President Donald Trump made two false claims about his 2016 victory early in his news conference on Thursday: He said he won 306 Electoral College votes, repeating a claim he made earlier on Twitter in the morning. And he said he had “the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.”
Trump keeps lying about his Electoral College victory
He made two false claims about his win at a news conference on Thursday.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Trump actually got 304, not 306, electoral votes, because two faithless electors didn’t vote for him when the Electoral College met, despite Trump winning their states.
And his Electoral College victory was still smaller than the wins of Barack Obama, who got 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012, and Bill Clinton, who got 370 electoral votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996.
When asked, Trump later said at his news conference that he meant he achieved a bigger Electoral College victory than any Republican since Reagan in 1980 and 1984. But even that isn’t true: George H.W. Bush got a whopping 426 electoral votes in the 1988 election. Trump did, however, beat out George W. Bush, who got 271 electoral votes in 2000 and 286 in 2004.
When further challenged on this claim, Trump said, “I was given that information. I don’t know. I was just given it. We had a very, very big margin.”
Watch: How should the media cover a White House that isn’t afraid to lie?
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