I was ambivalent about watching President Trump’s State of the Union address because, after 11 years of listening to his speeches, I knew there was not much new to learn.

Overall, they are basically all the same: venomous attacks on his “enemies,” lots of falsehoods, self-serving congratulations for a job well done and pausing to give his Republican sycophants time to give him standing ovations.

But, what the hell, I thought, let’s see how it goes. After about 20 minutes, I had enough and went to bed.

The next morning, at breakfast, I decided to listen to the end of his marathon speech. (It lasted one hour and 48 minutes, I read).

Various media institutions fact-checked his speech and here is a summary of their findings:

—Nine statements were totally false.

—Nine needed context.

—Eight were exaggerations.

—Five were misleading.

—Two lacked evidence.

That’s a total of 33 “questionable” statements. So, if Trump had devoted two minutes to each one, that’s more than an hour. If we had been spared these falsehoods, the speech would have been around 45-48 minutes. I would not have had to listen to him at breakfast.

(On the lighter side, in honoring the US men’s hockey team which won the gold medal at the Olympics and was invited to attend the speech, Trump paid special tribute to goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, for making 46 saves. Wrong: Hellebuyck made 41).

Asked about his mistake, after the speech, Trump said he made the other five saves but decided to give Hellebuyck credit.

The Olympic Committee plans to award him a post-Olympic gold medal for setting a world record for what it calls, diplomatically, “untruths.”

Perhaps in the future the media should just report on facts delivered by Trump.

I decided to test that idea that and found the following lines that did not include falsehoods.

His opening line, “Well, thank you. Members of Congress and my fellow Americans…” did not contain a lie.

Neither did his closing sentence, “Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.  Thank you.”

Some of the lies were repeats, like:

—Under the Biden administration, the country suffered the

worst inflation in US history.

—He ended eight wars.

—The economy is booming.

—He secured $18 trillion in new investments.

—The price of gasoline is below $2.30 a gallon in most states.

—Corruption is rampant in US elections.

One of my favorites: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”

Could that have something to do with population growth? The population in the 13 colonies in 1776? 2.5 million. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that as the population grows, the workforce will as well.

California Congressman Raul Ruiz had the best line, stating that “…with all his lies he should try and get one [Nobel Prize] for fiction.” Try and get one? He would win it easily.

But we should be used to it by now. The Washington Post published a book, Donald Trump and his Assault on Truth, in which it documented that Trump told more than 30,573 lies in his first term.

Add the lies he told while out of office and his one year back in the White House, he probably has reached 50,000.

Also, let’s also not forget this comes from a convicted felon; a man found guilty of sexual assault; a man who runs several businesses from the White House; was fined millions of dollars for real estate fraud; a man who incited an insurrection in which nine people died directly or indirectly and 150 police officers were injured; a man who lied about the 2020 election; and was impeached twice.

And those are all facts.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)