CNN identified 28 distinct lies President Donald Trump told in five days last week in what it called a “dizzying variety” of falsehoods on matters of national importance.
“There is so much going on in the news that it can be easy to overlook the fact that the president continues to tell a whole lot of lies,” wrote CNN correspondent Daniel Dale.
Likewise, the fact-checking website Politifact, run by the Poynter Institute, continues to rank statement after statement made by Trump as false. Of all the Trump statements Politifact has checked this year, only one was deemed true.
The CNN list from Monday through Friday last week is not a comprehensive list, “and it doesn’t include multiple Trump claims that are unproven but not definitively debunkable.”
“When we started, we had the highest inflation in the history of our country.”
Trump told lies on inflation and the economy, such as this: “When we started, we had the highest inflation in the history of our country.” CNN documents that the year-over-year inflation rate was 2.9% in President Joe Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and it was 3.0% in January 2025, when Trump took over.
He falsely claimed gas prices are down, beef prices are down and consumer prices are down.
Trump told more lies about Democrats, including documentable falsehoods about how Barack Obama and Joe Biden spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” to repair the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall that Trump is now spending $13 million in a no-bid contract granted to an ally.
He made false claims about Democrats cheating on elections and wanting to expand the Supreme Court to 21 justices and said Vice President Kamala Harris never visited the U.S.-Mexico border, when in fact she did so twice.
Trump told lies about elections, including this statement: “We have more corrupt elections than third-world countries have.”
He repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election and falsely claimed mail-in voting “is so crooked” and “corrupt.” He also falsely stated: “We’re the only country in the world that’s doing mail-in ballots.”
“We have more corrupt elections than third-world countries have.”
Trump told lies about Iran, including this: “We have total control of the Strait of Hormuz, as you know, with our blockade.”
He wrongly claimed Iran’s “material … for warfare” is gone.
Trump told lies about immigration, including falsely claiming the United States is “the only country in the world” that has birthright citizenship.
He grossly inflated and lied about the number of immigrants who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration. And he falsely claimed Biden admitted “11,888 murderers.”
The nation will not just bounce back to normal after Trump is off the scene, warns a former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel who was pursued by Trump. In an interview with The Guardian, Andrew Weissmann said all politicians must be held accountable if their lies damage democracy as Trump’s lying has done.
“Lying can be held to account,” Weissmann told the newspaper.
In his new book, Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America, Weissmann proposes a Truth in Elections Act, built on existing law.
“If we ever get out of this mess, what systemic reforms can we do? Because I think we tried going back to the old norms (under Joe Biden) and thinking that was going to be enough, and maybe it will be, but I just have been thinking a lot about, structurally, what we can do differently. I think the circumstances in the United States have made it imperative that we be as creative as possible.”