More than two-thirds of every factual claim made by President Trump at two of his rallies turns out to be false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.
In July, The Fact Checker examined every factual claim[1] made by the president at a rally in Montana. He returned to Montana on Sept. 6, and we decided once again to put every statement of material fact to the truth test to see whether the July rally was an outlier.
In July, 76 percent of his 98 statements were false, misleading or unsupported by the evidence. Last week the tally, out of 88 statements, was 68 percent. The average percentage for the two rallies was 72 percent.
Trump may have done slightly better, fact-wise, at the more recent rally because he spoke more about bills he had signed and actions he had taken. But he veered off course with his tendency to unnecessarily hype good economic data with assertions that it was the best in U.S. history.
We didn’t double-count statements when the president repeated himself, or else the number of false claims would be higher. We avoided trivialities or opinions. (Two comments he made on Sept. 6 about Democratic candidates in other states might be fairly viewed as opinions, so they were not included.)
Here’s a breakdown for the Sept. 6 rally: 36 false statements, 22 misleading statements and two unsupported claims. We also counted 28 accurate or mostly accurate statements.
All told, on Sept. 6, only 32 percent of his statements could be considered accurate or mostly accurate. At both events, at least 40 percent of his claims were false or
