By Andy May
President Trump is no politician in the more general sense of the word. He isn’t careful about what he says and speaks his mind. His nature, in my opinion, is to tell the truth as he sees it and, in that sense, he is very honest, just not very diplomatic. So, again in my opinion, it is odd that the New York Times and much of the news media try to portray him as a liar, since that seems to be against his nature. Much of the public appears to share my view, since while the news media’s allegations have undoubtably hurt Trump’s approval rating and his standing with some of the public, they seem to have hurt themselves even more. As recently as the 1990s the news media were generally thought of as the arbiters of truth, but as shown in figure 1, public confidence in them as a group has fallen recently to historic lows. According to Gallup, in 2025, 70% of the public say they have little or no confidence in the news media.
This decline in trust for the news media varies substantially by party affiliation as illustrated in figure 2, so in part, it must be due to perceived media bias. A majority of Democrats trust the media and only 8% of Republicans trust it, suggesting that the media is biased toward the Democratic Party. Majority support of the news media among Republicans and Independents disappeared in 2005 and never recovered.
Assessing the Alleged Trump Lies
To objectively analyze Trump’s alleged lies we need to define a lie. In this work we will try to consistently use the following definition, which is consistent with Merriam-Webster’s primary dictionary definition: “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.” The key phrase is “intent to deceive,” thus using this definition mistakes and opinions are not lies.
For a statement to be a lie:
- It must be a knowingly false statement about,
- A verifiable fact and,
- Contradicted by available evidence.
A lie must be known to be a lie by the speaker, and it must be about a verifiable fact. Furthermore, the lie must be contradicted by evidence available at the time the lie was spoken. The first requirement, that a lie must be known by the speaker, is a high hurdle, but it separates “mistakes” from “lies.”
My list of alleged lies used to make this post is mostly taken from a New York Times list published on December 14, 2017, but I’ve added some modern alleged lies. I tried to eliminate duplicate allegations in the list, but some duplicates remain. The New York Times (NYT) does not tell us what their definition of a lie is, but it is clearly different from the one above. Examining the list, we can see that the NYT:
- Treats disagreeing with their chosen experts as evidence of lying
- Treats exaggeration and hyperbole as lying.
- Treats jokes as lying.
- Treats ambiguous statements as lying.
- Does not distinguish between mistakes and lies.
- Does not require evidence of a lie to be available at the time.
In essence, the NYT list is simply a list of their perceived incorrect or exaggerated statements by Trump. This is contrary to the dictionary definition of a lie, in which “intent to deceive” is a key component. Reexamining the NYT list using my criteria, results in the following:
There are 112 alleged lies, and in my opinion, there are 18 possible Trump lies or Trump mistakes, 61 clear differences in opinion, and 26 cases where the New York Times or other news media sources are incorrect in their assertions. It is notable that although the list was meant to be a list of Trump lies, if we apply the NYT criteria to their own statements, and include their mistakes, they have “lied” more often than Trump. Seven of the alleged lies are difficult to characterize, these are listed in Table 2.
In table 2 I list the seven alleged lies that I had trouble classifying. My list contains links to the details and more discussion which allows the reader to decide if any of the allegations in table 2 are real lies. All these alleged lies contain minor errors in numbers or dates or were obvious jokes so calling them lies is over the top.
Most of the alleged Trump lies are differences of opinion (61). This happens when the news media accuse Trump of lying by taking some statement he made and then ask a selected “expert” if it is true, if the “expert” says no, they call it a lie. They are thus substituting “expert” opinion for a fact. Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm today, the news media have lost the ability to separate verifiable facts and evidence from opinion. This may be at the root of their problem with public confidence. Reporters must learn to separate opinions from facts. Table 3 provides an example.
When Trump speaks in public or to reporters, he tends to speak extemporaneously and even when giving speeches he often goes “off-script.” This is good for the public, since he is saying what is on his mind and we get insight into his priorities, thinking, and logic. But he, like anyone, does mix up dates and numbers. Fortunately, he generally gets the gist of a topic correct, even if the details are not. So, sticking to our definition, none of the alleged lies in the list are true verifiable Trump lies. That said, some statements might be lies to some people, if the reader judges the statement to be a “knowingly false statement,” “about a verifiable fact,” and using evidence available at the time Trump made the statement. Table 4 contains two example statements that the reader might interpret that way. To see the descriptions of all 18 “possible Trump lies or mistakes” see the full spreadsheet.
Reporters, when checking Trump, have his statement in front of them and they have time to research it, check dates and numbers, and other aspects of the statements. They also have editors and fact checkers available to them, so they must be held to a higher standard to be fair to President Trump. For them mixing opinions and facts, even expert opinions, should not be allowed, and they should not mix up dates and numbers. That sort of accuracy is expected in their profession. So, in that sense I am holding Trump and the media to different standards.
Summary
A critical flaw in the news media’s coverage of Trump and many other issues today is their systematic reliance on “expert opinion.” This encourages “expert” shopping, that is searching for someone with academic credentials that hold the opinion that the reporter wants. Since the news media routinely allows substituting expert opinions for verifiable facts, this causes the spread of silly and obviously false stories, like the Russia hoax, Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and the like.
Both of these stories were known to be wrong long before they stopped appearing in the news media. The FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2019 and concluded it was genuine well before the 2020 election and before the “51 intelligence officials” illegally claimed it was Russian disinformation (also see here). Major investigations by Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence committee found no Trump-Russia collusion before that narrative collapsed in the media. The famous Durham Report criticized the Justice Department and Robert Mueller for starting the Russia Collusion Inquiry without a proper “predicate.” That is, Durham concluded that neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community had sufficient grounds to initiate the Russia Collusion or “Crossfire Hurricane” investigations.
It was public knowledge, as early as 2019 (CBS News) that the investigation was based on “the thinnest of suspicions.” According to the Senate Report to Senator Grassley’s committee, the FBI knew the Steele Report was opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign and flawed in November 2016 when they fired Christopher Steele for cause. So, the media carrying on about Trump-Russia collusion for years cost them considerable credibility, just when alternative sources for news were springing up on the Internet.
These unfounded stories and the unverifiable accusations of Trump lying have destroyed the news media’s credibility. Unfortunately, the current mass news media has become a genre of reality TV, it is entertainment not news.
This is part 3 of a three-part series on Trump and his problems with the media and the deep state. The first two parts are: on the Lawfare against Trump and the 2020 election.
