Donald Trump was fully off the rails at Tuesday night's debate, repeatedly making threats and lying at least 33 times.
CNN's fact-checker, Daniel Dale, took to the airwaves shortly after the debate ended to break down what he called Trump's "staggeringly dishonest debate performance."
Dale, a veteran of keeping up with Trump's often-exhausting litany of lying, seemed unusually surprised with how far gone Trump truly is. "Just lie after lie on subject after subject," Dale told Jake Tapper. "By my preliminary count, Jake, Trump made at least 33 false claims. Thirty-three!"
Ironically, Tapper famously didn't fact-check Trump at all during his CNN debate with Joe Biden in June.
Dale pummeled Trump for not just lying, but for perpetuating lies that could have deadly consequences.
“This wasn’t like little exaggeration, political spin,” Dale said. “A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality: on abortion, saying every Democrat wanted Roe v. Wade overturned though actually more than 80 percent of Democrats supported Roe; on crime, saying it’s through the roof, though it’s actually sharply down since early 2023, it’s now lower than it was since Trump left office; on health care, saying he’s the one who saved Obamacare, the law he actually repeatedly tried to overturn; on Kamala Harris herself, saying that a Howard University grad, Black Law Students Association president had claimed that she wasn’t Black at one point.”
Dale also addressed the most egregious lie of the night when Trump made the egregious claim about migrants supposedly eating people’s pets in Springfield.
“This is not only false, I think it’s fair to call this odious," Dale said.