The Washington Post's fact-checking department has now clocked Trump at 10,000 lies and counting.
"One of his favorite lines is we have lost money on trade deficits. You don't lose money on trade deficits. We have another category called the bottomless Pinocchio. If he earned three or more and he said it more than 20 times, it's on a list. There are 21 or 22 of those at this point," Glenn Kessler said.
"There are a lot of Pinocchios running around without pants, the bottomless Pinocchios, as I like to say. The release of the Mueller report opened up a new phase as well, correct?" CNN's John Berman said.
"Yes. What he keeps saying is the Mueller report found no obstruction. That's not true. The Mueller report outlined five to ten instances that could be grounds for obstruction. It said the president could not be indicted for obstruction. So Mueller left it to Congress. But to run around and say he had total exoneration, which he likes to say, is not correct," Kessler said.
"Every time he speaks about the Mueller report you can almost see your meter going up. He can't help but talk about it without saying things that aren't true. One of the most fascinating lies is on news that's good for him and good for America, like the economic numbers that came out last week. The GDP growing at 3.2%. That's a good number. When he speaks about, even, that he can't help himself," Berman said.
"Right. He said for instance it was a record not set in 16 years, which is not true. I mean, we had 3.2% economic growth in one of the quarters last year. One of the things he does, he talks about the number of jobs created since he's been president which is a good number, a number he should be proud of. But he always starts the count from election day, when he wasn't president. It adds another 500,000 jobs or so. At this point when if you've gotten almost 4.5, 5 million jobs created under your presidency, I'm not sure why you have to pad the number," Kessler said.
"Does the White House respond to the counting? I was struck by in the Mueller report where it called out Sarah Sanders for lying about Jim Comey, they were unrepentant. Is there a sense of shame about this?" Berman asked.
"I haven't -- you know -- I mean, White House officials respond to our inquiries and will answer our questions. They haven't specifically talked about this count. I know the president talks about it. On about ten occasions he has talked about how he doesn't like getting Pinocchios.
"He gets 'one little thing wrong,' he gets Pinocchios," Kessler quoted him. "So the president is certainly aware of it."
