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    Op-Ed
    Monday, May 06, 2024

    Forget March Madness pool, try Trump lying madness contest

    President Donald Trump passed an ignominious milestone during last weekend’s speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference. According to a tracker kept by the Washington Post, Trump made more than 100 “false or misleading claims” over a span of two hours, a performance that pushed him over 9,000 lies in the first 773 days of his presidency through Sunday.

    Which raises the question: When will Trump utter his 10,000th lie?

    Well, this year he’s let loose with an average of 22 whoppers a day. Looking at the calendar and doing a little doodling math, I’ll take April 15 in the office pool, which has a lovely synchronicity since that’s the day the bill literally comes due for taxpayers.

    So what are Trump’s best lies?

    For nostalgia reasons I liked the lie about the crowd size at his inauguration, something he has repeated dozens of times. The day after the inauguration he said as many as 1.5 million people jammed the National Mall as far back as the Washington Monument to watch him take the oath.

    Not so much.

    That also introduced the country to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s notion of “alternative facts” as she tried to back up press secretary Sean Spicer’s lies — speaking for Trump — about the crowd size.

    But there have been sooo many other beauties, like the $5.5 trillion tax cut (it was closer to $1.5 trillion), “the biggest in the history of our country.” No again. It was the eighth largest since 1918, and smaller than two tax cut bills signed by President Barack Obama.

    Then there are the lies about trade, about immigration and crime, about Stormy Daniels, about national security issues, about, well, everything.

    So get your office pools ready. And then start planning for the 20,000th lie, and whether Trump will be able to squeeze it in before Inauguration Day 2021.

    Imagine the crowd size for that one.

    A native of Maine, Scott Martelle is an opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times.

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