The Many Gaffes and Misstatements of Donald Trump

Ever since he got in­to the pres­id­en­tial race nearly six months ago, Don­ald Trump has had an epic battle on his hands.

No, not with his rival Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates, who un­til re­cently have been re­luct­ant to cri­ti­cize him, but with the truth. As in ac­tu­al, prov­able facts.

While just about all the can­did­ates have ex­ag­ger­ated or em­bel­lished their re­cords or their pro­pos­als in some way, de­veloper-turned-real­ity-TV-star Trump has been in a league of his own when it comes to mak­ing fac­tu­al claims that are, simply, fac­tu­ally not true. From the size of his air­plane to the nature of the trade deal ne­go­ti­ated with Pa­cific Rim coun­tries to how he’s pay­ing for his cam­paign, what Trump has said re­peatedly fails to mesh with real­ity.

What’s more, he and his cam­paign typ­ic­ally re­fuse to ac­know­ledge any er­rors, and in­stead at­tack those point­ing them out. Cam­paign man­ager Corey Le­wan­dowski, for ex­ample, re­spon­ded to Na­tion­al Journ­al’s query about Trump’s fre­quent mis­state­ments by chal­len­ging the basis of the art­icle it­self: “The premise of your ques­tion is wrong and demon­strates the bi­as in your re­port­ing.”

This at­ti­tude is per­haps un­sur­pris­ing giv­en Trump’s ad­mit­ted propensity to stretch the truth when it has suited his busi­ness pur­poses. “I’m not dif­fer­ent from a politi­cian run­ning for of­fice,” he said in a 2007 de­pos­ition. He even al­lowed that his much-touted net worth was a func­tion of his “feel­ings” on any giv­en day.

And while Trump has kept fact-check­ers busy with scores of ques­tion­able claims, here are sev­en of the most egre­gious:

• His air­plane. Of his nu­mer­ous mis­state­ments, this one is the most eas­ily re­futed and there­fore the most mys­ti­fy­ing. In an in­ter­view with Rolling Stone aboard his Boe­ing 757, Trump said about his plane: “It’s big­ger than Air Force One, which is a step down from this in every way.” That state­ment, of course, is not re­motely true. Since 1990, the U.S. pres­id­ent has used a Boe­ing 747 as Air Force One (tech­nic­ally, whatever Air Force plane the pres­id­ent hap­pens to be us­ing is des­ig­nated Air Force One for that flight). The pres­id­ent’s plane is 50 feet longer, has a fu­sel­age 8 feet wider and a max­im­um takeoff weight more than three times that of a 757. All of this is read­ily known to even a school­child with a cas­u­al in­terest in air­planes—which raises the ques­tion: Where and why would Trump get the idea his plane was big­ger?
• A quarter-mil­lion Syr­i­an refugees. On the cam­paign trail, Trump fre­quently men­tions the Obama White House’s plan to ac­cept more Syr­i­an refugees. “Our pres­id­ent wants to take in 250,000 from Syr­ia,” he said in Texas two weeks ago. Only the ac­tu­al num­ber the ad­min­is­tra­tion has pro­posed is some­what smal­ler: 10,000, mean­ing Trump’s fig­ure rep­res­ents a 25-fold ex­ag­ger­a­tion. Trump has been ques­tioned about this claim, but re­fuses to back away from it. On Sunday, he men­tioned it again on NBC’s Meet the Press. His source for the fig­ure? “I happened upon a cer­tain amount of know­ledge, I’m very friendly with a lot of people on both sides, that Obama’s plan is 200,000 to 250,000,” he told NBC.
• Cheer­ing New Jer­sey Muslims. Some­what re­latedly, Trump told ABC’s This Week: “There were people that were cheer­ing on the oth­er side of New Jer­sey where you have large Ar­ab pop­u­la­tions. They were cheer­ing as the World Trade Cen­ter came down.” If Trump ac­tu­ally saw this on tele­vi­sion, it was per­haps on a spe­cial chan­nel pro­duced only for him and some of his fol­low­ers. While In­ter­net posts al­leging this ex­is­ted im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the ter­ror­ist at­tacks, po­lice de­part­ments and loc­al me­dia said then and say now there were no such cel­eb­ra­tions. In­ter­est­ingly, fel­low GOP can­did­ate Ben Car­son, who fol­low­ing Trump’s re­marks also said he saw the cheer­ing on TV, later said he had got­ten con­fused, and foot­age of the cel­eb­ra­tions was ac­tu­ally from East Jer­u­s­alem.
• Self-fun­ded cam­paign. Over and over, Trump has told audi­ences that he is be­hold­en to nobody be­cause he is pay­ing for his cam­paign him­self. He told mil­lions of TV view­ers of the GOP main-stage de­bate in Mil­wau­kee: “I’m self-fund­ing my cam­paign. I’m put­ting up my own money.” Ex­cept that Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion re­cords to date show that it is not true. Not even half-true. While Trump did lend his cam­paign $1.8 mil­lion dur­ing the first half of the year, and then spent an­oth­er $100,000 in “in-kind” con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing the sum­mer months, the bulk of his cam­paign money through Sept. 30, nearly $3 mil­lion, has come from the sale of “Make Amer­ica Great Again” hats, T-shirts, and oth­er souven­irs. The cam­paign’s second-biggest ex­pense over the sum­mer months, after the cost of fly­ing his 757 around, was for hats and T-shirts—which the cam­paign then sells at a 200-per­cent markup—mean­ing Trump’s cam­paign is not really so much self-fun­ded as it is hat-fun­ded.
• China’s trade pact “back door.” Trump has made China’s sup­posed abil­ity to get the bet­ter of Amer­ic­an lead­ers a fo­cus of his cam­paign. But dur­ing the Mil­wau­kee Re­pub­lic­an de­bate, he took this theme to a new level, sug­gest­ing that China would be the ac­tu­al be­ne­fi­ciary of the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship trade agree­ment that was re­cently com­pleted among the United States and 11 na­tions in Asia and the Amer­icas: “It’s a deal that was de­signed for China to come in, as they al­ways do, through the back door and totally take ad­vant­age of every­one,” Trump said. This claim has flum­moxed trade ex­perts. Back door? And giv­en that China is not even party to this agree­ment (as Sen. Rand Paul cor­rectly poin­ted out dur­ing the de­bate), are the Chinese so crafty and de­vi­ous that they can some­how in­sert self-serving pro­vi­sions in­to trade deals that they had no part in ne­go­ti­at­ing? This claim also speaks to Trump’s China fix­a­tion more broadly, in which he at­trib­utes the re­l­at­ive shift of man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs to China and oth­er Far East­ern na­tions to bad ne­go­ti­at­ing by U.S. lead­ers rather than mar­ket forces, such as vastly lower labor costs in those coun­tries. When The Wall Street Journ­al ed­it­or­i­al board asked him re­cently who he looked to for ad­vice on eco­nom­ics, Trump said there was no need: “Hon­estly, I feel that I have such a vast feel­ing for it that I really—you know, Milton Fried­man was good—but I don’t really listen to any­body,” he said.
• Mark Zuck­er­berg’s per­son­al sen­at­or. Dur­ing the Oct. 28 de­bate in Boulder, Col­or­ado, Trump was asked why he had re­ferred to Sen. Marco Ru­bio as Face­book cofounder Mark Zuck­er­berg’s “per­son­al sen­at­or” re­gard­ing Ru­bio’s sup­port for more tech-work­er visas. Trump’s reply: “I nev­er said that. I nev­er said that,” and ad­ded that he had no clue where mod­er­at­or Becky Quick could have come up with such an idea. Dur­ing a com­mer­cial break, though, Quick dug up the source for her ques­tion. It had come from Trump’s own cam­paign web­site. Trump offered a 158-word reply that said he had cre­ated tens of thou­sands of jobs and that im­mig­rants had to come to his coun­try leg­ally be­cause “we have a coun­try of bor­ders”—but failed to ad­dress his cat­egor­ic­al and, as it turns out, in­cor­rect deni­al from minutes earli­er.
• River of Blood. Trump’s for­ays in­to fic­tion are not lim­ited to his pres­id­en­tial cam­paign. A Vir­gin­ia golf course he pur­chased and ren­ov­ated along the Po­tom­ac River was giv­en a his­tor­ic­al monu­ment re­cently com­mem­or­at­ing all the sol­diers from both sides who died near that spot dur­ing the Civil War: “The cas­u­al­ties were so great that the wa­ter would turn red and thus be­came known as ‘The River of Blood.’” The only prob­lem was that ac­tu­al his­tor­i­ans, ac­cord­ing to aNew York Times ac­count, say that loc­a­tion saw noth­ing like what Trump ima­gines. Trump’s re­sponse to the Times: “How would they know that? Were they there?”

(Image via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com )