President Donald Trump tells a lot of lies. Trump additionally often accuses others of lying.
And generally he does each directly – telling a lie about one thing while accusing another person of lying about it. In different phrases, the president has been dishonest even about others’ honesty.
It’s a subset of his years-old “I know you are but what am I?” tactic of making an attempt to show widespread criticisms of him towards his opponents. And he’s used it a bunch this fall.
Trump’s deception about supposed deception from Democrats and his former FBI director
One excellent instance: Trump has repeatedly alleged that Democrats are lying once they appropriately say overall prices and grocery prices are up throughout his second presidency – although it’s Trump who’s lying when he says overall prices and grocery prices are down.
“The problem with the Democrats: they lie. They do it so well. They talk about affordability, but I’m the one that’s getting the prices down,” he told reporters Sunday, although total costs have been 3% larger in September than they have been in September 2024 and 1.7% larger than they have been in January 2025, the month he returned to workplace. “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats,” since “costs are way down,” Trump falsely said final week on Fox News.
Then, on Monday morning, Trump claimed on social media that Christopher Wray, whom he appointed as FBI director throughout his first time period, had “lied!!!” concerning the deployment of FBI brokers on January 6, 2021, the day Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. But the president’s supposed foundation for this declare was a false conspiracy theory that FBI brokers had been secretly inserted into the pre-riot Capitol crowd to whip up a frenzy.
The phony narrative was debunked in September by none aside from Trump’s present FBI director, Kash Patel, who noted that the brokers have been deployed for crowd management “after the riot was declared by Metro Police.”
In late October, Trump attacked the integrity of former president Joe Biden in a speech to a navy viewers – saying, “Biden used to say he was a pilot. He was a pilot, he was a truck dri— whatever, whoever walked in. He wasn’t a pilot.” Biden did falsely claim throughout his presidency to have beforehand been a truck driver, amongst different inaccurate claims about his past, however there isn’t any file of him having claimed to have been a pilot. In different phrases, Trump was making one thing up – again – while calling out Biden for supposedly making one thing up.
Biden’s precise fabrications about his biography would give Trump ample materials for assaults. But Trump usually discards fact-based ammunition in favor of colourful fiction.
Take what Trump mentioned about Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut when the president introduced in October that he was commuting the prison sentence of former Republican Rep. George Santos, who had pleaded responsible to federal wire fraud and aggravated id theft fees after gaining notoriety for numerous lies about his biography.
Trump posted on social media that Blumenthal’s actions have been “far worse.” Trump claimed that Blumenthal had lied for practically 20 years that, while serving within the Vietnam War, he “was ‘a Great Hero’” and “endured the worst of the War, watching the Wounded and Dead as he raced up the hills and down the valleys, blood streaming from his face.”
There isn’t any file of Blumenthal claiming to have been a struggle hero, nor of Blumenthal claiming to have been injured in Vietnam, seen wounded or deceased folks, fought in battles, or run by way of any explicit terrain.
Blumenthal, who served within the Marine Corps Reserve within the US through the struggle, did falsely claim on at the very least just a few events within the 2000s that he served in Vietnam itself. But Blumenthal – who precisely described his service on different events, and apologized in 2010 for the misstatements – told none of the vivid tales about participating in lethal fights that Trump attacked him for supposedly telling.
Trump has advised related lies about Blumenthal’s supposed lies for more than seven years now.
Echoes of Trump’s different baseless assaults on the integrity of folks and establishments
Trump’s assaults on the honesty of his political foes echo some of his best-known assaults on American establishments. Consider his frequent claims that accurate media reports are “fake news” and that the official 2020 election he misplaced was “rigged and stolen.”
In these instances, as along with his claims this week about inflation and January 6, he has introduced himself as a paragon of fact while deceptively undermining the reputations of individuals who have really been truthful.