Outrage Watch: The Lying Lies Of Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump lies. Profligately, habitually, brazenly, unrepentantly. 

Days ago, the Washington Post reported that there’s already a nuclear-safe, deep underground bunker at the White House designed to protect the president and top officials in the event of an international crisis. The disclosure challenges the need for Trump’s $600 million ballroom/bunker complex and may explain  the speed the administration has employed in tearing down the Executive Mansion’s East Wing and commencing ballroom construction even though it’s been contested in court. Trump presumably knew about the facility built in secret after the 9/11 attacks, but failed to reveal it so he could get his ballroom complex built before critics learned about the existing facility. 

Also recently, Trump said that the “golden age” he predicted for the economy has already arrived. That may be true for rich Americans—the primary beneficiaries of the stock market boom and Trump’s tax cuts— but it’s not for the majority of Americans, including his working class base.

Trump claimed in 2024 that “we’re going to grow like no one’s grown before.” But as New York Times economic columnist Steve Rattner reports, the economy is slowing. Trump inherited a growth rate of 2.75% from Joe Biden, but it fell to 2.1% in 2025 and to 1.8% thus far in 2026. He also promised that “starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” But the inflation rate has averaged 3.3% this year and wages have gown by just 3.2%.

He also promised that “energy will bring us back. That means gasoline will go down and get back below $2 a gallon.” In fact, it was below $3 a gallon before he started the Iran war, then shot up to $4.50 and now is $4.01. And he forecast mortgage interest rates would fall to 3%, “maybe even lower, saving the average homebuyer thousands of dollars per year.” In fact, mortgage rates are stuck at 6.7%. And he promised “we’re not cutting Medicaid,” but he has—by $17 billion this year and projected to climb to $111 billion by 2030.

Trump has joined his HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, in claiming there’s a link between vaccinations and autism, which multiple studies across several nations have debunked.

He has constantly charged that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen from him, though all evidence shows—and members of his own White House staff argued—that he lost. Sixty-one courts, including the Supreme Court, rejected his claims. He tried numerous strategies, legal and illegal, to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, including inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. None worked, but Trump has tried ever since to undermine faith in the US electoral system and has advanced proposals to try to block millions of voters from registering to vote.

He has claimed that his immigration policy is targeting the “worst of the worst” for detention and deportation whereas independent analyses of government data show that 70% of ICE deportees had no criminal convictions, and many of with convictions were for traffic or immigration offenses. Only 5% of those currently in ICE detention have records of violent crimes.

Americans have never considered Trump honest and trustworthy, but have elected him twice nevertheless. In 2016, only a third of voters called him honest and trustworthy. Hillary Clinton was just three points ahead of him on the question, but he was ahead of her in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, according to NBC News. In 2020, only 35% declared him honest, compared to 50% for Joe Biden. In 2024, Kamala Harris outpolled him by 15 points on the issue, evidence that voters consider other issues more important than honesty.

But lies don’t fully explain his credibility problem. He deceives himself. He thinks that his “massive tariffs” have led to manufacturing’s rebounding, factories hiring and production rising. But much of the growth—and it’s modest— has occurred in two sectors: metal products, cars and other transportation equipment—all protected by tariffs. Manufacturing jobs have increased by just 29,000 since January 2025—well below the post pandemic peak it hit under Joe Biden. According to a Washington Post analysis of government data, it will take five years to get back to the Biden record.

Meantime, in his Washington Post column and CNN TV program, Fareed Zakaria, makes the case that Trump has so demolished US credibility that other nations are forming new alliances rather than depend on the US. “The world has learned to treat his Truth Social announcements as a mix of fact and fiction, like some of the AI-generated videos he posts.”

Post columnist Max Boot makes a similar point, concluding “it’s a good thing that the United States has such a close relationship with Israel. Because the way things are going, eventually that may be the only ally the U.S. has left.”

The most obvious example of credibility lost abroad is the collapse of trade talks with Canada, leading the US to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports—and leading Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to liken alleged sudden changes in US trade terms to a war. “It’s a war when you get attacked. We’ve been attacked.” He also said that Canada would impose “dollar for dollar” tariffs on US exports. Trump blamed Canada for the breakdown, saying “Canada wants the benefits of being a State without being one.”  We are sadly undermining our best ally.

The US has substantially cut back its annual war game with South Korea, partly because it did not help fight Iran. But also, Trump cited his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un,  arguing the drills “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his time in the White House. While building nuclear rockets capable of reaching the US mainland and helping both Russia and Iran?  Unthreatening?

Between them, Zakaria and Boot cite dozens of other examples: Turkey and Saudi Arabia, hostile to one another for the last decade, joined Pakistan in a NATO-like defense alliance. Why? Because they could no longer depend on the US to guarantee their security. European nations can never be sure that the US will come to their aid if attacked by Russia, so they are increasingly organizing their own defense—to the point of buying European or Korean weapons systems, eschewing US systems.

Zakaria wrote that “the Iran war has been a master class in how to squander credibility,” pointing out that Trump has said repeatedly (38 times by one count) that a deal with Iran was close and that Iran was desperate for one. Or that the Strait of Hormuz was open to traffic when only a few ships a day were moving through it. (Iran certainly has its own credibility problems, sometimes indicating a deal was near, other times that no negotiations were under way.)

Even Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Trump’s latest 15-point peace plan for Gaza. “He has seen many Trump plans announced with great fanfare, only to be forgotten,” Zakaria observed.

He recalled that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, armed with overhead photographs, to brief French President Charles De Gaulle, “hardly a US supplicant.” De Gaulle said the briefing was unnecessary, that the word of the President was sufficient. “That scene is unimaginable today,” Zakaria wrote.

“This is how great powers decline,” he wrote. “Not necessarily by some dramatic defeat, but as others stop organizing their world around them.”

Max Boot adds: “Trump blocked new aid for Ukraine, and hasn’t condemned Vladimir Putin’s recent missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian civilians… He doesn’t even call out Putin for helping Iran target U.S. forces. How could anyone have any confidence that, if Russia were to start a war with NATO, the U.S. would come to its defense?”

Boot also cited Trump’s raising doubts whether the US would come to Taiwan’s defense if it was attacked by China. “The last thing I think we need is a war 9,500 miles away,” Trump said.

More Outrages

“D-Day” for Iran?

Virtually admitting the US has lost the Iran war militarily, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the US would conduct economic warfare, imposing new sanctions on Iran and threatening secondary sanctions on countries, banks and other entities doing business with Iran. Critics point out, however, that Iran already is one of the most sanctioned nations in the world and the only meaningful sanction left would be to convince China not to buy Iranian oil. China has been Iran’s best customer, buying 90% of its oil. Critics doubt China would stop such purchases. And Iran’s government brushed off Bessent’s threat.

US Debt: $40 trillion

The federal debt topped $40 trillion, or 101% of GDP, just under the 106%, the record high after World War II. Estimates are that at present rates, it will top 107% in 2020 and reach 120% in 2036. It will cost $1 trillion to service that debt (pay interest on it) this year, rising to $2.1 trillion in 2036–money that could pay for other national priorities. Like improving US health care, child care and education.

If the president and Congress practiced fiscal responsibility, which has not happened since Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress balanced the budget in Fiscal Year 1998 and ran surpluses until 2001, it could gradually pay down the debt. But spending more than the government takes in characterizes all the presidencies and Congresses (of both parties) ever since, especially during the presidencies of Barrack Obama, Trump and Biden. Mounting debt causes interest rates to rise, increasing costs for all borrowers, governments and citizens. 

ICE Again!

In June, the Trump administration began deporting undocumented migrants to the Central African Republic, one of the most violent countries in the world—so violent that the State Department counsels travelers not to go there and to deposit DNA samples in case of murder. Those sent there have no history in the country. Other violent countries deportees are sent to include South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ElSalvador, and Rwanda. 

And the administration has removed Afganistan from the list of countries whose refugees have enjoyed protected status. Many of them served as interpreters or other aides in the US war effort there. Deportation might lead to their being killed by the Taliban.

Trump wants to ban mail-in voting and control US elections, a responsibility that the Constitution vests in the states, with the Executive Branch excluded.

When do the outrages end? The mid-terms will be crucial to put Democrats in control of at least one half of Congress and begin to use the legislative powers to curb the impact of Trump’s outrageous behavior. Otherwise, it’s a going to feel like a very long couple of years until 2028.