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Washington CNN —
In a speech last week to the National Guard Association of the United States, former President Donald Trump claimed that he was the president who “created” the Veterans Choice health care program, and got it “passed in Congress,” after others had wanted to do so “for 57 years.”
In reality, President Barack Obama was the president who signed the program into law in 2014. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, expanded the Veterans Choice program but didn’t create it.
I could fact-check this Trump lie half-asleep – because he’s been telling it for more than six years.
Trump’s lying is most exceptional in its relentlessness, a never-ending avalanche of wrongness that can bury even the most devoted fact-checkers. But it’s also notable for its repetitiveness. He has found his hits, and he’ll keep playing them no matter how many times they are debunked.
As Trump enters the post-Labor Day sprint of his 2024 campaign for the presidency, his commentary is filled with many of the same false claims he made as president from 2017 to 2021. He’s even repeating some of the false claims he used during his 2016 presidential campaign.
As a fact-check reporter for CNN, I watch or read the transcript of every public appearance by Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. While Harris’ campaign remarks to date have been heavy on thematic rhetoric and light on assertions of...
The Department of Justice said it recovered a record-breaking $2.9 billion to resolve federal False Claims Act allegations in fiscal year 2024, a slight increase from the historic $2.7 billion rec...