-But one thing I can promise you this --
I will always tell you the truth.
-The database started as a project for the first 100 days.
It was in part an effort to not let us get distracted
by the easily checked false or misleading things
the President said and we could keep our focus
on writing substantive fact checks about big issues.
And we could just say "Oh, that thing the President said.
We just put that in the database.
We don't have to do a fact check on it."
And then when we were done,
readers begged us to keep it going.
We kept it going for a year, and at that point, he did 2,000.
It seemed manageable, so we said we'll keep it going
for the whole four years.
And then it kind of ate up our lives
'cause he kept saying more and more false things.
The President's lying got worse
and worse the longer he was president.
So in his first year as President,
he made on average about six false
or misleading claims a day.
The second year, it was 16 claims.
The third year, it was 22 claims.
And then last year, the fourth year,
which of course was a pretty dramatic year,
he's averaged 39 claims a day.
Now, 39 claims a day is a lot.
It's kind of amazing.
And we recorded one day in November,
the day before the election,
he made more than 500 false or misleading claims.
-They said, "How's he gonna do in Pennsylvania?
He's gonna win Pennsylvania except for the cheating."
We figure we have to leave 5% for the cheating.
-I mean, I think one reason why it just exploded
so much at the end
there is that he never really discarded a false claim.
There were a few instances, but very few.
So as you know, he did lots and lots of campaign
rallies before the election.
And the rallies got longer and longer
because he had more and more false things to say.
And he just kept building on it. You could see the pattern.
He'd have to go through his grievances
about the Mueller investigation,
then his grievances about the Ukraine impeachment,
then his grievances about the coronavirus
and falsely claiming everything was fine.
"The Bottomless Pinocchio" emerged out of the conundrum
we faced because we generally do not like to use the word lie.
I mean, lie means that you're getting in someone's head
and you're saying that they know what they're saying is false.
The problem with Trump is he lives
in his own alternative reality,
and so he convinces himself that his falsehoods are the truth.
In order to qualify for a Bottomless Pinocchio,
it needs to be repeated at least 20 times.
-You have to see these trade deals.
We're losing a fortune.
Hundreds of billions of dollars.
We lost $500 billion.
$300, $400, $500 billion a year. Billion.
The biggest tax cut, biggest reform of all time.
It's the biggest reduction in taxes
in the history of this country.
It's the biggest tax cut in American history.
This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country.
-If you look at the Bottomless Pinocchio list,
it gives you a pretty good guide
to the types of falsehoods the President would say.
A good portion, about 25%,
are Trump falsely claiming accomplishments that he did not
make or exaggerating about his accomplishments.
Nearly 500 times,
he said he created the best economy in US history.
-We also built the greatest economy
in the history of the world.
We had the greatest economy ever in the history of the world.
We have the greatest economy.
Greatest economy in the history of the world.
No country had anywhere near us.
We had the best economy anywhere in the world.
-The rally on the Mall January 6th,
I counted 107 false or misleading claims.
-All of us here today do not want
to see our election victory
stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats,
which is what they're doing,
and stolen by the fake news media.
That's what they've done and what they're doing.
-One question people often ask --
"Was President Trump a successful liar?"
I've always said that the proof would be
whether or not he won re-election.
Because if he won re-election, that would indicate
that someone who constantly misled the American people
would actually successfully hoodwink enough
that he could continue as president.
So he didn't win re-election, but he has managed to convince
a sizeable portion that this utterly absurd statement
that he lost the election because of fraud is true.
And it's gonna take a lot of work to make sure
that people understand that it wasn't true.
The long-term lessons of Trump,
if that kind of misbelief continues to persist,
it might indicate that a more skilled wannabe despot
could actually succeed where Trump failed.