Today is International Fact Checking Day and everyone is celebrating.
Except Donald Trump.
Angie Holan, Editor of PolitiFact, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources and said of Trump’s endless barrage of inaccurate statements:
“[Trump’s] track record has not improved. He’s still on our scale earning about 70% of mostly false, false, or pants on fire.”
That is the leader of the free world, on record as lying 70% of the time.
Holan continued about the importance of fact checking in general:
“I think fact-checking works from the point of view of citizens being informed. Democracy doesn’t work without an informed electorate.”
During Trump’s campaign, a staggeringly-low 9% of what he said was rated true or mostly true, putting him dead last in a list of all Republicans running for president.
Trump’s lies have been both financially imprudent and physically harmful. When he tweeted that Obama had Trump’s phones wiretapped, Congress began a costly and time-consuming investigation, ultimately yielding the answer that everyone already knew to be true: Obama did not have Trump’s phones wiretapped.
Trump also claimed that thousands of Muslims cheered in Jersey City, NJ when the World Trade Center came down on September 11th. As a result, per the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States have tripled with Trump’s rise to power, coindicing with a 67% rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes.
Trump’s lies are truly unprecedented in American history. As he continues to wreak havoc on the integrity of the office of the presidency, fact checking is now more important than ever. As Trump’s lies continue to get exposed and the American electorate stays duly informed, we will continue to edge closer to the end of Trump’s dangerous presidency.
Watch the entire exchange with Angie Holan below:
Happy International #FactCheckingDay! https://t.co/SrnBTrrOvg
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) April 2, 2017
