Donald Trump: All the false claims 45th President has made since his inauguration

They're adding up

Jon Sharman
Monday 23 January 2017 11:55 GMT
Comments
All the false claims Donald Trump made after his inauguration

President Donald Trump cemented his reputation for fabrication on the campaign trail, but ascending to the highest office in the land has not kept him from making false claims.

The 45th President has offered his own "alternative facts" at least five times since being inaugurated.

Mr Trump's press secretary, ​Sean Spicer, used his first ever White House press conference to make similar false claims while lambasting reporters for alleged bias and, later, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway leapt to his defence by saying the untruths were instead "alternative facts".

Here are Mr Trump's false claims in order.

January 20, Liberty Ball

Claim 1: "The crowd was unbelievable today. I looked at the rain, which just never came, you know, we finished the speech, went inside, it poured then we came outside," he said. "The helicopter scene was an incredible scene, and then, amazingly it rained—like God was looking down on us."

Reality: The rain started as Mr Trump began his inauguration speech, as he acknowledged the next day during a speech at CIA headquarters.

January 20, Salute To Our Armed Services Ball

Claim 2: "Even the media said the crowd was massive. That was all the way back down to the Washington Monument."

Reality: Photos show the crowd did not stretch that far.

January 21, speech at CIA headquarters

Claim 3: "We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed. I get up this morning. I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I say, 'Wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out. The field was ... It looked like a million, a million and a half people.' Whatever it was, it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument."

Reality: Estimates vary but one crowd expert said fewer people attended the inauguration than did the Women's March protest the following day, whose numbers he estimated at just under half a million. Photos also show attendance was far lower than at Barack Obama's ceremonies, the first of which in 2009 drew an estimated 1.8 million people.

Washington Metro statistics also showed markedly lower passenger numbers before 11am on January 20 than on those prior occasions.

The scene of Donald Trump's inauguration as US President on January 20 2017 (L) and Barack Obama's first swearing in ceremony in 2009 (Composite Reuters (L) Getty Images (R)) (Reuters (L) Getty (R))

Claim 4: "The rain should have scared them away. But God looked down and he said, 'We’re not going to let it rain on your speech.' In fact, when I first started I said, "Oh no." First line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, 'Oh, this is, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it.' But the truth is that it stopped immediately. It was amazing. And then it became really sunny, and then I walked off and it poured right after I left."

Reality: The rain did not stop immediately, leading former President George W Bush to don a plastic poncho. The sun remained behind the clouds following Mr Trump's speech.

Claim 5: "Time magazine—and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it's one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I've been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that's a record, Mike, that can ever be broken."

Reality: Richard Nixon featured on Time's cover 55 times. Time told Politico's Playbook Mr Trump had been on the cover 11 times.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in