I try to tell the truth... Hmmm....

Trump: 'I do try' to tell the truth

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump "always" wants to tell the truth, he claimed in an interview Wednesday night, and does tell the truth "when I can."

Trump has come under scrutiny throughout his presidency, but especially in recent weeks, for repeatedly spouting falsehoods and misleading statements. But despite evidence to the contrary, the president insisted on Wednesday that he tries to tell the truth.

“Well, I try. I do try" to tell the truth, he told ABC’s Jon Karl before a campaign rally in Florida.

“I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. And sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful.”

The Washington Post, which has made a project of tracking the president’s claims that they deem false, said in September that Trump had cleared 5,000 false or misleading statements during his nearly two years in office. Among the president's earliest foray into the world of politics was his vociferous support for the so-called "birther" conspiracy, which alleged, without evidence, that former President Barack Obama was ineligible to be president because he was not born a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Trump has continued to be accused of spreading misinformation as the midterm elections come to a close, especially on the issue of immigration. The White House has sought to use anti-immigrant rhetoric to drive Trump's base of conservative voters to the polls, pointing to a caravan of asylum-seeking migrants making its way through southern Mexico and floating a longshot executive order to end the practice of birthright citizenship.

Trump in recent days has spread the unfounded conspiracy theory that the caravan has received financial support from Democrats, a claim that has taken root in right-wing circles. Trump has referred to the caravan as an “invasion” and frequently implores the migrants to “turn back” and enter the U.S. “legally” despite that seeking asylum at a U.S. port of entry, which the migrants say they plan to do, is legal.

He has claimed without evidence that the caravan, comprised largely of Central American migrants, includes “thugs” and “gang members." He also told his Twitter followers that the caravan contained "unknown Middle Easterners," a claim he later conceded he had "no proof" to support.

He took issue in his interview with Karl about reported size estimates of the caravan, which have varied widely from a thousand people to 10,000. The president told Karl he is "pretty good at estimating crowd sizes," a point he has long fixated on in describing his own rallies and events. Trump's former press secretary, Sean Spicer, famously insisted that the crowd at the president's 2017 inauguration was the biggest in history, despite clear photographic evidence to the contrary, reportedly at Trump's demand.

"You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported actually,” he said. “I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I’ll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think.”

In an interview released Tuesday in which Trump announced his intent to end the citizenship guarantee many say is settled law as part of the 14th Amendment, the president falsely claimed that the U.S. is the only country in the world with such a guarantee.

When confronted with the fact that more than 30 countries also confer birthright citizenship — which in the U.S. means that a child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen regardless of his or her parents’ citizenship — Trump said his “only country” remark was “what I was told,” according to Karl.