Why critics call Donald Trump a chronic liar

Unlike most politicians, Donald Trump, does not simply exaggerate, distort or mislead. He tells outright lies that are easily disproved. Here is a small sampling of some of Trump’s whoppers:

A) Trump lied about US immigration policy for Muslims vs. Christians.

B) Trump lied about seeing thousands of Muslims cheering in New Jersey on 9/11.

C) Trump lied about Obama releasing “vicious prisoners” from Guantanamo Bay.

D) Trump lied about Mexico paying for the border wall.

Trump insisted before, during and after the election that Mexico would pay for the border wall he wanted to build, despite the fact that the Mexican government said they would never pay for any wall. Shortly after becoming president, he asked Congress to appropriate taxpayer’s money for the wall and made no mention of Mexico paying for it.

Trump now claims he always meant that Mexico would pay for the wall through improved trade agreements. However, even if an improvement with our trade deficit with Mexico occurred, that money doesn’t go into the treasury and it couldn’t be used to pay for the wall.

E) Trump lied for years about releasing his taxes.

Every presidential candidate since the 1960s has voluntarily released several years of tax returns to be viewed by the public and the media. This is a good faith gesture to prove they have nothing to hide. After promising for years to release his income taxes – even saying that he would be “happy” to do so – Trump announced after the election that he would not release any of his tax returns. He clearly never intended to do so and lied about it throughout the campaign.

F) Trump lied about opposing the Iraq War.

Mr. Trump claims he had opposed the war in Iraq, but in 2002 he told Howard Stern that he supported an Iraq invasion. In an interview on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.

“Yeah I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

There is no record of Trump ever publicly opposing the invasion of Iraq before the war started. Ironically, he now says we never should have left Iraq. We should have, according to Trump, stayed in Iraq so we could take all their oil.

“And I said, take the oil when we leave. But we shouldn’t have really left.”

Now let’s look at the Trump/Russia scandal in greater detail.

The complete list of Trump’s connections with Russian leader Vladimir Putin are too numerous to list here. Although Trump frequently repeats “No collusion” like his personal mantra, many of his friends, allies and campaign workers have been indicted and convicted of crimes in the Russia investigation.

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, worked for a long time helping Russian President Vladimir Putin install his handpicked politicians in places like Ukraine. Due to Manafort’s long involvement with Putin, he had been under investigation by US intelligence long before he worked for Trump.

As Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort gave analytical polling data to suspected Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik. This data would enable them to carefully target the people and regions of the country to influence the 2016 election.

Manafort later went to prison for lying to prosecutors to conceal the fact that he gave this data to the Russians.

In June of 2016, Donald Trump Jr. responded to an email from a Russian lawyer who said the Russian government wanted to give him dirt on Hillary Clinton, by saying “I love it”. Soon afterward, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner all met with the Russian lawyer who said that Russia wanted to help Trump win.

When asked about this later, Trump Jr. lied and said the meeting had nothing to do with the campaign.

Just weeks after receiving the offer of help from the Russian lawyer, Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to release dirt on Hillary Clinton in order to help him win the election. Trump promised that Russia would be “richly rewarded” for this. In the same speech he mentioned lifting sanctions against Russia. Investigations later revealed that Russia did, in fact, obtain information about Hillary Clinton and leak it to help Trump get elected. It was also revealed that Trump adviser Michael Flynn discussed lifting sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

In 2016, the Republican Party had a plank in their party platform that was highly critical of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. After Trump secured the needed delegates to win the Republican nomination, the Trump campaign quietly changed the Republican Party platform to remove the section that supports Ukraine against Russia.

• Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions against Russia.
• Flynn lied to the Pentagon about his ties to Russia on his application for top security clearance.
• Flynn invoked the 5^th Amendment and refused to answer questions about his ties to Russia unless he received immunity from prosecution.
• Ultimately, Flynn confessed to the charge of lying to the FBI in a plea bargain agreement.

Trump’s foreign policy campaign adviser, Carter Page, who had many business dealings in Russia and traveled to Moscow on behalf of the Trump campaign, was investigated by the FBI because he had so many contacts with Russian intelligence that they tried to recruit him.

Sessions lied about his contacts with Russian intelligence when he claimed he had not met with any Russian. In fact he met with the Russian ambassador. While it was not illegal for Sessions to meet with the ambassador, it was illegal to lie to Congress about it. This forced Sessions to recuse himself for any involvement with the investigations into the Trump Russia probe.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump admitted that he fired the FBI director because of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. That alone is obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense.

After Trump fired Comey, he bragged to Russian officials visiting the White House that firing Comey took “great pressure” off of him over the Russia investigation.

After the official death toll from Hurricane Maria rose to nearly 3000 people, Trump insisted that the actual death toll was around 60 and claimed the Democrats made up that larger number just to make him look bad. He actually trivialized the deaths of nearly 3000 people to make himself look like a victim.

After a terrorist attack in Manchester England on May 25, 2017, the Trump Administration had leaked so much classified information to the media that the United Kingdom said they would stop sharing information about the terrorist attack with the United States.

Due to Trump’s incessant lies, insults and contrasting policy statements, many of our allies have publicly stated that they do not trust him and are struggling to gauge whether they can depend on the United States to honor commitments.