Trump’s CPAC speech contained 104 false or misleading claims

President Trump's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday in National Harbor, Maryland was a whirlwind, with the president proudly going "off script."
The decision to ad-lib resulted in 104 "false or misleading claims" during the two-hour speech, raising Trump's overall tally of such claims to 9,014 since he entered the Oval Office 773 days ago, per The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" database.
The CPAC speech was prolific, but Saturday only registers as the fourth-highest day for "fishy" claims during Trump's presidency. Still, it boosted his daily average for 2019 up to 22 claims per day, up from 5.6 during his first year in office and 16.5 in 2018.
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Among the falsehoods the Post caught during the CPAC speech, were Trump's claims that the proposed Green New Deal resolution seeks to ban air travel and energy, and that if the U.S. relies on wind power and the wind stops blowing, there will be no electricity. He also rehashed some old false favorites — that his administration passed the largest tax cut in history, the border wall is under construction, and the U.S. economy is in the best shape it has ever been. Read the full breakdown at The Washington Post.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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