Daniel Dale is a Washington bureau chief and a member of the White House press corps representing the Toronto Star. Press corps members routinely attend briefings of the White House Press Secretaries and any news conferences held at the White House as well as the informal press gaggles that form between meetings and during arrivals and departures.
In addition to United States news agencies, the White House press corps includes representatives of other nations. Daniel Dale's employer—Toronto Star—is Canada's highest-circulation daily newspaper and biggest online news source.
And the Toronto Star is tracking President Donald Trump.
More specifically—since Trump took office—the Star dedicated a portion of their online presence to tracking the President's lies. On a page titled "Donald Trump has said ___ false things as U.S. president," a running tally of false statements fills in the blank.
As of the afternoon of September 12, 2018, according to Star records, Trump hit 2,519 false claims for the first 591 days of his presidency for an average of 4.3 per day.
To explain their reasoning for tracking such a thing, the top of the page states:
"The Star is keeping track of every false claim U.S. President Donald Trump has made since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Why?"
"Historians say there has never been such a constant liar in the Oval Office. We think dishonesty should be challenged. We think inaccurate information should be corrected. And we think the sheer frequency of Trump’s inaccuracy is a central story of his presidency."
And according to Dale, Donald Trump set a new record for false statements in August, namely 321 in August, up from 280 in July which was up from 268 in June, all of which set records at the time.
As you can see from this chart broken down by month, Trump falsehoods escalated in the last three months.
Many commenters ask why Toronto Star does not call them lies. The paper makes a distinction between lies, which they define as knowingly making intentional false statements and those born of ignorance.
Dale further broke down Trump falsehoods by week showing where spikes occurred. The top stories in each weekly news cycle correspond with dips and spikes in numbers.
Dale then shared his favorite misstatement, lie, falsehood or whatever category a claim made by Trump during the last week of August fell into.
While people were not overly surprised, it is interesting to note the patterns the false statements take. Many relate to the President's tendency for grandiose statements and the superlatives that dominate his speech patterns.
Everything is biggest, best, most and greatest ever. Reality however rarely fully matches the Trump claims.
But as the Star points out, does the President know these are false statements, categorizing them as lies according to the Star? Or does Trump believe he speaks the truth and the falsehoods result from ignorance?
Or has the President deliberately been given false information? Is Trump merely passing on someone else's lies?
Some Trump falsehoods are traceable to sources like Alex Jones and Infowars, Fox & Friends, Breitbart, Sean Hannity and Fox News. The President also passed on statements made on Twitter by dubious sources.
He infamously made claims about Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after the terror attacks on 9/11 and retweeted hate speech from anti-Muslim group Britain First.
Reactions to Dale's Twitter share of the latest Trump record lacked a certain level of disbelief of Toronto Star's running tally. The acceptance backed the Canadian paper's assertion that the Trump presidency may be most remembered for the level of dishonesty above anything else.
Others online recommended Dale to anyone looking for a reliable lie detector.
To see Toronto Star's tracker, visit their website here.
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