Every Time Donald Trump Has Been Exposed

The following article includes brief references to sexual assault allegations.

When many Americans think about George Washington, they might remember a myth they were taught as children: how America's first president couldn't lie about chopping down a cherry tree. Donald J. Trump, however, might bring to mind a different fictional hunk of wood. If the puppet Geppetto carved was cursed to repeat Trump's many mistruths, his nose might eventually poke him in the back of the head. (Perhaps this is hyperbole, but it's difficult not to use it when discussing a man who is so fond of it — with Trump, seemingly anything can be dubbed the "greatest" or the "biggest.") According to The Washington Post, Trump's lies numbered over 30,000 during his presidency. The outlet itself uses a Pinocchio scale to rate politicians' falsehoods, and in 2018, it created a new designation for Trump's special brand of big-league dishonesty: the Bottomless Pinocchio. It's bestowed on the lies that politicians repeat the most, such as Trump's claim that he passed "the biggest tax cuts in history." 

For his part, Trump decries "fake news" while keeping the fact-checkers busy debunking any untrue statements from the dangerous to the outlandish. "I think I'm the most honest human being perhaps that God ever created," he said during a 2022 campaign rally. But he's arguably made baseless claims about everything from the 2020 election being stolen to wind turbines causing cancer.

All that said, Donald Trump's habit of twisting the truth actually started long before he became president, and while some of these fibs may be fairly harmless, some have also been exposed in a court of law.

It's no secret that Donald Trump is no fan of Barack Obama; there's even a rumor that he decided to run for president because both Obama and comedian Seth Meyers roasted him during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. But to be fair, Trump had arguably brought the discomfort of having to sit there and be the butt of jokes on himself by loudly supporting the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn't born in the United States. Trump even vowed that he was going to deliver proof to his fellow birthers to back this lie. "I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding," he claimed during a 2011 appearance on the "Today" show (via Fox News). At the time, Trump was mulling over the idea of running for president against Obama. He bowed out, however. 

Trump never produced any evidence from the private investigators he supposedly sent to Obama's home state of Hawaii, and according to his former attorney, Michael Cohen, this is because no such investigation ever happened. "He didn't want to spend the money, and he didn't believe it," Cohen said on "The Rachel Maddow Show" in 2020. Cohen also alleged of why Trump so strongly dislikes Obama: "He's Black; he went to Harvard Law; he graduated at the top of his class; he's incredibly articulate. And he's all the things that Donald Trump wants to be." Maybe now we can add "He's a president who didn't get indicted" to that list.

Donald Trump exposed himself to a lot of criticism in 2013 with a since-deleted tweet that read, "I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th." He's also been exposed telling a tall tale about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2019, the then-president signed a law that provided medical funding for emergency personnel who suffered adverse health effects from exposure to the toxic dust of Ground Zero. Some first responders were in attendance for the signing, and Trump told them that he had joined them at Ground Zero after the towers fell. "I spent a lot of time down there with you," he claimed. He'd previously told attendees at a 2016 campaign rally that he'd even "helped a little bit" when first responders were clearing debris and searching for survivors. 

However, Richard Alles, who was a New York Fire Department deputy chief at the time, told The New York Times that he never saw Trump there. "He was a private citizen at the time. I don't know what kind of role he could have possibly played," he added.

On the day of the attacks, Trump spoke to WWOR-TV and made another dubious claim that was easily disproven. He boasted that one of the buildings he owned, Forty Wall St., had become downtown Manhattan's tallest structure after the Twin Towers fell. However, according to Snopes, 70 Pine Street was still 25 feet taller. 

According to "Desperado" star Salma Hayek, Donald Trump was once so desperate to score a date with her that he apparently ingratiated himself with the guy Hayek was dating at the time. This is how Trump obtained her phone number. "When I told him I wouldn't go out with him even if I didn't have a boyfriend, [which he took as disrespectful], he called — well, he wouldn't say he called, but someone told the National Enquirer," Hayek said on "El Show del Mandril" in 2016 (via BuzzFeed News). Hayek didn't reveal whether Trump's good pal, David Pecker, had become the owner of the Enquirer by then, but the tabloid had the real estate mogul's back; it printed a story claiming Trump found Hayek "too short" to date.

Then there was the time Trump got caught posing as a publicist named John Miller in 1991. Under this guise, he told a People reporter that the many famous women who wanted to date Trump included Madonna and Kim Basinger. However, it was the future first lady of France, model Carla Bruni, whom Trump had purportedly dumped his then-girlfriend, Marla Maples, for. This was news to Maples, who confirmed to People that Miller's voice actually belonged to Trump after listening to the audio interview. "I feel betrayed at the deepest level," she said. Maples would marry Trump two years later, and Bruni would eventually clarify to the Daily Mail that she never dated Trump. She also claimed he was "clearly a lunatic."

When Donald Trump earned himself a second indictment, this time for his alleged handling of classified documents, we learned that some of the records he reportedly absconded with after leaving the White House were found inside a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. It's unclear whether he may have been using that particular loo in lieu of a paper shredder, but in 2022, Axios shared photos that purportedly showed torn-up documents with Trump's handwriting on them marinating inside two commodes. One toilet was reportedly located inside the White House, and someone had risked clogging the other during a trip abroad. The name of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) was jotted on one paper fragment in permanent marker.

The New York Times columnist Maggie Haberman documented Trump's seemingly unusual manner of document disposal (which he has denied) in "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America." While promoting the book on "CNN This Morning," Haberman claimed of Trump's toilet troubles, "I learned that staff in the White House residence would periodically find the toilet clogged." When an engineer was called to fix a clog, Trump's soggy docs were discovered to be the source of the problem.

If he really was tearing up documents during his time in the White House, Trump would have been violating the Presidential Records Act. And if was actually putting them in the potty, this may explain why he thinks it's typical in the U.S. for it to take up to 15 flushes to get everything in the bowl to go down.

Donald Trump hasn't just been accused of telling falsehoods about his finances to further line his pockets. According to a former Forbes reporter, he also masqueraded as a Trump Organization exec named John Barron solely because he desired the notoriety of having his name printed on the Forbes 400 list. In a 2018 report for The Washington Post, Jonathan Greenberg recalled getting a call from "Barron" when he was working for Forbes in 1984. Donald's apparent goal was to convince Greenberg that he had become a billionaire by obtaining a majority of his father, Fred Trump's, business holdings.

Greenberg decided to rely on his own research instead of taking the pretender at his word, but he would later discover that Forbes still got it wrong when reporting on Donald's finances. Donald's net worth was just $5 million in 1982, but he managed to make the Forbes 400 when the magazine mistakenly estimated that he was worth $100 million. This was based on Donald's false claim that he had taken over the family real estate business. (In reality, it remained under Fred's control until he died in 1999.) 

According to Greenberg, Donald Trump, "Barron," and Trump attorney Roy Cohn occasionally badgered Forbes about its reporting on The Donald's finances over the years, seemingly always with the goal of getting the magazine to increase its already over-inflated numbers. Of the future president's first appearance on the list, Greenberg told CNN, "He should never have been there in the first place."

One of Donald Trump's first orders of business as president was to tackle one of the issues that mattered most to him: convincing the public that his inauguration was attended by a truly tremendous crowd of supportive Americans. It's probably one of his most innocuous lies, but it got a ton of press coverage because Trump was so fixated on it. While speaking at CIA headquarters in January 2017, he claimed that the sea of people present at his inauguration reached the Washington Monument. But this was demonstrably false; a photo taken from the top of the obelisk proved that the back end of the crowd was nowhere near it. Worse yet for Trump was the photographic evidence proving that Barack Obama's inauguration crowd was far larger; one crowd expert told The Washington Post that his number of attendees trumped Trump's by three times.

Then there was the unbelievable statement from White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who told reporters, "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe." But Trump was likely disappointed when he checked those ever-important TV ratings and learned that upwards of 7 million more viewers watched Obama's 2009 swearing-in. The Guardian made another embarrassing discovery about Trump's obsession with crowd optics in 2018: He had personally reached out to the National Park Service director seeking photos that made his crowd size look more substantial.

Donald Trump hasn't just been adept at convincing people that he's wealthier than he really is; he also possesses a talent for being deceptively generous. In 2016, The Washington Post recounted an occasion from two decades prior, where he showed up to an Association to Benefit Children event uninvited and stole the seat of one of the charity's donors. He was photographed alongside celebrities and politicians who had made large contributions to the organization — without donating a penny to it himself.

Trump did create his own charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, but The Washington Post discovered that one of its largest donations was used to the benefit of Trump himself; over $260,000 went towards the noble cause of giving a Trump Plaza Hotel fountain a facelift. Another shady expenditure was a portrait of Trump used to decorate one of his properties. Despite additional evidence that he's also used foundation money to settle legal issues, he tweeted in December 2016, "The DJT Foundation, unlike most foundations, never paid fees, rent, salaries or any expenses. 100% of money goes to wonderful charities!"

The Trump Foundation was put out of business in 2018 due to Trump's unlawful use of its funds, which included violations of campaign finance laws. But against his will, Trump's money did some good. "The president has been forced to pay $2 million for misusing charitable funds for his own political gain," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "... Funds have finally gone where they deserve — to eight credible charities."