Trump's late-campaign 'reality distortion' is getting more blatant, and increasingly bizarre

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

last updated 1 November 2018

President Trump kicked off his eight-state, 11-rally sprint to Election Day in Florida on Wednesday night, trying to give a boost to Gov. Rick Scott (R), who's running for Senate, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis. But "as he barnstorms the country trying to help Republican allies," note Peter Baker and Linda Qiu at The New York Times, "Trump has offered voters this fall a litany of misleading statements and falsehoods that exaggerate even legitimate accomplishments and distort opponents' views beyond the typical bounds of political spin." To wit:

In the past couple of weeks alone, the president has spoken of riots that have not happened, claimed deals that have not been reached, cited jobs that have not been created, and spun dark conspiracies that have no apparent basis in reality. He has pulled figures seemingly out of thin air, rewritten history, and contradicted his own past comments. The catalog of inaccurate claims ranges from the weighty to the head-scratching. [The New York Times]

And sometimes the weighty and bizarre meet — like Trump's assertion to The Wall Street Journal that "we don't even have tariffs" in his administration, or his complaint that Senate Democrats did not support opioid legislation that all of them voted for, or that Democrats oppose safeguarding pre-existing conditions, or his baseless claims they are financing the migrant caravan he's sending thousands of troops to counter.

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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.