donald trump at cpac 2017

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Donald Trump drops more lies in a ‘Time’ cover story about how much he lies

'I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not.’

 

Michelle Jaworski

Tech

Posted on Mar 23, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 7:51 pm CDT

Donald Trump once again doubled down on many of the lies and falsehoods he’s pushed on Twitter, in speeches, and through his officials in a Time magazine interview about his lies and falsehoods.

The latest interview with Trump is part of the magazine’s cover story, which invokes one of Time’s most famous covers as it asks “Is Truth Dead?”

During the 20-minute conversation, Trump, never one to admit he was wrong, repeated long-disproven lies and said that he “predicted” events happening when later stories appeared to support his claim—he cited riots in Stockholm occurring days after his false statements on Sweden as an example. He asserted that evidence would later trickle in for the things that haven’t been proven yet, like his false claim that 3 million people voted illegally. He justified sharing conspiracies like linking Ted Cruz’s father’s with Lee Harvey Oswald because he saw it in The National Enquirer and defended his long-debunked claim of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 because “if you look at the reporter, he wrote the story in the Washington Post.”

“I’m a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right,” Trump told Time. “When everyone said I wasn’t going to win the election, I said well I think I would.”

The president doesn’t believe that even if multiple sources come out to say he’s wrong, his credibility on the subject his affected. But when he asked Time Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer for examples of something he got wrong, Trump quickly switched instead to point out that he predicted Brexit, which he didn’t. 

Trump, who didn’t inherit a mess, believed he inherited a mess and said statistics aren’t real before admitting that he’s not doing that bad in comparison. After all, he’s the commander-in-chief.

“I inherited a mess in the Middle East, and a mess with North Korea, I inherited a mess with jobs, despite the statistics, you know, my statistics are even better, but they are not the real statistics because you have millions of people that can’t get a job, OK,” Trump said. “And I inherited a mess on trade. I mean we have many, you can go up and down the ladder. But that’s the story. Hey look, in the mean time, I guess, I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not. You know. Say hello to everybody OK?”

Read the full interview at Time.

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*First Published: Mar 23, 2017, 9:45 am CDT