For the fourth year in a row, Donald Trump dominates the whoppers of the year list from FactCheck.org.
FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said that in its year-end wrap-ups, it had never singled out one person as the most egregious teller of falsehoods — until Donald Trump entered politics as a presidential candidate in 2015. “But he continues to force our hand,” FactCheck.org wrote. “We can’t ignore the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming.”
FactCheck.org said it selected 10 of Trump’s whoppers for the wrap-up, from Hurricane Maria to revisionist remarks on Russia, noting that Trump not only makes inaccurate claims but embellishes them when he repeats them — so his frequent false claim that “U.S. Steel is opening and expanding seven plants” became “eight or nine” in a retelling.
Among his most newsworthy falsehoods: His denial that he knew anything about hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign and his claim that he “never said Russia did not meddle in the election.”
Trump is not the only one to make this year’s list from FactCheck.org. Also included: newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), who incorrectly claimed that unemployment is low “because everyone has two jobs” (that has no bearing on the unemployment rate); the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who wrongly claimed that the Secret Service paid the Trump Organization over $150,000 to rent golf carts to protect Trump (the money went to two unrelated companies) and House Science Committee member Rep. Mo Brooks (R., Ala.), who false claimed that erosion caused by river sediment deposits and falling rocks was to blame for the rise of sea level (the main causes are actually linked to global warming).
Worst viral claims
FactCheck.org also looked at “the viral spiral of 2018,” some of the worst viral deceptions in the past year, including false claims about Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg, the “caravan” of Central American migrants traveling to the United States through Mexico, and Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who described an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers.
