Trump wins PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ award for third time

The award for 2019 goes to Trump’s claim that the anonymous whistleblower reported his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky “almost completely wrong.” Trump’s conduct and requests on that call are now at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Since the Sept. 26 release of the whistleblower complaint, the president has claimed more than 80 times that the complaint is “fake, fraudulent, incorrect, ‘total fiction,’ ‘made up,’ and ‘sooo wrong,’” PolitiFact reported.

Katie Sanders, managing editor of PolitiFact, noted that while the president continues to say the whistleblower got details of the call wrong, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise:

“We know this from the very record of the call the president released. We know this from testimony under oath from career diplomats and other officials. And the president and his allies have told reporters that Trump did what the whistleblower suggested — urged the Ukrainian president to investigate political rival Joe Biden.”

A video posted on YouTube by PolitiFact also highlights that, according to the site’s executive editor, Aaron Sharockman:

“This is something that… makes you angry, it’s kind of ridiculous, it threatens democracy, it’s something so significant that we want to reflect on it and hopefully avoid it in the future.”

In 2015 and 2017, Trump also won “Lie of the Year,” the only person to ever achieve such a hollow victory:

The president’s lies have claimed the No. 1 spot twice before ― once in 2015 for his collective campaign trail falsehoods, which the site described as exhibiting “range, boldness and a disregard for the truth,” and once in 2017 for claiming Russian election interference is a “made-up story.”

At the rate Trump lies — he’s at 15,413 since taking office, according to the Washington Post — it seems entirely likely that 2020 will be another banner year for lies from the Donald.

Featured Image Via NBC News