CNN Fact-Checker Names Donald Trump’s ‘Most Notable’ Lies

CNN’s fact-checking reporter Daniel Dale has waded through thousands of Donald Trump’s lies during the president’s four years in office.

And ahead of Trump’s departure from the White House on Wednesday, Dale named “the 15 most notable” falsehoods of his presidency — from the “most dangerous” and “most alarming” untruths to the “most hucksterish” and “most entertaining lie schtick.”

“Trying to pick the most notable lies from Donald Trump’s presidency is like trying to pick the most notable pieces of junk from the town dump,” Dale wrote at the weekend. “There’s just so much ugly garbage to sift through before you can make a decision.”

Dale said Trump’s “most telling lie” was that it didn’t rain on his inauguration. It was “the first lie of Trump’s presidency” and “hinted at what would come next.”

Trump’s “most dangerous lie” was that the COVID-19 pandemic was under control; his “most entertaining lie schtick” involved him claiming “burly” men who’d never cried before were reduced to tears in his presence; and his “most alarming lie” was about the so-called “Sharpiegate” saga, when Trump was in 2019 accused of tweaking a map to show Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama.

The outgoing president’s “most depressing lie,” meanwhile, is his ongoing untruth that he actually won the 2020 election, said Dale.

“To many of us, it’s ludicrous nonsense. But to millions of deluded Americans, it’s the truth. And it has now gotten people killed,” the fact-checker wrote, referencing the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump supporters who were egged on by the president. The House last week impeached Trump for incitement to insurrection over the violence.

“The nation’s truth problem, clearly, isn’t just a Trump problem,” concluded Dale. “With this last blizzard of deception and the Capitol insurrection it fomented, Trump has shown us, once more, just how detached from reality much of his political base has become ― or always was.”

Read Dale’s full breakdown of Trump’s most notable lies here.