined the post a few years ago spent time covering jersey politics at the ledger the broken record, and the new york observer, and meg kelly is both a reporter and fact checker and before joining the post several years ago cover the 2016 election as a visual producer. Glenn, sal, and meg, it is yours. Good. Im glad everyone is here. We have been living the presidency of donald trump since it began and we spent every day going through and Fact Checking not only his claims but claims of democrats and other members of congress and other fse groups. We live with it day by day. When we finish completing this book it was still a shock to us to see what we had actually written about. Because you forget about it. The president said so many things that are so often false, its averaging about 22 claims a day. What we have written you guys will be surprised. The book is written as a way you can read it from cover to cover, you can also dip into sections that are of interest to you. We try to write it so each chapter stands on its own. In each of us are responsible for different chapters. Well take you to the book, i wrote the introduction, and described that. And then we will go through each chapter and get a little summary we will highlight leonard to or three of the particular claims we find of interest in that chapter. And then we will be really happy to take your questions. Think about president s is that every president lies. At some point. They might do it for National Security reasons, they might do it because theyre trying to cover up something of personal embarrassment, think of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The lies and falsehoods that are marginally fluffed when you think of barack obama as he went your plan you can keep your plan thing, and then generally each president is known for one big lie. One of my favorite president ial statements is Dwight Eisenhower were better president s who approve this series of statements to coverup the fact that the United States had youtube flights over the they assumed hed been shot down and killed you could cover it up. He wasnt. We found the pilot as well as his plane it was a huge propaganda victory. That was for the soviets. Eisenhower was latest asked what his latest regret is president one and he said that lie we told. We had so much damage from that lie. Which we write in the book we say and then theres donald trump, the most audacious president in Human History he almost never expresses regret. He is known from one big lie its a constant stream of exaggerated purposefully outrageous spiteful dubious and falsified. And as he mentioned we are now up to 19000 and counting of these claims. Only started the book it was the end of his third year. It was 16241. We actually had to scramble but wanted to end on generate 2h we had to scramble to ada scarano by chapter for obvious reasons. The interesting thing about trump is that he says things that are false for things that are big and small. Header reasonably successful economy before the coronavirus hit. And yet, amazingly, he would exaggerate about that. He would routinely add 600,000 jobs when he talked about how he jobs he created. There is no real reason to do that. He was also unusual that a lot of his falsehoods are used to denigrate people and put himself into a better light. I will read one little item from the introduction which is may be of interest there is a social scientist at the university of california santa barbara, she took our database the first year and studied it, looking for patterns of lies. She said ordinarily about half the wise people teller selfserving. And compared to a quarter are told to advance protection what else and only a tiny percentage are meanspirited. But it turns out donald trump, two thirds of trumps falsehoods were selfserving and lie slightly less than 10 were meant to be kind. That means he tells seven times as many selfserving lies as kind ones. And then, usually people who tell lies hurtful or disparaging lies are one to 2 of the totalizing tell. In terms of trump that accounts for 50 . She said she saw that she literally gasped when she looked at her computer screen. So, that is the state of our presidency analysis into the book the first chapter which is cataloging of trumps the biggest whoppers. Okay so ive just got to mention, President Trump made one of 16000 claims by the times wed started to write this book. And consequently, with narrowing down with the most important were the top ones the biggest whoppers became quite a challenge. Because we need to draw from all aspects of his presidency, policy, should represent biggest things in the present. I wont walk you through all of it. We sort of pulled out a few things but got mrs. Writing the chapter, the chapters divided in it wasnt me, that sort of reflects the way the president deals with most topics. Either hes taking credit for something that didnt happen or hasnt happened, or it could happen on his term, or its truly happened. I think for the most clear or disastrous example of this is the way he felt what the claims on correct me if im wrong this is the only time weve ever labeled something actually live. Because we could prove that he in fact knew he was being deceitful every step of the way. Only in the Washington Post. Sina jog everybodys memory. Basically trump said you have to ask Michael Cohen have to see if there is no truth, why did he make the subpoena you want for allegations. Have to ask Michael Cohen my attorney left us michael. I said do you know where he got the money to make that payment . And trump said no i dont know. Simply what i wrote about that it was false he do made the payment so it was an effort to kill a damaging story. And he knew that cohen was reimbursed for the hush money. Each peace of that was false. Annette was a clear example of all of the evidence being there and him sort of thing i didnt know. Its all about trump on trump. And essentially the thing that is sort of unique about trump is that he exaggerates or makes self claims about almost every part of life. So you know, it starts with where his parents are from, how long you went to college, and sort of moves all the way through his business career, through how successful he was, sort of his personality, what he cares about and straight to the presidency. So tell people perceive him a jump receive him given whats been going on in the past few days on to highlight a couple of different pieces from a first section which is about trump, the man. The first one is a personal favorite of mine. It is not connected to whats happening but trump has a habit of talking it out in cincinnati our tummies in cincinnati. The person i heard him say that trump is synonymous with the york why is he talking about growing up in cincinnati . He often exaggerates saying he works there, he lived there for a long time, he spent the summer there, essentially what happened is his dad had bought a home there and he would occasionally go with his father to do some tasks around that development. But the suggestion was he knows the city is a cincinnati guy the other thing i wanted to highlight as they go handinhand the folks of probablys he also has a habit of saying hes the least person as ever. But we did the chapters run through a series of events through that statement. It ends with earlier, he invoked the go back home speaking about minority congressman who, our executive editor essentially came out and said hey, this is certainly not the first or last time that trump has waited in hot water. Thanks albert the third chapter . So pirate the third, fourth and sixth chapter with the appendix is a common theme through all these pieces of the book. The psychology of donald trump when he is at his most tenacious or combative. So Chapter Three is all about the falsehoods that he tells about his perceived and real political enemy. People like Robert Mueller, nancy pelosi, james comey, chapter four is a stuff hes had during his boisterous rallies with a number of false claims are like nothing youve ever seen before from a politician. Weve measured the rallies and ill get to that in a minute. They are a spectacle that we have never seen and they dont do well. And then i had chapter six which is immigration. That is the category that President Trump most often, 18,019,000 claims, havent checked recently but immigration is consistently the top category for false claims. So a lot of ways i feel i go into the deepest darkest place in the jungle. [laughter] and i live to tell about it. [laughter] went so i think you know the book is a great Public Service of some have noted because you forget a lot, you forget that donald trump has been smearing Joe Scarborough since 2017 bird id totally forgotten about that until two weeks ago or three weeks ago the president started up all over again. And unfortunately, that is such a discussion of discussing a vicious lie based on absolutely nothing. But we did not have the wherewithal to remember only writing the book so its not in the book because it was from 2017, ages ago. [inaudible] he had only vaguely suggested it once in 2017 now its all over the place on his twitter feed on his just on fox news radio this morning. There is the Conspiracy Theory the National Enquirer would not touch that you will learn that today. That tells you something because they will touch a lot of things. On so let me just give you an example of the fact check we would do for Chapter Three which is a chapter on his enemies. So before impeachment, before coronavirus, before the riots, the Russian Investigation took up a lot of oxygen around the country in terms of news coverage. But since the campaign ended basically its been a different story. And now trump is very incensed about it. He has said so many false and misleading things about the Russian Investigation its hard to take any of these complaints seriously when their spinning documents coming at them with court cases as something they are not in the record for trump is so checkered. So for example about Robert Mueller, marine veteran, longtime director of the fbi, guys been respected by both parties for a long time is a lot of Public Service in his life. Donald trump would hammer Robert Mueller on a nearly basis basis with false claims he would allege that Robert Mueller and he had a business dispute going back several years and therefore Robert Mueller had a conflict of interest that would disqualify him from investigating the Trump Campaign. But what trump describes the conflict of interest his own aides including steve bannon said it was petty and ridiculous Robert Mueller was once a member of the trump golf course in virginia because he hadnt used it for years and years hed been living in the district and it one point he try to get a refund from the club and he and the club manager by all intensive purposes look like a cordial backandforth between them and then they talked about the refund and thats it trump spins it is some business that has a conflict of interest. He also plans with Robert Mueller had a separate conflict of interest because he was interviewed to be the fbi director would trump adjust fire james comey, the catalyst for the Russian Investigation. a very prominent example of trump spreading disinformation but a political foe, or antagonist. Nancy pelosi, speak speaker of the house, gets on his radar very often and awesome whenner where hearing trump making some outrageous or incredible claim about nancy pelosi, theres not much there when you start scratching. So the example we put in the book was trump he at one point made some comment, early in this presidency, and it wasnt clear whether he was talking about immigrants in general or the gang members from ms13. The way he had sort of proceeded through this remarks there was an ambiguity and most people if you look at the remarks would conclude the was talking bit immigrants and he call them animals. And then later on he returns to the them to of ms13 and how the gang is violent etch he calls interest gulp of people animals, the next day while its still ambiguous, nancy pelosi reprimands him and says no human should be called an animal and everyone has a park of divinity and he should realize that. And trump clarifies after that, talking but ms13 but for years and year he has been trashing nancy pelosi for criticizing him for censuring him on cawing ms13 animals. She was still in the mindset he was talking but off mick immigrants as the res of us were. This is an example. Lot more. You get a sense of the extort of stuff we delve into, and im going to quickly segway to chapter 4 and we titled what youll fine is that you look at the people who good to trump rally and have been interviewed for some event at the white house, and theyre catered to the religious right and you have Trump Supporters there. And what you find us a lot of them are not very perturbed but the president s record riff with faulty statements and a lot of them, when you ask them point blank about it, theyll say things like, well, i dont really take it seriously, or i know he is fibbing a bit. Its hard to tell how many of the present supporters are actually believing every word he says and how many have a more jaundiced view put still support him for other reasoned that have nothing to do whether he tell the throughout or not or he is on some issue or not. So, we a lot of economic and three that stan stan it, one the claim he quote unwoke decimated obama obama car. The reduce the individual penalty and that was a tax on people who declined to buy Health Insurance for that year, and so crump managed to reduce it to zero. But the rest of the law is still there the exchanges are still there millions of people still have insurance through the exchanges. The mid care is its still there states get billions of dollars for their mid okayed program. The guarantee for coverage for preexisting conditions is still there, obamacare. The Trump Administration is in court trying to get rid of it put for now its still part of the law. Secondly, briefly into another kind of claim in chat chapter and the claim he respeed he Johnson Amendment. So the Johnson Amendment forbids 501 c 4 s or charity organizations, 501 c 3 from taking political stances in support or opposition of candidates because they dont pay taxes and dent get to participate in supporting candidates. The state of new york sued the Trump Campaign for violation of the johnson example now trump is making this pinocchio claim he repealed it when in fact its still he law of the land and has no been repealed. Trump side a ive seen of another executive orders. This was fluff, doesnt have any teeth, and the Johnson Amendment may not be enforced bier toughly by the irs but its still there and chapter 5, ill hand it back over. Actually, its meg. Were we should want to leave room for questions so were probably the last ones other little more quickly. Ill be fast. Similarly the first two chapters this is another case of spends a time in trump residents head, chapter about twitter which is the president s preferred communication platform. One thing that struck me was that a third of these false and misleading tweets were but impeachment or the russia investigation so focusing on things that were hurtful to him and look through his times before being president it was very much luke a punching bag, hi thoughts on anybody political. He would go after obama on a regular basis, which he still does. Amongst other topics. Its also sort of like a catalogue of flipflops. Singhly almost in any situation, you can go back and find a tweet where he criticizes someone else for doing something he has done. One that is very straightforward and really stuck out to me was in 2012, he wrote, three chiefs of staff in this than theories of being president. Part of the reason barack obama cant manage the agenda. Of course at the end of decembeg into this fourth chief of staff. To sum things up. Well, we now this point the become is a into the issue chapters. So, sal did the first one which was on his falsehoods but immigration. Right. So, i probably dont need to good through the background here. The president campaigned on immigration, he has been perhaps the most at least in the murder ear are the tougher president with his rhetoric on michigans michigan immigrants and what we opportunitily sane we makes claims mixed being soaringed we hiver crime rates and ascribing to members of the Central American car van, theyre part of the drug trade, terrorists among them. It is the one thing that he constantly is fearmongerring on and especially as election seems to approach we see this when his first election was approaching, when the midterms were approaching, who know if he will make it part of his central plan. We talk but two issues we delve into in the immigration chapter and they are we delve some a variety of thing but theser big ones think idea that figure immigrants cause crime. Its very hard to measure the proportion of undocumented immigrants who are doing anything because how the census buryey kept for some but some poem complain thats not thorough enough because it relies on selfreporting. A big question mark but a lot of Academic Studies and theres no association between immigrants and higher crime rights or counties or regions where immigrants tend to settle and higher crime rate. In fact crime seems to go down where michigans settle as a group. And version tellingly ive always found the statistic to be very telling and i dont see it out the often enough so i try to repeat often and its one over first thing the chapter. During the 30 year period between the late 80s and mid2000s. The number of undocumented immigrants tripled in the out. And violent crane rates were cut by half. So property criminal rates and Violent Crime rates. So talking but this mass influx of tens of millions of people coincided with a hundred drop in crime. Its just that theres no real association and the president just has no interest in educating himself pout the topic because for years and years its been a canard of his he likes to repeat. The other one is this idea that trump and many members of the administration were suggesting in mid2018 they either didnt have a family separation policy at theberrer or that existing laws and court press tents forced their hand and required a family separation. This are both heavily false and an issue we had to fact check many times until it finally caught on. All right. And then the rest of the issue chapters are ones i wrote. Ill good through them quickly. Forced economics and trade which is of course a big issue for the president. He used to have a pretty good economy. It was growing up in an upward slope when he became president. Though he ran for president saying the economy was a disaster. And his most repeated claim ever, that we have fact checked. Now up almost 350 time is believe, is that he presided over the best economy in the u. S. History. Its not. No matter how you slice it no matter what data you look at, the common way is to look at increase in the grows domestic grows bill clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson had better booming economies than trump. Its a not that same kind of situation in the wake of the pandemic, so trump has actually adjust evidence his claim. He no longer says he has the best economy in u. S. History. The says he used to have the best economy in world history. So, once he actually said he had the best economy in the universe. Hard to have something to say to that. We say in book the residents trump odoctor mighttive agree. Trump omador might disagree. We also write but this trade fallshood. There were many. The next chapter is about foreign policy. An areay the president feel i used to cover foreign policy, spent nine years covering the state department for the Washington Post. And theres a way to do diplomacy. The president is more like bull in a chynna shop which is actually i call its trump ad and they bragged about the was a pull in a china shop. And his they cant get mad at me for the term. His claims about foreign policy, i go through a variety of different issues, north korea, iran, or the middle east, but theres one that just i just think is so delightful. The other ones are weighty and interesting. This one is delightful. Often says or said more than a dozen times now, that he came up with the idea, the face, the embassy of jerusalem, the new embassy in jerusalem with jerusalem stone. Called the ambassador, a great idea. Cover with the stone and make it look really. Ever sense the british mandate it has been the law in jerusalem that you must cover your buildings with jerusalem stone. Its a particular nice stone with a golden hue. Why does he say this . I dont know. The next issue chapter is but impeachment. Im particularly pleased with this chapter. I think if you want a good soup to nuts to understand exactly what happened in the impeachment inquiry, i think you through from his from the beginning to the end, in a readable fashion, and so impeachment seems maybe but 100 years ago. It when we were writing the become it was during the impeachment trial so seemed awfully relevant. Our world has changed but i think people will fine that chapter of great interest. The one thing i wanted to highlight in there, which is kind of from the beginning, is his just a comment he made that now i cant fine it oh, his favorite tv show, fox and friends and has had to diswe the server at the dnc and said they gave the server the crown strong what i after okayed, Company Opened by wealthy ukrainian and the fbi he have not the serve if why tent he go to the ukraine company. And the strangest thing but the whole series of things which is michigan he seems to firmly believe, theres a question, is it a lie or not. He just believes this. Kind of a Conspiracy Theory. The serve is it not ukraine. Its actual he the dnc on display. I they have union display next to the filing cabinet that the watergate buglars tried to pry open in 1972. Crowd strike, the founder, he was been in russia, not ukrainian, never been toian, and is a just cities, and crowd strike is not a ukrainean company. Its traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange and when public a month before trump had his call with the ukrainian leader, went up 97 on the first day in trading so would have been a good investment. Anyway, thats a but because of his obsession with that he led himself down a path that led to his impeachment. The final issue is about the coronavirus, which were all quite familiar with. We lead you through the just strange statements the president made such as people think it gill away in april, we only had 15 cases, pretty good job we have done. At the end of february, by the end of march there were 2,500 tales in the United States. Of course he blamed we love meg there she is of course she blamed barack obama for all sorts of thing that werent true, such as that left behind bad tests. How obama leave behind a test for covid19 which is a new disease. Then obama did a horrible job with the swine flu pandemic. Which actually obama was considered to have done a pretty good job on that. Strangely referred to statistics on flu, seasonal flu, which he would twist out of context or use in ways that were not relevant to this situation at hand. The two of ooh part of the other parts of the poock, he end with a conclusion and then the apen dis appendix is a tour how to one rally, trumps longest rally and he combined the various claims. So you can see exactly how many things he says are true and how many things are false. In the conclusion, i try to assess what is the impact of donald trump on the presidency. Its a bit of a fools errand to figure that out. Theres an exert in the Washington Post that appeared online yesterday. And it will be in outlook section on sunday. But part of this departments whether he is reelected. If he is not people might say that its kind of style of truth tell organize not truth telling doesnt succeed, put i do think there is some hope to be looking at this the impact of trump on the presidency because i dont think its necessarily work for him. He has he has terrible ratings in terms of whether people find his hi trustworthy. The Washington Post fact checker, with worked with pollsters to look at whether or not trumps biggest repeated falsehoodded are believed by the American People and only one out of three people believe these fallshoods. Werent even believed by people who are trump supporter and weted this by not identifying that trump said these thing weapon just asked people was this true, was a correct statement or opposite of a creque statement, and most people picked the correct statement. So, its like i said it will depend whether he is reelected put every action in politics results in a reaction and so if trump is not succeed, the next president might say, consistently misletting the American Public is not a way to political success. And then sal will talk but the appendix. I in the we want to get to questions. I thought you summarized it well bitten courage everyone to read it if they have the fortitude for it because it takes a while. Its one of the longest chapter. We good methodically through every single statement, every claim of fact that trump makes during the rallies. He speaks for two hours, we dont focus on the opinions we take every claim of fact he makes and be assess whether its true, falls, or misleading are so somewhere in there and we categorize them, and just very briefly to give you guys a take, the analysis shared from a grandtotal of 179 statements, 120 were false. Mostly false or unsupported by evidence. So, you can take that to mean that at trump recally, twothirds of what the president says is false or misletting. And that was misleading. We tide this to the times and twothirds is his best. Usually a little over. All right. I see we have a lot of questions. Ive been scrolling through them. This is an interesting one too you think trump is clueless or deliberate in his comments and actions . That is a fascinating question because we we struggle with this, this is why we dont often use the word lie. And the interesting thing but trump is he is situational. He he only live for the moment and doesnt feel any need to worry about whether or not he is contradicting something he said literally 4 hours before hand. Now, is that mean he is being tactical or does he actually convince himself that what he is saying now is the truth . And we noticed that in the ukraine investigationthat whole bit about crowd strike. Even fox and friends were saying are you sure but this . And he just repeated this and ill was a Ukrainian Company and the server was in ukraine and they caused the interference in the 2016 election. So, he has a tendency to believe these conspiracy theories. So we talk but joe scarbrough. Sound like a total lou and how would anyone believe this . But he seems to have convinced himself its true. I dont know if either of you want to take another question or just i fine this point to be interesting. From marco hen to what extent do think aidsers talk to him be the lies and try urge him to moderate has men dassey . A good question because you mendacity. Its a deafblind you imagine thats be a huge liability. Tase database in the Washington Post that says you lied 15,000 times. How do we sell that to the public . Theres some evidence. We see reporting sometimes that his aide sometimes anonymously are saying they try to steer are him away from things and they couldnt convince the president to do it, and also we see it reflects sometimes in sometimes well fact check on economic claim, say but the black Unemployment Rate or something have to do with manufacturing jobs during the Obama Administration and we notice after he is fact checked, he will tweak the wording in such a way its city not quite there but gets him into safer, more accurate territory. But generally, no. He does not desist from you see the scar prog thing playing out. Meg is there one you want to take . I saw one and lost it but pout how often does he delete tweets, and we actually have that statistic for the first three years. I think its 500 tweets he deleted. He has a tendency to retweet people and quote people a lot and i should note we dont fact check his retweets put a its a fact because its a factual not him saying it but we fact check things when he quote tweets and when he does tweet. That was one thing that caught my eye. One i saw. What is trumps average pinocchio score . Not something we have actually calculated. But a couple of things i can say, which is that generally a politician that we fact check on a regular basis get fours pinocchios 15 to 20 of the time. Barack obama was 18 . Hillary was in that same range. During the 2016 campaign, which is when i did calculate this, trump got four pinocchios 65 of the time. The only person who had ever been close to that was michelle bachmann, a congresswoman from minnesota, and she got four pinocchios 30 of the time so truthful was twice as bad as bachmann, and his record as president has not been any better and there was a point in october this year where i calculated hed already received more than a thousand pinocchios. And he actually break the scale. Got more pinocchios all by him than all other republicans combined in the nine years ive been doing this. Take another one i see a couple of questions inquiring about Mental Health and our Mental Health and i want to assure people were fine. Its a little bit theres a little bit of an element of fatigue and repetitiveness. Theres tedium involved when youre working on the database. The book was wonderful to work on and collaborate on put when youre Fact Checking every single thing the president says theres an element of repetitiveness that gets to you, but i dont really see that it brings us done or we have i mean, obviously, were humans and we process politics like ann else and also our job and theres 100 things to worry about and we just keep moving forward because the president never stops. So i would just assure everybody were all okay. Ill just add that the database we did not expect it to be such an allconsuming thing. Started out as 100 day project, working with sal residents predecessor sals predecessor who suggest they of the database and we did it in part because we try to write about policy in depth and the fact checks are a jumping off point to explain complexs to people, and we didnt want to be bogged down with trump, who would say things you can fact check in a couple of lines, and the we thought this is a way we can keep focused on important issues and just throw that trump tweet into the database. And it was five or six claims a day. Seemed manageable and we said well too it for another year, same thing happened for another year. We thought we would do it for the rest of his presidency and then he became his open press secretary, stopped giving white house briefings and claims just exploded. The thing that has made we just lost two many weekends and week nights, evening, trying to keep up the database. Theres a big difference between adding in six claims a day and adding in 22 claims a day or if its a rally, you know, can be 100. 100. Yeah, i think the statistics, the compare comparison between the first two years and the third year clarifies that. He made more false and misleading claims in this third year his first two come pinned. A particular month in 2018 that be remember quite well. Trumped to double his rate of claims and he just suddenly felt like he world the sky was falling in and we werent shoe why request when the numbers came out it was clear why we were scrambling so much. I just held up never turn back oh, ijust held up the graphic we have in here. He the book is filled with between each chapter we eave little amusing graphics that people will find of interest. Thats this page i was holding up. Showing factories that trump claimed he was responsible having been built that he opened which he had nothing to do with. Anyway its just little nuggets that didnt fit somewhere else but intended to keep it somewhat light and i amusing. The globe says in the book the book is filmily funny. We tried to have a light hand as we went through this. I see a question here, the most popular one, what is the most dangerous false statement from trump . And i have two answers to that. I would say that recently i would direct everyone to go to our website, meg and colleagues did this excellent veiledey fact check pout trumps claimed but hydroxychloroquine. The trump the fda says can cause Heart Disease and trump for two months and still occasionally now talks about i as a possible remedy for the novel, coronavirus. Theres a chapter in the back as well. The other answer id like to give is that i think with trump, its not so much theres one thats the introduction lays out, not so much theres one big falsehood, one big law. Its the constant wearing down of every segment of society that he sort of speaked but that needs to be Fact Checking him. The constant misinformation on every single issue that comes across him. That does a lot to shake faith in democracy, which isnt to much dangerous like taking hydroxychloroquine but there might be some longterm impreliminary indications slatter are on the people dont trust the local media, post office, states, schooled and that has longterm repercussions, the volume of false claims. An excellent answer. You can see his rhetoric how the media is the enemy of the people and now just this past week, you see reporters being attacked, sometimes brutally, by either Law Enforcement officers or sometimes protesters, and that i think thats a legacy of the kind of rhetoric that the president uses. I was recently asked in an interview, was there an issue in which trump spoke the truth ever . And actually the answer is, i cannot think of one. Theres not one single issue where the president , you can say, consistently is honest. And that is a disturbing thing. Yeah. Think that when you start to think but the scale and scoop of the fallshood falsehoods he says, everything from a main newt detail that is a throwway thing but no reason to make up, to things that have ethe Health Consequences or policy consequences, such as global foreign policy. Thats where it starts to feel like the ground is a bit uneven under all of it. How does trump compare with reagan or bush one and bush two living through the presidency. My recollection they lied a lot about very big things. This is maybe to say a myriad in which small are thing about still told serious lies on big things. Well, like we said, every president lies at some point, and you definitely big things that come to mind. In the case of reagan, the irancontra affair. The case of george w. Bush, the weapons of mass destruction, but you can argue, his supporters argue he just was mislead or allowed himself to be misled by the intelligence and didnt look more carefully at it. The question, is that a lie or hoping things to be the way they are. The United States did good to war based on that intelligence. Im really trump is just in another realm truly. And one of the reasons why he is another realm, compared to the other president s, trump does not really rely on the expertise of the government. You may feel like george w. Bush took us to war on false pretenses, but he tide rely on spell queens did rely on intelligence that was developed by the cia. Now, again, in trumps case, the are things he says that are not dont come out of the intelligence agencies, and in fact in the cause of the pandemic, the intelligence agencies were telling him this is a serious problem but he wanted to wish it away so he wasnt paying attention, and then he spent time, weeks, telling the American Public it was going away, even as his halve advisers were saying this was potentially very Serious Public Health issue. Lets see. Well, six more minutes or so. Five more minutes. Are there what role should social media platforms play in Fact Checking trump. Someone want to tack that . An interesting question. We are seeing it play out with twitter facebook. Twitter started apenning these what i think are appending these its insufficient little line that links to a separate page but fact checks some of what the president is san diego first time they did it was a vote by mail claim. The president has been saying lot of false and misleading thing put vote by mail of he is laboring in the assumption that vote by mail prenantzly helps democrats and not republicans. And that is not for certain. Went to no whether it helped the republican or the democrats put the thinks so and twit fact charactered and then his second warning to one of his tweets when he tweeted the line when he looting starts the shooting starts which has a racist history and they appended a warning to. That theres been a lot of debate are social Media Companies or are they not a publisher, just a tech company with a platform and have no responsibility over the third party and what theyre saying on there . No matter what you do, no matter what the solution is, whether twitter hires butch of fantastic checkers or independent Fact Checkers to. Youve cant draw hedges around donald trump. He has a huging me fa phone and he mega phone and he has to bear responsibility. This begins and end with the president. Totally agree with that. Lets see. How do we make sure this information is known by eave voter, elys with impugnty and people seem to forget. The answer is everybody should feat company of this become for fathers day and or for or [laughter] for their friends. He write these fact checks to give people information. What they do with it, we cant control. Theres a lot of evidence studies shown that fact checks actually make Trump Supporters better informed, but doesnt change their opinion of the president. We find the data showing that while 15 users ago democrats and republicans the same percentage thought it was important for a president to always tell the truth. When we redid that poll recently. It was still 0 70res to torontos and 49 for republicans which indicates they realize the president is not telling the truth but still support him for other political ropes so much thats the reasons the country has gotten much more partisan. Trump has exacerbated that partisanship. Another figure i cite in the conclusion which i think is fascinating is in 1960, i presented democrats and republicans said they would be upset if their child married someone from a Different Political Party. That study done now shows that as much as 45 would be upset if their children married someone from a Different Political Party. They would be more upset if the child married someone from a different Different Political Party than they would be upset if the child married someone from a different race or from a different religion or even if the child marry someone of the same sex. That shows how much police calesque has become so political identification is how and trump has exacerbated that by simply painting the other side as an enemy and someone to be defeated and he is using falsehoods to make those claims. As opposed to trying to bring the American Public together and try to actually say, we should shouldnt be such a split society. He lives on those splits. Another thing that we do aside from the columns youre familiar with and the paper and online is we expanded where fact check lives. We have a youtube series that consecutives a lot of bigger topics and, we publish videos on facebook and the post site and have been on snapchat and instagram so trying to sort of spread information to voters who are getting their information in all different locations. In fact i should say that more people watch fact checker videos than to actually read the written fact checks. This has been a huge success at the Washington Post the large part due to meg and colleagues on the video team. Aisle very proud of and these videos are astonishing, a video we did having to do with where tide the wuhan virus come from and that two million views. I dont know we are on time. Brad. Thank you for truly a great and illuminating discussion. The work you do sounds so exhausting but its so important. Its reassuring to hear youre all still company. One thing is most definitely true, the three of you are going to stay very, very busy Fact Checking trump through at least the rest of the years. The title of the become, its donald trump and his assault on truth. And you can get a copy or several by clicking on the green bar at the bottom of your screen. Thanks again to everyone for tuning in. From all of us here at politics and prose, stay well and well read. Youre watching post boost on cspan2. For a complete television setted all visit booktv. Org and follow along behind the scenes on social media, at booktv, on twitter, instagram and facebook. On our weekly Author Interview premier after words, former Clinton Administration press secretary mike mccurrie interviewed abc news chief White House CorrespondentJonathan Carl about his time covering the Trump Administration. In this portion of the program he discusses the history of the phrase enemy of the people. Every one of those president s complained about press coverage. With if a one of the president s thought the press focus ode way too negative. Didnt see the great accomplishments of the administration. Thats standard operating procedure, but i mean trumps attacks go far beyond any of that. Literally you have enemy of the people which is a phrase which i actually spent a little bit of time in the become the origins of the phrase. Its a very ugly phrase that has been used by stalin, used by hitler, used during the french revolution to justify the beheadings of people by guillotine. Talk more pout that. Thats like one of the most interesting parts of the book is unpacking that phrase and you do that at some length in a couple of chapters and go how to what obnoxious phrase that is if you look back at the hit of it. But talk about that. I spent some time looking through the origins of the phrase, and it was used quite prominently during the french revolution. Thats really the most significant place. People got beheaded as a result. And the basically the justification that was the people that were targeted by the law under which they were found guilty and beheaded, the actual law uses that phrase, enemy of the people. And goes through and i document the use of it during the reign of terror when blood was falling in at the streets of paris, and then the other place that the next place i saw it was with in germany, the member gave hitler his powers, i find this article, an Associated Press article on the front badge of the anytime anytime and other newspapersover the New York Times and other newspapers around the world and in the lead paragraph you see the National Socialist party making the case that anybody who votes against this is an enemy of the people. So you have the nazis using the phrase. Then you see it a bit later used by joseph stalin. Im not sailing that donald trump knew that was not saying that donald trump now the history behind the phrases but it was certainly pointed out by a lot of people that it had this really dark and more morbid and deadly history and we kept using it. You can watch the rest of the program and find other episode of after words, vicepresident our website, booktv. Org click on the after words tab near the top of the page. Joining news on booktv is matthew whitaker, serving a the acting attorney general from november 2018 through february 2019. And he is the author of this new poock, above the how the inside story of how the Justice Department tried to subvert President Trump. Mr. Whitaker, before we begin with the book, explain how you became the acting attorney general to us. Guest thats a great first we. So i was chief of staff to attorney general Jeff Sessions starting in october of 2017, and i tide that for