Washington
CNN
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A Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election lists at least 27 lies Trump told about the election – and that’s counting conservatively.

The new indictment, handed up Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, is the second indictment this month to function as a kind of prosecutorial fact check of the former president’s relentless campaign of election-related dishonesty. A federal indictment in early August, which also charged Trump for his efforts to subvert the will of the voters, listed 21 of his election lies.

There is significant overlap between the lies identified in the two indictments, but the Fulton County document lays out more of his false claims about Georgia in particular. Trump uttered many of those claims during a January 2, 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to give him a victory in the state Joe Biden had won.

The Fulton County indictment – in which Trump was charged with making false statements to Raffensperger and in a court filing and engaging in a conspiracy to try to use phony pro-Trump electors, among other crimes – also lays out numerous lies from some of the 18 Trump allies who have been charged alongside him, notably including a large number of falsehoods from his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani. This article is specifically about lies attributed to Trump himself.

1. Trump’s lie that he was the real winner of the 2020 election. (Page 20 of the indictment)

This is Trump’s overarching lie about the election. He lost fair and square to Biden, 306-232 in the Electoral College, and there is no evidence of fraud even close to widespread enough to have altered the outcome in any state.

2. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was “corrupt.” (Page 45)

The Fulton County indictment, like the federal election subversion indictment, alleges that on December 27, 2020, Trump said the following in a conversation with two senior Justice Department officials, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Donoghue memorialized this purported Trump remark in his handwritten notes.)

3. Trump’s lie that he won Georgia in 2020. (Pages 44 and 52)

Trump has repeated this lie even though the last of the state’s three vote counts, completed in early December 2020, showed that he lost to Biden by 11,779 votes – and though the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state certified the election and have steadfastly affirmed its legitimacy. The Fulton County indictment alleges that, in a December 23, 2020 call with the chief investigator for Raffensperger’s office, Trump falsely claimed that he had won Georgia “by hundreds of thousands of votes.” The indictment also notes that on the January 2, 2021 phone call with Raffensperger, Trump falsely said, “And the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes. At least.”

4. Trump’s lie that he “also won the other Swing States” in 2020. (Page 46)

He did not win those states – at least not the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – but made this categorical assertion anyway in a December 30, 2020 tweet.

5. Trump’s lie that there was “massive VOTER FRAUD” in Georgia. (Page 48)

Trump made this false claim in another tweet on December 30, 2020. There is no proof of massive fraud in Georgia or in any other state in 2020.

6. Trump’s lie that “the number of false and/or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result.” (Page 68)

Trump made this false claim in a letter to Raffensperger in September 2021 in which he sought the decertification of Biden’s win in Georgia nearly eight full months after Biden was sworn in as president – an impossibility.

7. Trump’s lie about a supposedly mysterious drop of Georgia ballots. (Page 51)

Trump falsely claimed on the January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger that “anywhere from 250-300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” in Georgia. In reality, there were no mysterious ballot drops. What happened was that legal ballots were counted as normal and added to the public totals as normal; ballots from urban areas that generally took longer to finish their counts tended to favor Biden.

8. Trump’s lie about ballots being “dumped” into Fulton County and an adjacent county. (Page 88)

Trump falsely claimed on the call with Raffensperger that “if you check with Fulton County, you’ll have hundreds of thousands” of improper votes “because they dumped ballots into Fulton County and the other county next to it.” This did not happen.

9. Trump’s lie that “close to 5,000” Georgia ballots were cast in the names of deceased people. (Pages 9 and 88)

When Trump made this false claim on the call, Raffensperger told him the actual number of ballots cast in the names of deceased people was just two; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.

When the Trump campaign in late 2020 provided some specific examples of ballots supposedly being cast under deceased Georgia residents’ names, its claims were quickly debunked. For example, CNN found that a ballot the Trump campaign claimed had been cast in the name of the deceased Deborah Jean Christiansen had actually been cast legally by a living Georgia resident who happened to also be named Deborah Jean Christiansen. (The indictment notes that Trump raised the number of supposed dead voters even higher, at “as many as 10,315 or more” dead voters, in a December 2020 legal filing.)

10. Trump’s lie that “about 4,502” people voted in Georgia even though they weren’t on the voter registration list. (Page 51) Raffensperger wrote in his 2021 book that “our investigation confirmed all voters were registered” and that no evidence was ever presented to support this claim Trump made on the call.

11. Trump’s lie that a Fulton County elections worker stuffed the ballot box. (Page 88)

Trump has repeatedly lied about Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman, falsely claiming to Raffensperger on the call that she had been caught on video stuffing the ballot box and that she, her daughter and others at a Fulton County ballot counting site had fraudulently awarded Biden a minimum of 18,000 votes. In fact, Freeman, her daughter and the other workers did nothing wrong – as Raffensperger told Trump and as top Justice Department officials Rosen and Donoghue testified to Congress they had told Trump directly in late 2020. Freeman and her daughter were fully exonerated by a state investigation.

12. Trump’s lie that Freeman is a “professional vote scammer.” (Page 88)

Trump told this lie to Raffensperger on the call. Again, Freeman committed no wrongdoing.

13. Trump’s lie that that there were “thousands and thousands” of people in Georgia who were told at voting places on Election Day that they couldn’t vote because a ballot had already been cast in their name. (Page 88)

This is another fictitious claim Trump made on the call with Raffensperger. Raffensperger wrote in his book, “There are no reports of thousands and thousands of voters being told they couldn’t vote. If this had occurred, it would have made national news.”

14. Trump’s lie that, during the phone call, Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 52)

In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims during their conversation.

15. Trump’s lie that “as many as 2,560 felons with an uncompleted sentence” were permitted to vote in Georgia. (Page 86)

Trump made this false claim in the December 2020 legal filing. Raffensperger wrote in a January 6, 2021 letter to Congress that an analysis by his team had found that the maximum number of possible felon voters in the 2020 election was 74 and that all of those voters were under investigation. (His office did not respond this week to a request for an update on the probe, but nonetheless, Trump’s “as many as 2,560” figure wasn’t even close.)

16. Trump’s lie that Georgia had “at least 66,247” underage voters. (Page 49)

This claim in the December 2020 legal filing was entirely baseless. Raffensperger wrote in his January 6, 2021 letter to Congress that his office had determined that the actual number of underage voters was zero.

17. Trump’s lies about people voting in Georgia while registered with only a post office box. (Pages 49 and 88)

Trump asserted in the December 2020 legal filing that “at least 1,043 individuals” had voted in Georgia after illegally registering to vote using a post office box as their dwelling; on the subsequent call with Raffensperger, he put the number at 904 people. Both figures were baseless. Raffensperger wrote in his letter to Congress that a simple Google search showed that many of the addresses Trump allies had called post office boxes “are actually apartments.”

18. Trump’s lie that states knew their certified vote totals were “based on irregularities and fraud.” (Page 63)

Trump made this baseless claim in a January 6, 2021, tweet while pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to send Biden electoral votes back to the states. While some Trump allies in state legislatures certainly believed their states’ vote totals were inaccurate, that was never the view of the election chiefs and governors who were actually responsible for certification – because it wasn’t true.

19. Trump’s lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 57, 60-62)

Pence had repeatedly, and correctly, told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. Trump’s White House lawyers agreed. Like the federal indictment in early August, the Fulton County indictment notes that Trump nonetheless kept insisting that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, 2021, and in Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech in Washington at a rally before the riot at the US Capitol that day.

20. Trump’s lie that Pence agreed with him about the vice president’s powers. (Page 61)

On January 5, 2021, Trump had his campaign issue a statement that falsely said “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” But Pence had repeatedly told Trump, including earlier that day, that he did not agree.

21. Trump’s lie that “in Detroit, we had, I think it was, 139% of the people voted.” (Page 88)

Trump made this false claim on the call with Raffensperger. Detroit actually had 51% turnout.

22. Trump’s lie that “in Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.” (Page 88)

The federal indictment notes that Rosen and Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false before he repeated it on the call with Raffensperger and then in his January 6, 2021 rally speech.

23. Trump’s broader lies about the election in Pennsylvania. (Page 21)

The indictment notes that Trump made false statements about supposed election fraud in Pennsylvania when he called into a November 25, 2020, meeting of state legislators that also featured false statements by Giuliani. (The indictment doesn’t say what false statements Trump made, but there were several, including the lie that he “won Pennsylvania by a lot” and vague but baseless claims about dead voters and Dominion voting machines. He lost the state by 80,555 votes.)

24. Trump’s lies about the election in Arizona. (Page 23)

The indictment notes that Trump made false claims about supposed election fraud in Arizona when he called into a November 30, 2020, meeting of state legislators there. (The indictment doesn’t specify these false statements either, but they included the lie that he won Arizona “by a lot.”)

25. Trump’s lie that thousands of dead people voted in Michigan. (Page 51)

Trump falsely claimed on the call with Raffensperger that Michigan had a “tremendous number” of dead voters, tentatively putting it at 18,000. That figure is baseless; online claims about large numbers of deceased voters in Michigan were quickly debunked in 2020 by CNN and others.

An election investigation by a Republican-led Michigan state Senate committee found that, of a list of over 200 supposed dead-voter cases in Wayne County, home to Detroit, there were no voter fraud cases at all – and only two cases where it even “appeared” that a deceased person had voted. Both had benign explanations: one was a clerical error involving a legal voter who is the son of a deceased voter with the same name, while the other involved a woman who had submitted her ballot and then died four days before Election Day

26. Trump’s broader lies about supposed election fraud in Michigan. (Page 21)

The indictment says that Trump made false claims about supposed fraud in Michigan during a November 20 meeting in the Oval Office with state Republican legislators. The indictment doesn’t specify what Trump said at the meeting, but the previous federal indictment mentions that, at this meeting, Trump “raised his false claim, among others, of an illegitimate vote dump in Detroit.” The federal indictment says the state Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, responded by telling Trump that the president had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because he had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”

27. Trump’s lie that phony pro-Trump electors were real electors. (Page 76 and others)

The Fulton County indictment, like the federal indictment, alleges that Trump was heavily involved in the scheme to put forward slates of fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in swing states won by Biden, saying that Trump and multiple allies “unlawfully conspired to cause certain individuals to falsely hold themselves out as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia” with the intention of deceiving Pence, Raffensperger, the country’s chief archivist and the chief district court judge for the Northern District of Georgia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With Donald Trump facing felony charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories about his defeat.

It’s part of a multiyear effort to undermine public confidence in the American electoral process as he seeks to chart a return to the White House in 2024. There is evidence that his lies are resonating: New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 57% of Republicans believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president.

Here are the facts about Trump’s loss in the last presidential election:

REVIEWS AND RECOUNTS CONFIRM BIDEN’S VICTORY

Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was not particularly close. He won the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots.

Because the Electoral College ultimately determines the presidency, the race was decided by a few battleground states. Many of those states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of the results, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory.

In Arizona, a six-month review of ballots in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, that was commissioned by Republican state legislators not only affirmed Biden’s victory but determined that he should have won by 306 more votes than the officially certified statewide margin of 10,457.

In Georgia, where Trump was recently indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 result there, state officials led by both a Republican governor and secretary of state recertified Biden’s win after conducting three statewide counts. The final official recount narrowed Biden’s victory in the state from just shy of 13,000 votes to just shy of 12,000 votes.

In Michigan, a committee led by Republican state senators concluded there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the state in 2020 after conducting a monthslong investigation. Michigan, where Biden defeated Trump by almost 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, was less competitive compared with other battleground states, although the result in Wayne County, home of Detroit, was targeted by Trump and his supporters with unfounded voter fraud claims, as were key urban jurisdictions across the country.

In Nevada, the then-secretary of state, Republican Barbara Cegavske, and her office reviewed tens of thousands of allegations of possible voter fraud identified by the Nevada Republican Party but found that almost all were based on incomplete information and a lack of understanding of the state’s voting and registration procedures. For example, Cegavske’s investigation found that of 1,506 alleged instances of ballots being cast in the name of deceased individuals, only 10 warranted further investigation by law enforcement. Similarly, 10 out of 1,778 allegations of double-voting called for further investigation. Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes, or 2.4 percentage points.

In Pennsylvania, the final certified results had Biden with an 80,555-vote margin over Trump, or 1.2 percentage points. Efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s election failed in state and federal courts, while no prosecutor, judge or election official in Pennsylvania has raised a concern about widespread fraud. State Republicans continue to attempt their own review of the 2020 results, but that effort has been tied up in the courts and Democrats have called it a “partisan fishing expedition.”

In Wisconsin, a recount slightly improved Biden’s victory over Trump by 87 votes, increasing Biden’s statewide lead to 20,682, or 0.6 percentage points. A nonpartisan audit that concluded a year after the election made recommendations on how to improve future elections in Wisconsin but did not uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state, leading the Republican co-chair of the audit committee to declare that “the election was largely safe and secure.” The state’s Assembly speaker, a Republican, ordered a separate review, which a state judge said found “absolutely no evidence of election fraud.”

AP INVESTIGATION FINDS MINIMAL VOTER FRAUD IN SWING STATES

An exhaustive AP investigation in 2021 found fewer than 475 instances of confirmed voter fraud across six battleground states — nowhere near the magnitude required to sway the outcome of the presidential election.

The review of ballots and records from more than 300 local elections offices found that almost every instance of voter fraud was committed by individuals acting alone and not the result of a massive, coordinated conspiracy to rig the election. The cases involved both registered Democrats and Republicans, and the culprits were almost always caught before the fraudulent ballot was counted.

Some of the cases appeared to be intentional attempts to commit fraud, while others seemed to involve either administrative error or voter confusion, including the case of one Wisconsin man who cast a ballot for Trump but said he was unaware that he was ineligible to vote because he was on parole for a felony conviction.

The AP review also produced no evidence to support Trump’s claims that states tabulated more votes than there are registered voters.

Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

TRUMP’S OWN ADMINISTRATION FOUND NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD

Trump was repeatedly advised by members of his own administration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

Nine days after the 2020 election, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” The statement was co-written by the groups representing the top elections officials in every state.

Less than three weeks later, then-Attorney General William Barr declared that a Justice Department investigation had not uncovered evidence of the widespread voter fraud that Trump had claimed was at the center of a massive conspiracy to steal the election. Barr, who had directed U.S. attorneys and FBI agents across the country to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, said, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The Jan. 6 House committee report details additional instances where administration officials and White House staff refuted Trump’s various allegations of voter fraud.

COURTS HEARD TRUMP’S LEGAL CHALLENGES AND REJECTED THEM

The Trump campaign and its backers pursued numerous legal challenges to the election in court and alleged a variety of voter fraud and misconduct. The cases were heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at both state and federal levels, including by judges whom Trump appointed.

One of them, U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, was on a federal panel that declined a request to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its results, saying, “Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected several efforts in the weeks after Election Day to overturn the election results in various battleground states that Biden won.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT VOTING MACHINES WERE UNFOUNDED

Many of the claims Trump and his team advanced about a stolen election dealt with the equipment voters used to cast their ballots.

At various times, Trump and his legal team falsely alleged that voting machines were built in Venezuela at the direction of President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013; that machines were designed to delete or flip votes cast for Trump; and that the U.S. Army had seized a computer server in Germany that held secrets to U.S. voting irregularities.

None of those claims was ever substantiated or corroborated. CISA’s joint statement released after the election said, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

Nonetheless, many of these and other unfounded claims were repeated on Fox News, both by members of the Trump team as well as by some of the network’s on-air personalities. Dominion Voting Systems sued the network for $1.6 billion, claiming the outlet’s airing of these allegations amounted to defamation.

Records of internal communications at Fox News unearthed in the case showed that the network aired the claims even though its biggest stars, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as well as the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, did not believe they were true.

Dominion and Fox News settled out of court for $787.5 million.

CLAIMS INVOLVING SUITCASES AND BALLOT MULES ARE DEBUNKED

Trump and his supporters also have claimed that a number of other factors contributed to a broader effort to steal the presidential election.

One theory advanced by both Trump and one of his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, is that “suitcases” full of fraudulent ballots in Georgia cost Trump the election there.

Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told the Jan. 6 House committee that he personally reviewed the video purported to show the fraud allegation in question. He recounted telling Trump: “It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.”

State and county officials also had confirmed the containers were regular ballot containers on wheels, which are used in normal ballot processing.

But a week later, Trump publicly repeated the suitcase theory, saying, “There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”

Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, told the Jan. 6 committee that, days later, he told Trump that “these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true. … We looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses.” But Trump continued to repeat the false claim.

Another debunked claim spinning a tale of 2,000 so-called ballot mules was featured in a film that ran in hundreds of theaters last spring. The film alleges that Democrat-aligned individuals were paid to illegally collect and drop ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the AP determined that the allegations were based on flawed analysis of cellphone location data and drop box surveillance footage.

___

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

Vivek Ramaswamy lies a lot. 

Last month, at the first Republican presidential debate, he called climate change a “hoax” and said “more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change,” which is not remotely true. 

He also has claimed we don’t know “the truth about Jan. 6” and spread baseless conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 — and when caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, he said that he was misquoted (which is also a lie). He has denied criticizing Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, even though he did so in a book published just last year. And he has supported masking during the COVID-19 pandemic, pardoning Hunter Biden and cutting U.S. aid for Israel. When asked about each claim, Ramaswamy denied making them — all easily provable falsehoods.

Ramaswamy lies so much that even Donald Trump thinks “he’s starting to get out there a little bit.”

The irony of all this lying is that Ramaswamy is running his campaign based on a set of what he calls “truths.” These include rather uncontroversial statements like “there are three branches of the U.S. government, not four,” but also claims such as “God is real,” “human flourishing requires fossil fuels” and “the U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.”

These latter ones are opinions. 

Indeed, Ramaswamy lies so much that even Donald Trump thinks “he’s starting to get out there a little bit.” 

Like Trump, whose political playbook Ramaswamy seems to be mimicking, the first-time candidate also likes to float ludicrous ideas that will appeal to Republican voters. 

When asked a few days after the debate if former Vice President Mike Pence should have certified the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, Ramaswamy said that he should have demonstrated courage by stopping the proceedings and insisted that Congress immediately pass an electoral reform law. But Pence had no power to do such a thing, major pieces of legislation are generally not passed on a whim, and there wasn’t even majority support among lawmakers for Ramaswamy’s voting measures.  

His proposal to end the Ukraine war by traveling to Moscow to convince Vladimir Putin to abandon his partnership with China and ally himself with the United States is even more far-fetched.

In a normal political environment, such brazen dishonesty and ludicrous policy ideas would disqualify Ramaswamy from office. Yet Ramaswamy is enjoying a bit of a boomlet. Despite his deception-filled debate performance, his poll numbers actually moved upward, and he is suddenly getting new media attention. 

The root of Donald Trump’s success in 2016 was not that he told GOP voters the truth. It’s that he told them even bigger and bolder lies.

It makes sense because, in the modern GOP, a candidate lying is hardly a reason for disqualification. Republican voters don’t mind that their presidential candidates tell them lies — it’s actually what they want. 

The root of Donald Trump’s success in 2016 was not that he told GOP voters the truth. It’s that he told them even bigger and bolder lies. For years, Republican politicians pledged to stop illegal immigration. What did Trump do? He said he’d build a wall, and Mexico would pay for it. It was obvious that this would never happen, and in four years he never finished the wall, nor did Mexico cough up the money. Yet that did not lessen his support. Years into Trump’s presidency, I attended political events in which his supporters earnestly told me that the wall had, in fact, been built. 

GOP leaders said they’d repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump promised not only to repeal it, but replace it with something better. Republicans talked about limiting Muslim immigration from Syria — Trump said he’d ban it altogether.

Other Republicans flirted with questioning Barack Obama’s birthplace. Trump not only fully embraced “birtherism,” he insisted he had sources to prove Obama wasn’t an American. (And when he finally admitted in 2016 that Obama was born in the U.S., he falsely blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the “birther” controversy.) 

Trump also said he would prosecute Clinton, hire the best people and “clean up the swamp” in Washington. None of that happened. During his impeachment over his efforts to coerce Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, he claimed that his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “perfect,” even though anyone listening to it could tell that it wasn’t. After he lost the 2020 presidential election, he claimed that the election had been stolen from him — even though there was no evidence of widespread fraud. 

At last month’s GOP debate, Chris Christie and Pence told hard truths about Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and his assault on the Constitution. Both got booed. That’s hardly a surprise, when 70% of Republicans think Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was illegitimate. 

GOP voters aren’t looking for honest candidates; they want ones who will tell them what they want to hear.

This week, Sen. Ted Cruz went on Newsmax to complain that the Biden administration wants to limit Americans to two beers a week (it’s actually a recommendation). Like the recurrent attack on Democrats for regulating gas stoves and ceiling fans, it gets cheered by Republicans. 

You’d think that Republican voters would catch on to the fact that they are perennially taken for ride after ride. But if anything, the opposite occurs — they seek out politicians willing to confirm their views. GOP voters aren’t looking for honest candidates; they want ones who will tell them what they want to hear. No matter how outlandish the lie, ludicrous the claim, or far-fetched the policy idea, Republican voters have consistently shown that they will believe what their party leaders tell them — and will not punish them when their campaign promises don’t materialize. The only ones that get punished are the ones that attempt to puncture their world view.

Ramaswamy is just offering more of the same. He’s merely using what has been obvious for years: When it comes to Republican voters, you can in fact fool most of the people all the time.

Wait a minute … that can’t be true.

Through the year, we at PolitiFact say that a lot, as we fact-check false statements from the campaign trail, the Oval Office and social media. Although we say mostly that things are false or misleading, we save “lie” for Lie of the Year — the mendacious statement, or statements, that undermined the truth most significantly in the previous 12 calendar months.

For 2023, the distinction goes to the conspiracy theories of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. 

Here’s a look at PolitiFact’s Lies of the Year going back to its 2009 debut.

2022: Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his statements that obfuscated truths about the war in Ukraine

Putin deployed a highly sophisticated propaganda machine — hundreds of websites, state-run media, social media channels, fake fact-checking and oppressive censorship laws — to wage an unprovoked war and join history’s most brutal authoritarians. Putin disseminated ruthless falsehoods — that Ukraine was committing genocide or under neo-Nazis’ leadership, for example — to co-opt Russian citizens whose family members would be sent to fight a war, kill others and perhaps die themselves. 

2021:Lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and its significance

On Jan. 6, 2021, after then-U.S. President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Although live news footage and videos from participants provided inescapable evidence of what happened, claims that Jan. 6 was an antifa operation, a false flag, a tourist visit or an uneventful, forgettable day persisted and proliferated throughout the year.

2020: Coronavirus downplay and denial

Lies about COVID-19 infected America in 2020, as conspiracy theories and misinformation, including that new coronavirus was overblown, and maybe a hoax, spread. These lies hampered the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic and the worst of them were not just damaging, but deadly.

2019: Trump’s claim that whistleblower got Ukraine call “almost completely wrong“

A whistleblower raised concerns that Trump’s actions leading up to a July 2019 phone call the then-president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amounted to 2020 presidential election interference. Trump, incensed, worked to discredit the whistleblower, but the complaint sparked months of investigation and Trump’s first impeachment in the House. More than 80 times, Trump insisted the whistleblower’s account was incorrect, “total fiction” and “almost completely wrong.” But the record of the call as released by the White House combined with under-oath testimony from career diplomats and other officials validate the whistleblower’s account.

2018: Online smear machine tries to take down Parkland students

After 17 people were viciously gunned down at a Parkland, Florida, high school, students advocated for action against gun violence. Then came the lies, as the students were called “crisis actors” and worse. With polarization high and bipartisanship scarce, the attacks on the Parkland students sparked shared outrage in nearly all political corners.

2017: Russian election interference is a “made-up story”

Trump continually asserted that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election was fake news, a hoax or made up, despite widespread, bipartisan evidence to the contrary. Classified and public reports and U.S. intelligence agencies said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered actions to interfere with the election.

2016: Fake news

Although conspiracy theories have long been part of America’s political conversation, they surged online in 2016. Fake news found a willing enabler in then-Republican presidential candidate Trump, who repeated and legitimized fabricated reports. We defined fake news as fabricated information that was manipulated to look as if it were credible news reporting for easy online spreading.

2015: The campaign misstatements of Trump

From dubious accounts of his own record and words to “thousands and thousands” of people cheering in New Jersey on Sept. 11, 2001, Trump’s inaccurate statements in 2015 exhibited boldness and a disregard for the truth previously unseen in a presidential candidate. By December 2015, PolitiFact had rated 76% of Trump’s claims Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. No other politician had clocked more falsehoods on our Truth-O-Meter, and our only real contenders for Lie of the Year were Trump’s.

2014: Exaggerations about Ebola

In 2014, there were just two Ebola-related deaths in the United States, yet exaggerated claims from politicians and pundits stoked fear of the disease nationwide. Claims included that Ebola was easy to catch, that immigrants illegally in the country may have been carrying the virus and that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy.

2013: President Barack Obama: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

Obama and other Democrats claimed this when touting the Affordable Care Act. but reducing the complicated health care law to a sound bite proved treacherous. In fall 2013, people started to receive insurance cancellation notices, proving the statement was wrong. Worsening matters, Obama and his team suggested the claim had been misunderstood. To quell the political uproar, Obama issued a rare presidential apology.

2012: Mitt Romney campaign’s ad on Jeeps made in China

When Romney ran for president in 2012, his presidential campaign launched an ad claiming that Jeep was pulling its plants out of Ohio, a critical swing state, and moving production to China. But the Ohio Jeep plants weren’t going anywhere; the moves in China were to expand into the Chinese auto market. Negative press coverage deluged Romney’s campaign; he lost in Ohio, a key battleground state, and then the election.

2011: “Republicans voted to end Medicare.”

Democrats absorbed two years of Republicans’ false charges about the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Then, they turned the tables, slamming House Republicans for voting for a cost-cutting budget resolution from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.. Democrats claimed that voting for this resolution amounted to voting to end Medicare, but Ryan never proposed ending Medicare. He wanted to bring more private insurers into the program. Democrats later altered their talking point to say Republicans wanted to end Medicare “as we know it.”

2010: ‘”A government takeover of health care”

As the Affordable Care Act moved toward enactment, Republicans repeated that the law was a government takeover of health care, though it wasn’t. “Government takeover” connotes a European approach in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. The Affordable Care Act, by contrast, relied largely on the free market and in no way nationalized the country’s health system.

2009: Sarah Palin and “death panels”

Former Alaska Gov. and 2008 vice presidential candidate Palin had PolitiFact’s very first Lie of the Year — that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels.” The idea of government boards that would supposedly determine whether seniors and people with disabilities were worthy of care, was wholly fictional. The law didn’t, and doesn’t, call for death panels. But in 2009, about 30% of the public believed the health care law did include them.

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A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. And that was before Twitter (X) came along—which explains why the canard that there was an “assassination attempt” on Donald Trump—spread like wildfire.

It all started when self-described conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly flagged a newly unsealed FBI document authorizing officers to use “deadly force” when searching Mar-a-Lago. And then, a lie that started in the fever swamps quickly made its way into mainstream conservative media, as well as the social media platforms of prominent Republicans.

Attorney General “Merrick Garland basically issued a kill order for President Trump,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. For his part, Trump claimed that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

Never mind that the wording was boilerplate. Never mind that the same verbiage reportedly appeared in similar FBI documents when they searched Biden’s house.

Never mind that the FBI executed the warrant when Trump was in New York (not at Mar-a-Lago). And never mind that Trump’s team has previously argued that a president could be immune from prosecution for killing a political rival.

Even if you put all of that aside, the “assassination” allegation was patently absurd. That’s because people who push these ideas are basically asking you to believe two mutually exclusive things.

They assert that a nearly omnipotent Deep State is being controlled by Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. This evil cabal set about using the Mar-a-Lago raid as a pretext to assassinate Trump.

The problem? Why would a super powerful conspiracy need to use the Mar-a-Lago raid as an excuse to murder Trump?

Imagine the fallout if Trump had been killed during the raid. If the FBI really wanted to assassinate Trump, wouldn’t they have simply made it look like he died of a heart attack?

If the goal was to kill Trump, would the FBI be so inept and clumsy as to execute the search warrant when Trump was out of the state of Florida and in New York? Wouldn’t an organization with unlimited resources be competent enough to know that Trump was 1,200 miles away?

Additionally, why would they put their plans in writing? And if they did, wouldn’t a Deep State this powerful and this determined be smart enough to prevent the unsealing of a document that would incriminate them?

In short, the right-wing conspiracy theorists want you to believe a) that a nearly omnipotent confederacy of powerful intel organizations is plotting something evil, yet b) is too incompetent to execute the plan—or cover it up. Foiled again!

Imagine a political party that includes “leaders” who are evil enough to invent such an idea, and lemmings who are gullible enough to believe it.

Of course, when it comes to conspiracy theories, such logical fallacies are par for the course. Years ago, I read an essay written by conservative movement leader Morton Blackwell that warned that such conspiracy theories tend to deliver an unintended consequence for the side that spreads them.

Regarding the old right’s penchant for falling for crazy ideas, Blackwell recalled that “Many conservatives became so convinced of the overwhelming power and cleverness of one or more of these conspiracies that they sank into despair and virtually ceased political activity.”

“After all,” Blackwell continued, “if one is faced with opposition so powerful and so clever that defeat is inevitable, why bother to do anything about it except to complain?”

There’s nothing new under the sun… except this: Once upon a time, such conspiracies were the work of fringe actors, such as the John Birch Society. Today, they are promulgated by popular Fox News hosts, Republican members of Congress, and even the former president of the United States of America.

And while these machinations inevitably harm the perpetrators (who could forget Trump stupidly telling Republicans not to vote by mail), they also pose a real danger to the rest of us.

Stop for a moment and consider the logical response that a misguided (ostensibly patriotic) American would have if they truly believed that the so-called “Deep State” was trying to assassinate a past (and future?) president.

If Trump cult members were incited to riot on Jan. 6 (when they were told an election had been stolen), what might an assassination attempt on Dear Leader inspire?

It goes without saying that it is utterly irresponsible and dangerous to falsely assert that a current president attempted to assassinate his political rival. One might even equate it to yelling “fire” in a theater.

What is more, this lie, like the Big Lie (the false claim the 2020 election was stolen), will live on forever.

And while bad actors are pushing it, not enough good actors are pushing back. Indeed, too many of the referees focused on pedantic criticisms of Biden have remained largely silent on this much bigger lie.

The bottom line is that no decent or sane person should, in my estimation, support a politician who advances such a dangerous lie.

The real scandal is that so many of them are poised to do just that.

Former President Donald Trump has lashed out against President Biden’s repeated false claims over the past few weeks, including the Democrat’s latest gaffe about 9/11. 

“Look at all the lies he’d told,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker in his first network news interview since leaving office aired Sunday. 

“Look at all the lies he’s told over the past couple of weeks. He said he was at the World Trade Center, and he wasn’t,” Trump said. “He said he flew airplanes. He didn’t. He said he drove trucks, and he didn’t. Everything he says is like a lie. It’s terrible.” 

 Trump added that Biden claimed to have a golf handicap of six, which means he shoots six over par on average – an impressive score for a non-professional. 

“He’s not a six,” Trump added over Welker’s interjection. 

Welker, who newly took over the program from former host Chuck Todd, said she wanted to focus on Trump, not Biden, during the interview because “it’s important that we hear from you.” 

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“Well, I’d like you to, but you keep interrupting me,” Trump said. 

At a 9/11 remembrance event at a military base in Alaska last week, Biden falsely claimed that he visited Ground Zero the day after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. By contrast, Trump did visit Ground Zero days after the 2001 attacks, as evidenced in archived photos taken in Manhattan. 

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby avoided a question about 80-year-old Biden’s 9/11 gaffe last week. 

“In the past couple of weeks, the president has lied about being at Ground Zero the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, falsely claimed he saw the Pittsburgh bridge collapse, claimed his grandfather died in the hospital days before his birth,” The Washington Times reporter Jeff Mordock posed during a White House press briefing. “What is going on with the president? Is he just believing things that didn’t happen, did happen? Or is he just randomly making stuff up?”

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“The president was deeply touched and honored to be able to spend 9/11 with military members there in Alaska and some families,” Kirby said in response. “And he spoke about a visit to Ground Zero, which he did participate in about a week or so after the event. And what that looked and what that smelled and what that felt like. And it has visceral impact on him as it did so many other Americans on that terrible day. And he’s focused on making sure that an attack like that never happens again.”  

Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden’s conduct. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was seen walking off during her daily briefing when a member of the press pool asked her to respond to a recent poll suggesting 61% of Americans believe Biden lied about his alleged involvement in the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden. 

In the interview Sunday, Welker also asked Trump, “Mr. President, tell me what you see when you look at your mugshot.“

“I see somebody that loves this country in me. That loves this country,” Trump began. “I see tremendous unfairness. I think very few people would have been able to handle what I handled.”

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In the case related to Mar-a-Lago, Welker asked Trump about a new charge alleging the former president asked a staffer to delete security camera footage so it wouldn’t get into the hands of investigators. Trump’s response criticized the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Jack Smith. 

“False,” Trump said, agreeing he would testify to that under oath. “It’s a fake charge by this deranged lunatic prosecutor who lost in the Supreme Court 9 to nothing, and he tried to destroy lots of lives. He’s a lunatic, so it’s a fake charge, but, more importantly, the tapes weren’t deleted. In other words, there was nothing done to them. And, they were my tapes.”