Pinocchio Politics
Lying by politicians has become an epidemic. Donald Trump's 'big lies' are back, along with growing doubts about his vow to 'put America first.'
With “big lies” in politics now at historic highs and public trust at historic lows, many political leaders, scholars and researchers agree today’s falsehood firehose is hurting us all. “Lies are lies—and can’t simply be excused anymore as a ‘form of free speech’ nor justified as ‘a negotiating strategy,’” says Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checker Bill Adair. “Exposing falsehoods is not censorship,” he says. It’s a reality check.
NEW YORK — These first five weeks of Donald Trump’s return to the White House have whizzed by at a blistering pace. His lies have been fast and furious, too.
In speeches, interviews, exchanges with reporters and posts on social media circling the globe, Trump has been filling public statements not only with exaggerations but also with outright fabrications—some of them repeats, and others new and bizarre. The latest whopper has to do with Ukraine and his talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
No, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not start the war with Russia, a claim Putin has made, but which Trump also made for the first time last week, sending bipartisan shockwaves across the United States and Europe. Russia came into Ukraine three years ago this week, with the intent to topple Ukraine’s democracy and its government and seize the country.
Zelenskyy is not a dictator. Trump, again parroting Putin, made the same claim last week, shocking most Americans and U.S. allies around the world. “Politicians can have their opinions but universal facts are facts,” says Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia. “Saying this has made Trump look weak.”
Europe is not “loaning money to Ukraine and will get their money back” —which is what Trump asserted Monday during a joint news conference broadcast globally from the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron. [Macron, interrupting Trump to correct that falsehood, said: “No. In fact, to be frank, we (Europe) paid (Ukraine) 60% of its total defaults … real money, to be clear.” Europe has frozen $230 billion in Russian assets, Macron said, “but this is not a collateral of a loan.” If, as part of a negotiation with Europe, Russia decides to give Europe those assets, “super,” Macron said. Those frozen assets would then be a loan that Russia would have to pay for, not Ukraine, he said.]
And no, Trump’s government cost-cutters have not yet given Americans an accurate list of the “waste, fraud and abuse”they say they’re carving out of the government budget. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this month that Trump’s cost-cutters discovered a Biden-era plan to spend $50 million “to fund condoms in Gaza.” But that was another piece of fiction. There was no such program nor spend, so no cost savings there. Yet Trump, rather than acknowledge the falsehood, not only repeated the $50 million figure the next day, he added the incendiary claim that the condoms were “for Hamas.” Then, a few days later, when it became obvious the $50 million figure was pure fiction, he inflated it to $100 million. No correction, no remorse.
Grievance Culture
That Trump continues to traffic in falsehoods should come as no surprise. Politicians, in greater numbers, now say social media have made it easier for all politicians to lie, especially those who believe they’ll score more points than they’ll lose with angry voters. During his 2024 campaign, Trump told quite a few big lies, like the one claiming the new migrants to Springfield, Ohio, were “invaders” who were kidnapping neighbors’ pet dogs and cats, and then eating them—a total break with reality. Still, in his campaign’s anti-immigrant fury, many Trump supporters either fell for it, or were willing to look the other way if it helped Trump to beat former Vice President Kamala Harris to the White House.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual, global poll measuring citizen sentiment, “anger against the status quo is running so high, that fear has turned to anger and most recently to grievance to be acted upon with whatever works to make change,” says CEO Richard Edelman. According to the company’s 2025 Trust Report, 40% of the 33,000 people surveyed in the United States and in 28 countries around the world said they would approve of people spreading disinformation if it was used to bring about social change—a feeling most prevalent among respondents, ages 18 to 34.
During Trump’s first term in office, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team counted 492 false or misleading claims made during his first 100 days in office, and 30,573 lies over his first four years in the White House. Yet back then, Trump got minimal pushback. “It was like driving on the Autobahn. If you could far exceed the speed limit without any risk of getting a speeding ticket, you’re going to break the law. In the case of politics, many times it has been the same thing,” says Bill Adair, a Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker and author of Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More and How it Could Burn Down Our Democracy.
Democrats lie, too. President Joe Biden and his supporters had been lying for months about Biden’s waning fitness for office, until visual examples of Biden’s age frailties—tripping up the stairs to Air Force One at least several times and giving a disastrously unsteady performance in his debate against Trump— became harder to spin and to hide.
While both sides lie, Adair says his dozens of candid interviews for his book with politicians, political operatives and experts in misinformation found that Republicans lie more often. He writes in his book that from 2016 to 2021, 55% of the statements made by Republicans and investigated by PolitiFact, the fact-checking organization he founded, were false, compared with 31% of those made by Democrats. [To counter Trump’s relentless exaggerations, falsehoods and lies, The New York Times, The Associated Press, CNN and other media organizations have added special “fact-checking” columns to their coverage this year. To fight back, Trump is trying to ban reporters who cite his lies from covering his press conferences.]
Why Lie?
Politicians have been lying as as long as our democracy has been around, but just not as frequently nor as blatantly and visibly as today, Adair says. Social media and our fractured media ecosystem has made it much easier to lie, and lying is also “a very calculated decision” and part of an ongoing strategy to gain and retain power. “They (politicians) make a calculation—am I going to gain more from making this statement that is false than I’m going to lose?” Adair said in an interview. “It’s that simple. They want to build support for the base, and some believe that telling a lie, in some small or big way, will help them to do that.
“… Many Republicans and some former Republicans who were willing to talk to me said that in recent years, with polarization running so deep, it’s just become a part of the (Republican) party’s culture.” But Adair is also quick to add that “lying is a huge problem in all of our politics” and that “fact-checking has struggled to keep pace.” He also said that the disappearance of local news organizations also has had an impact. “The local press used to hold politicians accountable to local voters—and while some nonprofit news organizations are popping up now to restore that kind of oversight, there’s still a bunch of news deserts across the country, so it is really hard now for a lot of voters to sort out the truth and have an honest discourse on issues.”
So what now? Many Americans may still not be willing to place truthfulness over partisan preference in every case, Adair says. “But more will have to start caring about lies now, especially when their candidate wins on those lies and then risks becoming the culprit.”
Voter Remorse?
This past week, Republican lawmakers began facing angry voters in town halls, and the negative tenor of the meetings hinted that a broader backlash may be emerging. Trump’s vow to “drain the swamp” and empower Americans who feel overlooked by the system is now being seen by some to be at odds with the mass firings of thousands of government workers—in Washington and across the country. Many of those fired by Trump’s cost-cutting voted for him just a few months ago, and some are now telling Republican lawmakers and local newscasters they feel “duped” and betrayed.
In Georgia, GOP Rep. Rich McCormick struggled to respond as constituents shouted, jeered and booed at his response to questions about Elon Musk’s power to decide who gets fired and who doesn’t, and his access to government data. In Wisconsin, GOP Rep. Scott Fitzgerald was asked to defend the administration’s budget proposals as voters demanded to know whether cuts to their essential services were coming.
Other Trump voters expressed concern that Trump’s repeated statements about his desire to ‘take over Gaza,’ don’t synch with his vow to “put America first.” The popular UFC fighter Sean Strickland, who was a big supporter of Trump’s before his election, took to X this week to say Trump’s plan to take over Gaza “is B.S.” and “ain’t America first.” That post racked up 159,000 likes and 13.2 million views.
Atlantic writer Yair Rosenberg says Trump is starting to “belie the imaginary versions of himself that inspired many of his supporters.”
More Whoppers
Yet despite these rising anxieties, Trump’s falsehoods continue to proliferate.
No, the people of Canada do not like Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st U.S. state. Trump, however, continues to insist they are “thrilled.” Pierre Poilievre, MAGA’s favorite Canadian conservative, said last week, “Let me be clear. Canada will never be the 51st state.” And no, Canada does not prohibit U.S. banks from doing business in Canada—a claim Trump also keeps making, nonetheless, without a shred of evidence.
No, DEI initiatives—like them or not— did not cause the deadly January collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet. That’s fiction. There is no evidence that any Federal Aviation Administration policy had anything to do with the crash. Trump, who has ordered all DEI initiatives to be canceled immediately, fabricated a story about a frantic last-minute push by former President Joe Biden to hire people with significant disabilities as air traffic controllers before Trump took office. That’s also false. The facts? In 2019, Trump’s own administration hired people with significant disabilities as air traffic controllers, and they performed well.
No, the violent January 6th insurrection at the Capitol was not “a day of love.” And Capitol police were not aiding the rioters. They were being assaulted by them, five fatally. The rioters—all of them Trump supporters—used bats, flagpoles, bear spray, brass knuckles, metal barricades, stolen law enforcement shields, wooden furniture legs, a “tomahawk axe” and other weapons—actions seen by millions of Americans, with their own eyes, during the live, hours long broadcast of the riot, from start to finish.
And one newer break from reality? Trump now says his poll numbers “are the highest that any Republican president has ever had.” Wrong again. Trump’s approval ratings have fallen by 13 points just 33 days into his second term, according to a new poll released Monday, conducted by IPSOS. President George W. Bush’s poll numbers hit 92% shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Those of his father, George H.W. Bush, hit 89% at the end of the Gulf War in 1999.
Empty Vessels
In the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, a majority of poll respondents say they worry that government leaders are now “purposely misleading” the public, and not just in the United States.
The global survey also says that some 61% of those polled believe that government and businesses are making their lives harder and now serve narrow interests, and that wealthy people are benefiting unfairly from the system. It’s a sentiment that helped Trump get elected last fall—but also one that may catalyze some mass protests on Friday and through March against his continuing work to fire many more thousands of government workers while also closing some of the government programs that could help them.
“The outrage of some influencers who believed Trump would further their causes is a warning,” Atlantic writer Rosenberg says. “As president, Trump is no longer being seen as the vessel into which people can pour their discontent with the status quo. With every disappointment, it will become harder for him to hold together the coalition that delivered him the narrowest popular-vote victory since Richard Nixon’s in 1968.”
Adds fact checker Adair: “It's an uncomfortable thing to say, and it's not something people want to hear, and I’m sure I’ll get blowback, but I believe we need to face this epidemic of lying. Lying and repeating the lie makes it really difficult to have an adult conversation about public policy if one side or the other is denying the facts about the big issues affecting us all.
“…If one side is always rejecting facts, it robs everyone’s power to have a say in how we’re governed.”
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s something Trump has truly wanted, all along.
NOTE: This post was updated on 2-27 and 2-28, to add extra data and additional reporting and reaction this week by Trump supporters to his aggressive efforts to downsize government.
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Great article and even greater title, Marcia. Thank you for some encouraging news about people waking up to the new reality that many brought on themselves.