Marty Kress was a former U.S. Senate Senior Committee staffer.
Mark Twain used to say there were three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics. But he never met Donald Trump. Add whoppers to the kinds of lies.
Never has there been a president who so consistently misrepresents facts to support his agenda or differentiate himself from past presidents.
Whoppers started day one of Trump’s first term. He declared his inaugural crowd was the largest ever, despite contrary photographic evidence.
His worst first-term whopper: his claim he won the 2020 election.
Democrats cheated. This perpetuated an assault on the Capitol to change the electoral vote count. He was impeached but not convicted. He still claims he won the 2020 election and uses this whopper to try and wrest federal control of elections from the states.
After the 2024 election, it wasn’t crowd size. Rather, it was his proclaimed landslide victory even though he secured less than 50% of the popular vote. I’m sure he knows Hillary and Joe both got more than 50% of the popular vote.
During the campaign, candidate Trump said he never heard of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. So why place its key authors in his Cabinet, frame over 750 Project 2025 recommendations as Executive Orders? That’s a whopper.
Once in office in 2025, Trump appointed Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to cut $2 trillion in federal spending. When Musk left, DOGE’s Wall of Receipts identified $215 billion in savings.
A Government Accountability Office assessment found these savings “severely overstated and plagued by unreliable data.” Whopper.
Interestingly, Vice President JD Vance just announced his task force to eliminate fraud uncovered $230 billion in waste, fraud and abuse, and suspended $56 billion in improper payments. GAO should audit this, too.
Why inflate the savings? Waste, fraud and abuse savings in the Big Beautiful Bill were the offsets for the $1 trillion tax cut. Savings of $715 billion were assumed in Medicaid alone. Those savings occur in January 2028 – after the midterms. Three million Ohioans rely on Medicaid.
Despite stating there would be no cuts to Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security benefits, Trump teamed with Republicans to claim waste, fraud and abuse savings don’t reduce benefits – they are savings.
Let’s see in January whose right. Trump or the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated 8.3 million Americans would lose Medicaid health benefits.
Remember the president’s $3 million pool project done by friends – it would be better than Obama’s effort. It cost $16 millon. Trump now says he doesn’t know the contractor who, according to DOJ, did shoddy work. Sadly, the pool is still damaged. Trump continues to blame Democratic vandals. Whopper?
Then there’s the ballroom. Estimated to cost $200 million funded by private donations, the current estimate is $950M, requiring significant taxpayer funding – $750 million and counting. Still, no White House congressional funding request.
Why? Attorney General Todd Blanche on August 17 said the project was already approved by Congress. Really? News to them! And the project is now a national security complex – not a ball room? Big Whopper.
Why the shift? So that the Supreme Court overturns a lower-court ruling that halted ballroom construction until approved by Congress. So, now it’s a national security project.
As for Trump’s pledges not to cut benefits programs, his budget notes “its not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things” while we are fighting wars. States should fund benefit programs.
On a daily basis, we are so misled by Trump whoppers it’s hard to know when something is accurate. Be it Trump’s golf score, proposed Cuban invasion, making the Straits of Hormuz a US territory, Canada a state, annexing Greenland, declaring a national emergency regarding elections, ending amnesty for immigrants.
Our nation and the world deserve better. Time to return to the rule of law. Time for serious congressional oversight. Vote Democratic and cancel Trump’s credit card.
Marty Kress was a former US Senate Senior Committee Staffer, Associate Administrator of NASA, VP at Battelle and AVP Research-Institute Director at Ohio State University
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Trump whoppers go beyond ‘damned lies.’ Here’s a fraction | Opinion
Reporting by Marty Kress, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Marty Kress, Guest Columnist | USA TODAY Network
