donald trump

donald trump

This is only my opinion, and not the representation of Saintel Daily, LLC

We are definitely living in a new time, folks.  I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised by anything since Donald Trump became president.  What am I talking about this time?  Journalists have now had to come up with scientific indicators in order to measure and describe the extent of Donald Trump’s dishonesty and trustworthiness.  Or lack thereof as it were. Trump, as you’re aware is a serial liar, which means we are in uncharted territory.  There’s a part of me that wants to say – is he a liar, or does he have some kind of mental condition where he doesn’t know truth from lies?  But then there’s the realistic part of me that know’s he’s just covering his tracks and is full of you know what.

Daniel Dale, the Washington bureau chief at the Toronto Star, has come up with the “first detailed statistical analysis of Trump’s dishonesty”.  Keeping track of Trump’s lies is no small feat.  In fact, many reporters, such as Dale, are keeping track of the lies that he’s told.  While many started during the campaign, they also continued including on inauguration day when Trump lied about the weather, and then the next day, when he lied about how many people attend the inauguration.  These are things that are pretty easy to fact check, so it makes you wonder why he’s doing in?  Further to that, there’s no real advantage to lying.  Hence my original theory about some kind of mental condition.

donald trump

The Star analyzed no fewer than 1,340,330 words Trump has said since his inauguration speech on Jan. 20, 2017 through July 1 of this year. The newspaper said it had found 1,929 false claims during that period.  Dale, however, indicates that readers wanted more than just the raw numbers.  For example, they asked for Dale to explain why the number of false claims per week has increased.  The key question – is Trump talking more, or are his words more dense with dishonesty?  The answer, according to Dale is that the dishonesty density is increasing.

How is this being measured?  Trump has said a “false word” every 19.4 words, according to Dale’s report.  In 2017, the percentage of Trump’s words that were part of a false claim was 3.8 percent. That figure is now reportedly 7.3 percent, according to Dale.  Dale’s analysis also notes that Trump is talking more than he used to.  In fact, he’s talking 20% more than he used to, unfortunately.  Dale’s study indicates:

The number of words Trump utters in a week varies widely depending on what happens to be on his schedule — it often jumps in weeks when he holds one of his hour-long campaign rallies, for example — but it is generally increasing over time. Trump has averaged 484 more public words per day in 2018 than he did in 2017 — 2,856 vs. 2,372, a 20 percent increase.

donald trump

Staff at the Star believe that the increase in the lies may be due to the fact that he’s going off script more often than not.  In fact, most of the time Trump goes rogue, so it’s no surprise that the number of lies he has increased.  While all of this is really interesting I’m not sure that it makes me feel better about the state of affairs.