WASHINGTON — Why does President Donald Trump get a pass on telling the truth? As a political analyst and columnist, I guess I’m supposed to have all the answers, but I admit that I haven’t figured this one out yet.

Trump consistently says things that are easily disprovable, and yet there appear to be no consequences for him. He just plows ahead after saying things that would have derailed or discredited anyone else.

“I feel that I won Minnesota. I think I won it all three times. Nobody’s won it … since Richard Nixon won it many, many years ago. I won it all three times, in my opinion, and it’s a corrupt state, a corrupt voting state, and the Republicans ought to get smart and demand on voter ID,” Trump said at a Jan. 9 White House event. “They ought to demand, maybe, same-day voting and all of the other things that you have to have to safe election. But I won Minnesota three times that I didn’t get credit for. I did so well in that state, every time. The people were, they were crying. Every time after. That’s a crooked state.”

If I said Trump won Minnesota three times, I’d be ridiculed, forced to issue an immediate correction and no one would take me seriously again. Trump has never won Minnesota. He lost by 4 points in 2024, 7 points in 2020 and 1.5 points in 2016. There’s no evidence of serious allegations of voter misconduct. In this case, it’s just the president jumping to conclusions, believing that because of alleged financial fraud in the Somali community, there must have been electoral fraud that contributed to his three losses.

Not only does Trump continue to complain about the election he lost in 2020, he lies about elections he won.

“I got probably 85 million votes. They say 78 million, 79 million,” Trump mused about the 2024 election a couple of days ago. “They cheated in this election too. It was just too big to rig, too big to rig. But they cheated like hell.”

Trump received 77.3 million votes in 2024, 74.2 million votes in 2020 and 63 million votes in 2016. It appears even winning isn’t sufficient to avoid him lying.

If a political analyst or journalist incorrectly reported on an election outcome, vote percentage or vote total, they’d be corrected. Trust would be lost. They’d get painted as part of a lazy and inaccurate media cabal. And yet Trump soldiers on.

It’s not just election numbers that trip Trump up. One of the president’s greatest hits right now is talking about the cost of prescription drugs.

“So in my first year of the second term – should be my third term, but strange things happen – I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement,” Trump said at Tuesday night’s State of the Union. “The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600 percent and more, all available right now at a new website called TrumpRx.gov.”

The State of the Union was just the latest instance of him trying to make the same point. “I said, if you don’t put them up, then we’re going to put tariffs on your nation, which will be more expensive to you,” he said at the Feb. 5 rollout of the website. “So in many cases, the drug costs will go up by double and even triple for them, but they’re going way down for the United States, come all the way down by a difference of as much as 300, 400, 500, even 600 percent, even more than that in some cases.”

That is nonsensical. Any price reductions of more than 100 percent would result in the government paying consumers to obtain prescription drugs. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the president is talking about and yet he exaggerates to make it sound more impressive and garner support. Either Trump is confused by how the math works or he’s intentionally confusing people.

There are so many instances of the president just not telling the truth. Whether it’s deceit or confabulation, I don’t believe the pattern is harmless.

Trump has said he was surpised at why President Joe Biden renominated Jerome Powell to continue as head of the Federal Reserve — when Trump first appointed Powell to the position in 2017.

During the State of the Union, the president said that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Afghan immigrant charged with killing West Virginia Army National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom in downtown Washington in November, was in the country illegally. His asylum status was approved by the Trump administration in April.

And once again on Tuesday, Trump said there was “almost no crime anymore” in Washington after the surge in federal troops and agents to the capital city last year. I guess it depends on the definition of “almost,” but, as of Feb. 25, there have been 10 homicides, five sexual abuse incidents, 131 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 146 robberies, 99 burglaries, 327 motor vehicle thefts, 569 thefts from auto and 1,316 “other” thefts in 2026, according to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department’s daily crime statistics. In most of those categories, the stats are better than the year before, but it’s a stretch to say there’s no crime.

The point is not to fact-check everything the president has said nor to take a stance on specific policies. The point is that there are clear instances of the president not telling the truth, and it doesn’t appear to matter.

Why?

Maybe the key is to repeat lies so often that it dulls people’s senses and deadens the outrage. Maybe it’s because, even after more than a decade of running for office and five years as president, plenty of Americans still consider Trump to be an outsider. And even a lying outsider is better than a politician to many folks right now.

Or maybe it’s because other politicians lie too. Trump seems to get a pass on lying because he has a reputation as a straight shooter.

None of those are valid excuses to me. Trump is the leader of the country, with the largest platform, and that should come with an expectation of truthfulness. But if there are no consequences, the behavior will continue.

Even to people who are disillusioned with government and politicians, planting and cultivating seeds of doubt in our electoral system, legal system and legislative process is harmful. I believe both parties and people across the political spectrum benefit from trust in our processes and institutions, and that includes upholding a level of commitment to valuing the truth.

___

©2026 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.