Salvador Rizzo, fact checker for the Washington Post, marvels that Trump has surpassed 20,000 lies in his term in office, surely a record. Trump is definitely Number One!

20,000

“What we do have is we have perhaps the lowest, but among the lowest, but perhaps the lowest, mortality rate — death rate — anywhere in the world,” President Trump said July 9, 2020, the day he surpassed 20,000 false or misleading claims since taking the oath of office.

It was the 13th time the president spread this particular falsehood, and it is entry No. 20,036 in our ever-metastasizing database of Trump’s deceitful claims. Nearly 40 Americans had died of the novel coronavirus per 100,000 people, the second worst rate in the world, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

When we started the Trump database project for the president’s first 100 days in office, we could not imagine he would exceed 20,000 false or misleading claims before the end of his term. Trump averaged fewer than five claims a day in his first 100 days, which would have added up to about 7,000 claims in four years.

But the snowball quickly became an avalanche, the false statements a routine. In the last 14 months, Trump averaged 23 claims a day for The Fact Checker’s database. No setting or subject is spared by Trump.

In Rose Garden remarks, at coronavirus briefings, in tweetstorms at odd hours, in press gaggles near a whirring chopper, the Trumpian stream of misinformation engulfs every topic nowadays, from his impeachment in Congress to his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, from the worldwide pandemic that crashed the economy to the protests across the country calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality.

As of July 9, the tally in our database stands at 20,055 claims in 1,267 days.