Good evening and welcome to politic and prose live, im grad graham, the coowner along with my wife. Thanks for joining us sures online where we have been able to move many of our event in response to the current pandemic, and continue to for social distancing. We crowdcast you can see us but we cant see you. You can still ask a question. To do so just click on the ask a question icon at the bottom of your screen, and there youll also see a green bar. To purchase this evenings featured book which is trump and is a assault on truth. The Fact Checkers path at the weapons. The fact check are column first appeared in the post in 2002, 2007. The column was a permanent feet noor 2011 by glen kessler, and became famous for rating falsehoods with pinocchios, one pin knownor for minor shading of the factsment for outright lies. But nothing has quite prepared the truth spotting effort for the sheer scale and brazenness of trumps mendacity over the past few years. By the posts latest count, trump has made more than 19,000 fallacious statements since take office. In the new book the team examines a number of the president oses most frequent distortions and most dangerous desings. Their book, like thick post reporting, provides an essential resource for all of us trying to keep our own eyes on the truth and avoid being blind by trumps blatant and repeated disregard for it. Today Glenn Kessler remains the fact checker editor and chief writer, his own journalism career has spained more than three decades including 11 years with newsday and 22 years with the post, during which he has covered Foreign Policy, economic policy, the white house, congress, politics, Airline Safety and wall street, a wide range of experience thats contributed to glenns ability to keep tabs on many subjects with the fact checker watched glen operate up close when he overlap he ted post and can attest to his great reporting stills, particularly key attention to detail and abiding sense of fairness. The fact checker long ago ceased to be a one man operation. Also here this evening with glen are two other members of the team. Salvador rizzo who joined the post a couple of year ago and spent time covering new jersey politician during stints at the star leak tour, the record and the new york observer, and meg kelly who is both a reporter and video editor for the fact checker and before joining the post several years ago, covered the 2016 election for npr as a visual producer. So, glenn, sal and meg, the screen is yours. All right, very good. Glenn, everyone is here. We this book, we have been living the presidency of donald trump since it began and we have spent every day going through and factcheck can his claims and also claims of democrats and other members of congress and advocacy groups. And we live it day by day. When we finished completing the book it was still a shock to us to see what we had actually written about. You forget about it. The president says so many things that are so often false, its averaging 22 claims a day, that its i think most people when they actually get through what we have written will be very 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 was we try to write so it each chapter stands on its own and each of us was responsible for different chapters. So what we are going to do in this presentation, well just take you through the book. Wrote the introduction, and describe that, and then well go through each chapter. Well give a little summary, highlight one or two or three of the particular claims that we find of interest in that chapter, and then well be really happy to take your questions. So, the thing about president s is that every president lies. At some point. Might do it for National Security reasons, might do it because theyre trying to cover up something of personal embarrassment, you think of the Monica Lewinski scandal. The lines temperature the falsehoods cher marketing fluff. You think of Barack Obamas if you want your plan you can keep your plan thing. And generally each president is known for one big lie. One of my favorite president ial statements is dwight eisenhower, regarded as one of pour better president s, who approved the series of statements to cover up the fact that we had the United States a had u2 flight of the soviet union because he assumed gary powers had been shot done and killed and he could cover it up. He wasnt. They found the pilot also well as his plane it and was a huge propaganda victory for the soviets. And eisenhower was asked what his greatest regret as president was and he answered forthrightly, that lie we told. We had so much damage from that lie. But its related in the book dish want no get this rightwe say and then theres donald trump, the most men additions president in u. S. History. He almost never express regret. He is not known for one big lie, just a constant stream of exaggerated invented,boatful, purposely outrageie, insightful, inconsistent, dubious and false claims and as brad mentioned were now up 19,000 and count offering the claims. The when we start the book it was the end of his third year and it was 16,241. And we actually had to scramble to add we wanted to end with january 20th but we had to scramble to add a coronavirus chapter for obvious reasons. But interesting thing about trump is that he says things that false for things that are big and small. He had a reasonably successful economy before the coronavirus hit, and yet amazingly he would exaggerate about that. He would routinely add 600,000 jobs when the talked about how many job head created. Theres no reason to do that. Also unusual in that he a lot of his falsehoods used to denigrate people. And to put himself in a better light. Ill just read one little item from the introduction which is maybe of interest. A social scientist at the university of california in santa barbara, she took our database did studied it, looking for patterns of lives lies liesd soardsly half of the lies that people tell are selfserving, and fired a quarter of them are told to advantage or protect someone else and only a tiny percentage of falsehoods are mean spirited. But turns out that donald trump, twothirds of his false idaho were selfserb serving and only 10 were meant to be kind. That means he tells seven times as men selfserving lies as kind ones. And then usually people who tell lies hurtful or disparaging lies are 1 to 2 of the total lies they tell. In terms of trump, it accounted for 50 . She said when she saw that she gasped when she looked at her computer screen. So, that is the state of or president and our presidency and now well take you through the book. The first chapter which is our cataloguing of trumps biggest whoppers was written by meg. Hi. So,s glenn just mentioned, President Trump made one of 16,000 claims by the time we started writing the book, and consequently, narrowing down what the most important ten claims were, the top claims, the biggest whoppers, became quite a challenge. Because we needed to draw from sort of speaks of his presidency, his main policy priorities, and we decided it sort of should represent his biggest things for the presidency. I wont walk you through all of it but what we sort of pulled out a few trends that really stuck out to me as i was writing the chapter so that the chapter is divided into the it wasnt me they did it reflects the way that the president deals with most topics. Either claiming credit for something that didnt happened or hasnt happened or didnt happen on his term or reflecting something that deflecting something that is completely obviously truly happened. And i think the most clear or disastrous example is the way he dealt with claims around Stormy Daniels and i think glenn the only time we have ever labeled something officially a lie because we could prove that he in fact knew that he was being deceitful at every step of the way. In the pages of the Washington Post. Only from the pages of the Washington Post. And so just to sort of jog everyones memory, basically trump said, when read this to make sure its contribute you have to ask Michael Cohen. A reporter asked him did Michael Cohen make the payment . If there was no truth, tell us why did Michael Cohen make the payments if there was no truth to her allegations . Referring to Stormy Daniels and trump said you have to ask Michael Cohen. He is my attorney. You have to ask michael. The reporter said, you know where he got the money to make that payment . And trump said, no, dont know. And essentially what we wrote about that every answer is fault. True. New but to the payment. New cow hen made the payment. He enough it was an effort to kill a damaging story. And he knew that cohen was reimbursed hard paying out the hush money. Each piece was demonstrably false and a clear example of all of the evidencing in and trump saying, i didnt know. Hough did i know that . So, im just going to good ahead and turn to the second chapter, which i also wrote, because i feel like its a good transition. Its all about trump on trump and essentially the thing that sort of unique about trump is that he exaggerated or makes false claims about almost every part of his life. It starts with where his parents are from, how well he did in college, and sort of moves through his business career, through how successful he was, and sort of his personality, what he case about, and straight to the presidency. His Approval Rating hour well people perceive him, who he has one political fights won political fights against in be past. Given what has been going on in the last few days i kind of want to highlight a couple of different pieces that are from the first section which is about trump the man. The first one is a personal favorite of mine and was not connected to what is happening in the news at all at the moment but trump has a habit of talking about cincinnati every time he is in cincinnati. And the first time i heard him say this i was like, trump synonymous with new york, developer, why is he talk about growing up in cincinnati . And so he often exaggerates saying that he worked there, he lived there for a long time, he spend a big summer there, and essential what happened is his father bought a development there while he was in high school and he would occasionally go with his father to do some menial tasks around that development. But his suggestion that he sort of like really knows the city and is a cincinnati guy, are just deeply misleading. The other thing i want to highlight and these go hand in hand is i think folks have seen the president say that he has been done more for throw Africanamerican Community than any other president in his term. Also has a habit of saying hes the least racist person ever, and one thing we did in the chapter is run through a series of events to sort of debunk that statement. And i ends with earlier, last year, when he invoked the go back home trope, spinning to four democratic minorities congressmen and marty darrins, who is our executive editor, came out and said, this isnt racist trope. But this is certainly not the first or the last time that trump has weighted in hot water when it comes to race and i think sal was the their chapter. Right, i wrote the third, fourth and the sixth chapter in the appendix and theres a common theme that runs through all 0 four of these pieces of the book and that is the psychology of donald trump when he is at his most combative. Because Chapter Three is all about the false idahos he tells about his perceived and real political enemies. People like robert muller, nancy pelosi, john mccain, jim comby, chapter four is the stuff that he tells people in his base, often during his very boisterous rallies where the number of false claims is just like any just like nothing you have ever seen before from a politician. We have measured the rallies and theyre a spectacle of politics like we have never seen and dont do well win you measure how truthful the president is being. Then its had chapter six which is immigration and that is the category that President Trump most often out of our 18,000, 19,000 claims di i havent recently but missioning this top category for false and misleading claims if people lying i went to the deepest, darkest part of the jungle here, and lived to tell but it so if i can do it, so can in the country and the become is a great Public Service as some have noted because like glenn said you forget a lot. You forget that donald trump has been smearing joe scar brought since 2017. I forgot about that until two weeks thing president start all over again and unfortunately that is just such a disgusting and sort of vicious lie that is based on absolutely nothing but we didnt think we didnt have the wherewithal to remember it because its not in the book its from 2017, ages nothing trumpland. [inaudible] nod he suggested once in 2017 and now all over the place on his twitter feed. He was just once fox news radow this manager. Theres nothing for the conspiracy their. This National Inquirer would not touch thatsoso that tells you something because theyll touch a lot of things at the National Inquirer. Melt give you an example of the kinds of fact check we would do for chapter 3 which is the chapter on his enemies and before impeachment, before coronavirus, before the riots, the Russian Investigation can do took up a lot of oxygen in d. C. , around the country in terms of News Coverage sin the campaign ended. We had a constant drip drip of stories, and now trump is very issue sends about it but he has said so many false and misleading thing about the russia investigation its hard to take any of these latter day complaints seriously when theyre spinning these documents coming out in court cases bo something theyre not and the record for trump is so checkered. So, for example, about Robert Mueller, marine veteran, you know, longtime director of the fbi, a guy who has been respected by both parties for a long time and done a lot of Public Service. Donald trump would hammer Robert Mueller daily, on twitter and public remarks with false and miss leaving claimeds, alleging he and Robert Mueller has a business consecutive spout and mueller had conflict of interest and that would disqualify him from investigating the Trump Campaign. What trump describes as a conflict of interest, i his own aides describe as petty and ridiculous. Robert mueller was once a member of the Trump Golf Club in virginia. Had not been using it for years because he was living and work neglect district and at one point he tried to get a refund from the club, and he and the club manager by all intents purposes looks like a very courtal back and forth between them and then i guess Robert Mueller gave up on the refund and thats its and trump spins this into some business dispute and a conflict of interest, claims about Robert Mueller he had a separate conflict Love Interest because he was interviewed to be the fbi director when trump just fired james comey the reason for the Russian Investigation. But actually what wow see in the mule are report and what we put in the book and we fact check social distance many times because the president says its constantly, Robert Mueller went to the white house to speak to trump and some aides to give them an institutional perspective of the fbi directors job. Wasnt applying for it and was clear fluff to the trumps aides and steve bannon, just not trump. Thats a very prominent example of trumps spreading disinformation but a political foe or antagonist. Nancy pelosi the speaker of the house gets on his radar very often and always when youre hearing trump may some outrageous or incredible claim but nancy pelosi theres not much there when you start scratching. So, theyve never we put in the book with trump he at one point made some comments early in his presidency it and wasnt clear whether he was talking about immigrants in general or the gang members from ms13. The way hey proceeded through his remarks there was ambiguities and moe people reason whether i would conclude he was talk about immigrant expose he called them animals and then later on he returns to the theme of ms13 and how the gang is very violent. So he called some group of people animals, the next day while its still ambiguous, nancy pelosi says, no human should be called an animal and everyone has a spark of divinity and he should realize that. And then trump clarifies after that, he was talking but m113 but for years and yearly had been trashing pelosill for criticizing him for supposedly send suring him on calling ms13 animal. She never did that. She was still in the mindset he was talking about owl immigrants as the rest of us were before he clarified. So theres a lot more. We couldnt include scarbrough but you get a chance. And im going to segway to chapter 4 which i wrote and that is we titled you religion find is that you look at the people who go to trump rallies and theyve been interviewed for some event at the white house, and theyre catered to the religious right and you have a lot of Trump Supporters there and what you fine that a lot of them are not very perturb evidence about the president s record with false and misleading statements. And in fact a lot of them, when you ask them point blank, theyll say things like, well, you know issue dont really take it seriously, or i know he is fibbing a bit. Its hard to tell how many of the president s supporters are actually believing every single word he says and how many have a more jaundice its book ask still support him for other reasons and have nothing to do with wh