In recent weeks, writers and fact-checkers at The New Yorker have produced a series of reported essays about Donald Trump and the truth. Presidential candidates have always lied, “but sometimes there really is something new under the political sun,” David Remnick wrote when he introduced the series, last month. Trump, the Republican nominee, “does not so much struggle with the truth as strangle it altogether.” Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has had her bald-faced moments. “But, in the scale and in the depth of his lying, Donald Trump is in another category.”
Or, as Margaret Talbot wrote, “Donald Trump lies, a lot—that’s a fact and easy to prove simply by reference to what he’s on the record saying.” Her piece on Trump and the “lying” media, along with the other essays collected here, offers a way to keep track of Trump’s fabrications—“a record,” Remnick wrote, “that appears to know no bounds and certainly no shame.”
Also in the series: Eyal Press looks at Trump’s claim that immigrants cause crime levels to increase; Adam Gopnik writes about Trump’s suggestion that Ted Cruz’s father was a party to the J.F.K. assassination; Jia Tolentino writes about the “Mexican” judge Gonzalo Curiel; Adam Davidson explains both Trump’s flip-flop on the Fed’s interest rate and his attempt to label the official unemployment rate a “hoax”; Jelani Cobb writes about Trump’s claim that “the African-Americans love me because they know I am going to bring back jobs”; and John Cassidy examines Trump’s alleged charitable giving.
Thirty-one days remain before the election. Anything can still happen. This spin wheel contains a Trump whopper pulled from every essay in the series. The topic of each essay appears on the outer ring, and a Trump quote that sums up the topic appears in each wedge, along with a link to the corresponding essay. We will update the wheel in two weeks. Spin with abandon.