Last week, President Donald Trump’s annual monetary disclosure showed he made greater than $1 billion from cryptocurrency ventures in 2025. On Monday, after a reporter requested him a query associated to crypto, he finally pivoted to a colourful anecdote about the nation’s first president.
Trump said George Washington “had two desks in his pre-White House.” He continued: “And they were right next to each other. One was for business and one was for the presidency. He had two desks, in the same room. And so you’re allowed to. But I choose not to. I don’t talk to my kids about, you know, this stuff.”
An interesting story about Washington. Unfortunately, it’s a fictional story about Washington.
Washington did conduct some private enterprise whereas he was president, however he didn’t have separate desks for enterprise issues and official issues. Historians debunked the two-desks story when Trump delivered it greater than six years in the past; one historian told NCS it was “utter nonsense,” one stated it was “an absurd allegation,” and one stated, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
This is likely to be thought-about a matter of trivia moderately than present significance. But Trump told the story to attempt to fend off urgent considerations about his wealth-building whereas in workplace – if the revered first president may have a complete separate desk dedicated to enterprise affairs whereas serving, why can’t this president do massive enterprise whereas serving? And it wasn’t a one-time slip.
Rather, it’s a part of Trump’s long history of fake history. For years now, for quite a lot of tactical causes, he has deployed imaginary stories about US historical past, world historical past and his personal historical past. The story about Washington is one in every of no less than 4 such false claims he has made in the previous week alone.
He wildly overstated American deaths throughout the building of the Panama Canal. He wrongly claimed no person earlier than him had donated the president’s official wage. And, as standard, he lied that he gained the 2020 election.
During his July 4 speech marking the nation’s 250th birthday, Trump spoke of Americans’ function in constructing the Panama Canal, the important waterway he has beforehand said the US shouldn’t have ceded to Panama final century. “And by the way,” Trump added, “38,000 Americans died to give us one of the greatest engineering feats of all time: Panama Canal.”
That quantity is not close to true.
While the century-old data are imprecise, they show about 5,600 people died throughout the canal’s American building part between 1903 and 1914 – and “of those, the vast majority were Afro-Caribbeans,” corresponding to staff from Barbados and Jamaica, Julie Greene, a historical past professor at the University of Maryland and creator of the e book “The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal,” told NCS after Trump made the same declare in his inaugural deal with final 12 months.
The late historian David McCullough, creator of one other e book on the constructing of the canal, found that “the number of white Americans who died was about 350.”
Thousands of further staff, perhaps around 22,000, died throughout the French building part that preceded the American part. But Trump stated, as he has earlier than, that he was speaking about American deaths particularly.
In an interview with CNBC final week, Trump stated, “I’m the only president, they say, that’s ever given up my salary. I gave up my salary.”
We don’t know who “they” is likely to be, however Trump’s declare isn’t true. John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover donated their presidential salaries, as media shops pointed out when Trump repeatedly made such claims throughout his first time period. (Trump did it again – with out the “they say” – earlier on this time period.)
Also, whereas Trump provided proof that he donated his whole $400,000 annual presidential wage for many of his first time period, the extent of his wage donations to this point this time period isn’t clear; the White House didn’t instantly reply to NCS’s Monday request for proof of his second-term donations. The White House Historical Association, a nonprofit Trump said in August 2025 he had donated his “first ‘Paycheck’” to, said in October 2025 that Trump had donated a complete of $66,000 to the group since January 2025.
Trump entered a White House luncheon on Monday to the patriotic music he walks out to at his marketing campaign rallies, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” As if reminiscing, Trump said, “That’s been with me a long time, that song. We won three elections with that song.”
He gained two presidential elections with that music, in 2016 and 2024, and misplaced one other, in 2020. But he has by no means proven any indication that he plans to desert his fake historical past about that 2020 defeat.