Sarah Huckabee Sanders told one heck of a verifiable whopper on Thursday

(Image credit: Win McNamee/AFP/Getty Images)

published 16 March 2018

On Wednesday night, The Washington Post printed some of President Trump's remarks to Republican donors in Missouri in which Trump boasted about snowing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with incorrect facts about U.S.-Canadian trade. When Trudeau said the U.S. has no trade deficit with Canada, Trump recounted, "I said, 'Wrong, Justin, you do.' I didn't even know. Josh, I had no idea. I just said, 'You're wrong.'"

At Thursday's White House press briefing, Fox News Radio's Jon Decker asked Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about Trump admitting "he was not exactly truthful in his conversation with his counterpart from Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau," and Sanders cut him off. "That's actually not what he said," she insisted, before repeating his four-Pinnochio claim that the U.S. does actually have a trade deficit with Canada. (The U.S. exports more goods and services to Canada than it imports.)

As luck would have it, a GOP donor also gave audio of Trump's comments to NBC News, which broadcast them on Thursday morning.

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Maybe someone will point this out to Sanders at Friday's press briefing, and we can do this all again.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.