I the Washington Post today: Fictions, misleading statements, wild exaggerations and lies - former president Donald Trump dispenses untruths of one form or another on a regular basis. The falsehoods range from the inconsequential, like the crowd size of his inauguration to the democracy-shaking, like the "stolen" 2020 election.
With Trump barreling toward November when the Americans will get a chance to choose him to lead the nation again, the Washington Post fact checker sought to get a sense of the staying power of his lies - whether people are more or less likely to believe them over time and which lies proved the most stickiest - as well measure the value Americans place of the president's honesty, however they define it.
Midway through Trump's presidency, in 2018, the Post documented through a poll that most Americans, including Republicans, did not believe his repeated claims.
A fresh Washington Post - Schar School poll shows that remains largely the case with an average of 28% believing Trump's false claims tested in the poll.
But, Trump has made significant inroads in convincing Republicans that his lies are the truth. That applies to election integrity especially, Trump's "big lie".
Even more significant Americans have appeared to diverged on the meaning of honesty itself. Among Republicans, fewer now say that Trump makes misleading statements. Slightly more view him as honest than did in 2018, despite an extraordinarily large amount of evidence that Trump often does not tell the truth. During Trump's presidency the Fact Checker documented more than 30,000 misleading or outright false claims, and since he began his second campaign against Joe Biden, he's introduced new falsehoods to his catalogue: inflation is "almost 50%" under President Biden; "nearly one million jobs held by native-born Americans" have been lost to immigrants. In a single interview with Fox News Sean Hannity Trump made 24 false or misleading claims in five minutes - one every 12.5 seconds.
Six years ago just 1 in 4 Republicans (26%) agreed that millions of fraudulent votes were cast during the 2016 election. Now 38% of Republicans and 47% of strong Trump supporters believe this now the case. Among all Americans belief in this false claim has hardly changed because the rest of Americans have moved in the opposite direction. Trump often made this claim to justify his loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton , when the electoral college propelled him to the Oval Office.
Trump has convinced 70% of Republicans and 81% of his strong supporters that Biden won the 2020 election because of voter fraud, though not a single allegation has been proven. Just 1 in 3 Americans overall believe this. He has convinced 51% of Republicans and 58% of his most fervent supporters that some cities tallied more votes than registered voters. This ludicrous claim is disproven by checking the statistics. Yet Trump has repeated at rally after rally, identifying Democratic strongholds like Detroit or Philadelphia.
False claims about election integrity are not the only ones that have taken hold.
While Biden has pushed forward with significant investments in green energy to combat climate change, the poll finds that Trump's argument that temperatures are rising because of natural causes has gained traction with Republicans. Whereas one third believed this in 2018, now nearly half of Republicans (46%) think this is the case. As a result, the number of Americans that say that human activity had little to do with climate change has climbed to 26%, up from 19% in 2018.
Only one Trump false claim tested has shown some slippage in support among Republicans - that the U.S. funds the majority of NATO's budget. (The U.S provides 15.9% of NATO's budget for military related operations, maintenance and headquarters - the same as Germany) More than half of Republicans believed this in 2018 (53%); now that has ticked down to 46%. Just over one third of Americans overall believe this. Trump's rhetoric has had to contend with news reports of NATO allies sending military aid to Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion, focusing new attention on the share of the load they shoulder.
As for that Russian invasion, Trump's claim - without evidence - that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded has resonated with Republicans (63%) and (74%) of strong Trump supporters say Putin wouldn't have invaded if Trump had remained in office. Majorities of Independents (51%) and Democrats (78%) believe Putin would have invaded regardless of who is in office.
One of the more striking findings in 2018 is that Republicans have become less concerned than they were a decade earlier. In 2007 an AP Yahoo poll found 71% of Republicans saying it was "extremely important" that presidential candidates are honest, similar to 70% of Democrats and 66% of independents. The 2018 poll showed near identical numbers for Democrats and independents, while the Republican share had dropped to 49% - 22% lower than just a decade earlier.
In one of the clearest measures of how deeply Trump's lies have pierced the American consciousness, more Republicans now believe Trump is more honest than did in 2018. Asked whether Trump makes regular misleading statements, the share of Republicans dipped 10%, to 38%. The percentage of Republicans that said Trump makes outright false statements ticked down to 8% from 14%.