The audience at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing broke into applause when Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) reminded her GOP colleagues about the frequency of Donald Trump’s lies.
The moment came after Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) pointed to a fact check by the Washington Post that assessed the credibility of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s claim that the whistleblower has a “statutory right” to anonymity.
Speier went on to describe why Democrats believe the whistleblower has a right to anonymity, but was interrupted by Conaway.
“The end of the article … also says there are three Pinocchios,” Conaway said, a reference to the Washington Post’s rating of how truthful or untruthful a statement is.
Speier, who did not appreciate Conaway’s interruption of her questioning, shot back.
“The president of the United States has five Pinocchios on a daily basis so let’s not go there,” Speier said, leading to an eruption of applause from the audience.
Speier was actually downplaying the number of false or misleading statements Trump makes on a daily basis.
According to a Washington Post analysis published in October, Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading statements over the course of 993 days — which actually amounts to 13.5 false or misleading statements a day.
The Post analysis found that Trump has had an uptick in false and misleading statements since the impeachment investigation, which added 250 entries to the false or misleading statement database in just a few weeks.
“Trump earned his fastest Bottomless Pinocchio ever with his repeated false statement that the whistleblower compliant about the call was inaccurate,” the Post reported, defining a “Bottomless Pinocchio” as repeating a three- or four-Pinocchio claim at least 20 times. “The report accurately captured the content of Trump’s call and many other details have been confirmed, yet Trump has repeated this Four Pinocchio claim 29 times.”
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
