CNN analyst Daniel Dale says the president lies. He lies a lot.
“President Donald Trump told a story on Monday about how he 'made a correct prediction’ about the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum while he was visiting his golf course in Scotland ‘the day before the vote,’” Dale said.
“It didn’t happen,” said Dale. Trump actually visited Scotland the day after the Brexit referendum, and he’d made no public predictions on the outcome of that vote.
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It would be trivial if it didn’t happen all the time, said Dale, but it’s “part of a pattern – a long line of similarly fabricated tales from the president about his own history and world history.”
Dale included an eight-point list of lies from just over the last two months, including Trump’s false claim that he issued a “don’t go in” warning against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his lie about a supposed conversation with his late uncle about the Unabomber, and his dishonest claim that it was he who deployed the National Guard during civil unrest in Minneapolis in 2020, among many others.
“I actually did say, ‘Don’t go in [to Iraq], don’t go in, don’t go in.’ But I said, ‘If you’re going to go in, keep the oil.’ But they didn’t do that,” claimed Trump.
He didn’t, said Dale
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“[Ted] Kaczynski [the Unabomber] was one of [my uncle’s] students,” said Trump, who then went on to fabricate an impossible conversation between Trump and his uncle about Kaczynski.
Dale said it was impossible because Kaczynski was not known to be the Unabomber at the alleged time of the conversation.
“That city was burning down, Minneapolis – it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground – and [Gov. Tim Walz] wouldn’t call the Guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the Guard, and I saved it.” Trump claimed of civil unrest in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd by city police.
But it was Gov. Tim Walz, not Trump, who called out the guard.
And as for Trump’s claim that South Korea persuaded Biden to let it abandon paying for U.S. military protection from North Korea? Lies.
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“In fact, Biden’s administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea twice agreed to pay more than it did during Trump’s first term,” Dale said.
So, why does he do it? Dale said the lies all serve the purpose of exaggerating Trump’s alleged expertise, embellishing his biography and his record and to “diminish his political opponents.”