CNN’s Daniel Dale Pens Scathing Feature Recounting 10 Years Of Decoding Trump’s ‘Remarkable Number of Lies’

(Photo by Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire) (Icon Sportswire via AP Images)

CNN’s Daniel Dale penned a piece for CNN.com where he recounted the monumental effort it has taken to decode Donald Trump’s “remarkable number of lies” over the past 10 years.

Dale admitted that he came into the assignment rather naively, thinking it would be a quick stint.

“Ten years ago this month, in my old job as Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, I started what I believed would be a quick little side project: fact-checking underdog presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was telling a remarkable number of lies but was rarely being corrected. Like a lot of people, I thought Trump would lose the 2016 election,” Dale wrote, adding, “I was very wrong. And Trump continued to be very wrong, about a dizzying variety of subjects, for the next decade.”

Dale wrote that his assignment has given him great insight into “the nature of [Trump’s] lying, how it is received by the public and how it is covered by the media.”

Some takeaways:

There is no Washington liar like Trump

Washington is not the nation’s capital of straight shooting. But it’s abundantly clear that there is no public official in Washington who lies like Trump – not as constantly, not as obviously, not about as many topics…We are witnessing a rare, very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.

The bigger the crisis, the more Trump lies

When Trump gets in trouble, he ramps up the dishonesty – even in the cases where dishonesty created some of the trouble in the first place.

The smallest lies are the most distinguishing lies

The subjects Trump has lied about include a nonexistent phone call he claimed to have received from the Boy Scouts, a nonexistent Michigan “Man of the Year” award he claimed to have received years ago, and whether there were any empty seats in venues in which seats were visibly empty. None of these things are important in the slightest, but Trump’s brain has seen fit to make up a story about them. It’s a special trait.

Many Trump lies never go away

[Trump] says the same untrue things again and again. The first time, it might take a while to research; by the 10th or 100th time, I can recite the debunking half-asleep – and there actually is a 100th time for some of the lies.

After many more examples, Dale ended his piece by writing, “The lies cause real harm.”

“Some of Trump’s lies are so bizarre or trivial that I can’t help but laugh,” Dale wrote. “On the whole, though, his lies have been deeply harmful to the country.”

Dale gave the examples of the people spurred on to commit the Capitol riot, or those who died after receiving misinformation about Covid.

“His lies have worsened innumerable public debates around critical policy issues,” Dale added. “And American democracy itself is worse off for all the lying, too.”

Read Daniel Dale’s full article here.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!