Fake news or fib? Two phone calls described by U.S. President Donald Trump that didn’t actually happen represent the latest chapter in a long-running series of disputes revolving around the President’s rocky relationship with facts. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday found herself explaining that compliments Mr. Trump had described receiving in phone calls from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and the Boy Scouts did happen — just not on the phone.
“I wouldn’t say it was a lie. That’s a pretty bold accusation,” she told reporters. “The conversations took place, they just simply didn’t take place over a phone call... He had them in person.”
The non-calls weren’t earth-shattering news. But they fit a pattern that also involves weightier issues and that has raised larger questions about Mr. Trump’s credibility six months into his presidency.
After Donald Trump Jr. put out a statement, later shown to be misleading, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016, the President’s outside lawyer was categorical that the President had no role in drafting the statement. But when The Washington Post later reported that the President had dictated the statement for his son, Ms. Sanders acknowledged that Mr. Trump had “weighed in” on his son’s statement “as any father would based on the limited information that he had.”
Polls, history and other research leave open the question of how impressions of Mr. Trump’s truthfulness affect his job approval, which hovers around a third of Americans.