PolitiFact finds that only 1 percent of the things Donald Trump says are entirely true

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

last updated 19 February 2016

Only 1 percent of the statements Donald Trump makes are true, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact checking group PolitiFact. Updated as recently as Thursday, over half of Trump's statements were recorded as being lies.

PolitiFact uses six different categories to measure the truthfulness of statements, ranging from "true" to "mostly false" to "pants on fire." Trump's statements were 18 percent "mostly false," 39 percent "false," and 19 percent "pants on fire." President Obama, by comparison, only had 12 percent statements that were "mostly false" and "false" and 2 percent that were "pants on fire."

Of course, it raises the question of how PolitiFact is picking the statements to analyze. According to their website, "Every day, PolitiFact and PunditFact staffers look for statements that can be checked. We comb through speeches, news stories, press releases, campaign brochures, TV ads, Facebook postings and transcripts of TV and radio interviews. Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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