2015 Lie of the Year: the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump

By Angie Drobnic Holan, Linda Qiu

Politifact 

It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.

"People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts," Trump wrote in his 1987 best-seller The Art of the Deal. "People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion."

Who Is the Biggest Liar in the 2016 Election?

By Tessa Stuart

Rolling Stone

 December 15, 2015

George Orwell once said politicians' words are "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder sound respectable." PolitiFact, founded by the Tampa Bay Times in 2007, was designed to examine those truthful sounding lies – and some outrageous sounding truths – and to determine the actual facts underlying both.

The website doesn't check every politician's or candidate's statements, just the ones likely to provoke the most debate. But even by that scattershot standard, the website has had its work cut out for it this election cycle, as PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan discussed in a recent piece for the New York Times.