title: Waqf

text: The beneficiaries of the waqf can be persons and public utilities. The founder can specify which persons are eligible for benefit (such the founder's family, entire community, only the poor, travelers). Public utilities such as mosques, schools, bridges, graveyards and drinking fountains can be the beneficiaries of a waqf. Modern legislation divides the waqf as "charitable causes", in which the beneficiaries are the public or the poor, and "family" waqf, in which the founder makes the beneficiaries his relatives. There can also be multiple beneficiaries. For example, the founder may stipulate that half the proceeds go to his family, while the other half go to the poor.


title: Waqf

text: There is dispute over whether the founder himself can reserve exclusive rights to use waqf. Most scholars agree that once the waqf is founded, it can't be taken back.


title: Waqf

text: The Ḥanafīs hold that the list of beneficiaries include a perpetual element; the waqf must specify its beneficiaries in case.


title: Waqf

text: The declaration of founding is usually a written document, accompanied by a verbal declaration, though neither are required by most scholars. Whatever the declaration, most scholars (those of the Hanafi, Shafi'i, some of the Hanbali and the Imami Shi'a schools) hold that it is not binding and irrevocable until actually delivered to the beneficiaries or put in their use. Once in their use, however, the waqf becomes an institution in its own right.


title: Waqf

text: Usually a waqf has a range of beneficiaries. Thus, the founder makes arrangements beforehand by appointing an administrator (called "nāẓir" or "mutawallī" or "ḳayyim") and lays down the rules for appointing successive administrators. The founder may himself choose to administer the waqf during his lifetime. In some cases, however, the number of beneficiaries are quite limited. Thus, there is no need for an administrator, and the beneficiaries themselves can take care of the waqf.


title: Waqf

text: The administrator, like other persons of responsibility under Islamic law, must have capacity to act and contract. In addition, trustworthiness and administration skills are required. Some scholars require that the administrator of this Islamic religious institution be a Muslim, though the Hanafis drop this requirement.


title: Waqf

text: Waqf is intended to be perpetual and last forever. Nevertheless, Islamic law envisages conditions under which the waqf may be terminated:


title: Waqf

text: The practices attributed to Muhammad have promoted the institution of waqf from the earliest part of Islamic history.


title: Waqf

text: The two oldest known "waqfiya" (deed) documents are from the 9th century, while a third one dates from the early 10th century, all three within the Abbasid Period. The oldest dated "waqfiya" goes back to 876 CE and concerns a multi-volume edition of the Qur'an currently held by the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul. A possibly older "waqfiya" is a papyrus held by the Louvre Museum in Paris, with no written date but considered to be from the mid-9th century. The next oldest document is a marble tablet whose inscription bears the Islamic date equivalent to 913 CE and states the "waqf" status of an inn, but is in itself not the original deed; it is held at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.


title: Waqf

text: In the 16th century, the Haseki Sultan charitable complex was founded by the wife of Suleyman the Magnificent and serviced 26 villages; the institution also included shops, a bazaar, two soap plants, 11 flour mills and two bathhouses located in Palestine and Lebanon. For several centuries, the income generated by these businesses contributed in the maintenance of a mosque, a soup kitchen, and two traveler and pilgrim inns.


title: Waqf

text: The earliest pious foundations in Egypt were charitable gifts, and not in the form of a "waqf". The first mosque built by 'Amr ibn al-'As is an example of this: the land was donated by Qaysaba bin Kulthum, and the mosque's expenses were then paid by the "Bayt al-mal". The earliest known "waqf", founded by financial official Abū Bakr Muḥammad bin Ali al-Madhara'i in 919 (during the Abbasid period), is a pond called Birkat Ḥabash together with its surrounding orchards, whose revenue was to be used to operate a hydraulic complex and feed the poor.


title: Waqf

text: Early references to Wakf in India can be found in the 14th-century work "Insha-i-Mahru" by Aynul Mulk Ibn Mahru. According to the book, Sultan Muizuddin Sam Ghaor dedicated two villages in favor of Jama Masjid, Multan, and, handed its administration to the Shaikhul Islam (highest ecclesiastical officer of the Empire). In the coming years, several more wakfs were created, as the Delhi Sultanate flourished.


title: Waqf

text: As per the Wakf Act 1954 (later Wakf Act 1995) enacted by the government of India, Wakfs are categorized as (a) Wakf by user such as Graveyards, "Musafir Khanas" (Sarai) and "Chowltries" etc., (b) Wakf under "Mashrutul-khidmat" (Service Inam) such as "Khazi" service, "Nirkhi" service, "Pesh Imam" service and "Khateeb" service etc., and (c) "Wakf Alal-aulad" is dedicated by the Donor ("Wakif") for the benefit of their kith and kin and for any purpose recognised by Muslim law as pious, religious or charitable. After the enactment Wakf Act 1954, the Union government directed to all the states governments to implement the Act for administering the wakf institutions like mosques, , , graveyards, , , , "anjuman"s and various religious and charitable institutions. A statutory body under Government of India, which also oversees State Wakf Boards. In turn the State Wakf Boards work towards management, regulation and protect the Wakf properties by constituting District Wakf Committees, Mandal Wakf Committees and Committees for the individual Wakf Institutions. As per the report of Sachar Committee (2006) there are about 500,000 registered Wakfs with land in India, and Rs. 60 billion book value.


title: Waqf

text: The "waqf" institutions were not popular in all parts of the Muslim world. In West Africa, very few examples of the institution can be found, and were usually limited to the area around Timbuktu and Djenné in Massina Empire. Instead, Islamic west African societies placed a much greater emphasis on non-permanent acts of charity. According to expert Illife, this can be explained by West Africa's tradition of "personal largesse." The imam would make himself the collector and distributor of charity, thus building his personal prestige.


title: Waqf

text: In Southeastern Europe, there are several places in Bosnia and Herzegovina that were originally built under the waqf system, such as Gornji Vakuf, and Donji Vakuf.


title: Waqf

text: After the Islamic waqf law and madrassah foundations were firmly established by the 10th century, the number of Bimaristan hospitals multiplied throughout Islamic lands. By the 11th century, many Islamic cities had several hospitals. The waqf trust institutions funded the hospitals for various expenses, including the wages of doctors, ophthalmologists, surgeons, chemists, pharmacists, domestics and all other staff, the purchase of foods and medicines; hospital equipment such as beds, mattresses, bowls and perfumes; and repairs to buildings. The waqf trusts also funded medical schools, and their revenues covered various expenses such as their maintenance and the payment of teachers and students.


title: Waqf

text: From the more peculiar examples of healthcare-related waqfs, in the city of Tripoli, a man had set up a waqf which employed two people who would "walk through the hospitals every day and speak quietly to one another in the patients' hearing, remarking on their improvement and good colour".


title: Waqf

text: The "waqf" in Islamic law, which developed in the medieval Islamic world from the 7th to 9th centuries, bears a notable resemblance to the English trust law. Every "waqf" was required to have a "waqif" (founder), "mutawillis" (trustee), "qadi" (judge) and beneficiaries. Under both a "waqf" and a trust, "property is reserved, and its usufruct appropriated, for the benefit of specific individuals, or for a general charitable purpose; the corpus becomes inalienable; estates for life in favor of successive beneficiaries can be created" and "without regard to the law of inheritance or the rights of the heirs; and continuity is secured by the successive appointment of trustees or "mutawillis"."


title: Waqf

text: The only significant distinction between the Islamic "waqf" and English trust was "the express or implied reversion of the "waqf" to charitable purposes when its specific object has ceased to exist", though this difference only applied to the "waqf ahli" (Islamic family trust) rather than the "waqf khairi" (devoted to a charitable purpose from its inception). Another difference was the English vesting of "legal estate" over the trust property in the trustee, though the "trustee was still bound to administer that property for the benefit of the beneficiaries." In this sense, the "role of the English trustee therefore does not differ significantly from that of the "mutawalli"."


title: Waqf

text: Personal trust law developed in England at the time of the Crusades, during the 12th and 13th centuries. The Court of Chancery, under the principles of equity, enforced the rights of absentee Crusaders who had made temporary assignments of their lands to caretakers. It has been speculated that this development may have been influenced by the "waqf" institutions in the Middle East.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is a 2012 visual novel developed by Spike Chunsoft. It is the second game in the "Danganronpa" franchise following "" (2010). It was first released in Japan for PlayStation Portable in July 2012, and a port for PlayStation Vita was released in Japan in October 2013. NIS America released the game worldwide in September 2014; a port for PC was released in April 2016 and a bundle for PlayStation 4 called "Danganronpa 1-2 Reload", also containing the first "Danganronpa" game, was released in March 2017. An enhanced version with the subtitle "Anniversary Edition" was released for Android and iOS in August 2020, for Nintendo Switch in November 2021, and for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One May 2022.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Development of the game started as Kazutaka Kodaka was writing the light novel prequel "Danganronpa Zero" and added hints about a sequel to the novel following their approval. Kodaka aimed to develop a unique plot to give players more mysterious elements in a group of islands, inspired by the television series "Lost". The protagonist Hajime Hinata is part of a group of high-school students who are trapped on a tropical island by their high school's headmaster Monokuma, a sentient stuffed bear, along with Monomi, a sentient stuffed rabbit. Similar to the first game, to leave the island, students must kill one of their peers and not be caught in the subsequent investigation and trial.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The game was well received based on sales and critics. Critical response to the game's narrative and cast was generally favorable. However, the gameplay elements involving class trials earned mixed responses; some writers found some parts of the game uninteresting, while early ones proved unchallenging. "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" was followed by the spin-off "", which was released on September 25, 2014, and the anime "", which ran from July 11, 2016 to September 29, 2016. A loose sequel to the series, called "", with similar gameplay but a different storyline was released on January 12, 2017.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: In a similar manner to the series' , "Danganronpa 2" has two modes of gameplay; School Life, which is split into Daily Life and Deadly Life sections, and the Class Trial. In the dating sim-like "Daily Life" section, players interact with other characters and progress through the plot. Conversing with characters during "Free Time" sections earns items known as Hope Fragments, which can be exchanged for skills that can be used in the Class Trial, increasing the protagonist's skill in debates. Players earn currency known as Monocoins by finding hidden Monokuma Figures and performing well in trials. Monocoins can be exchanged for presents that can be given to other characters during Free Time segments and thus create more Hope Fragments. In the Deadly Life section, which occurs when players discover a crime scene, the player must search for evidence that will help them in the upcoming Class Trial to expose the culprit.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The Class Trial, in which players must determine the identity of a culprit, has the same features as the previous game with new gameplay elements. Class Trials, which uses the first-person shooter genre, mostly consist of Nonstop Debates, in which players must find weaknesses in the students' discussions and shoot them with "Truth Bullets" that contradict them. Yellow "Argue Spots" and blue "Agree Spots" must be shot with a Truth Bullet, indicating someone is telling the truth. In the minigame Hangman's Gambit, players must combine matching letters appearing from both sides of the screen before they collide and combine incorrectly. Combined letters may either be destroyed or used to spell a clue. "Panic Talk Action" replaces "Bullet Time Battle", with a similar rhythmic timing gameplay mechanic used to overcome a student's mental defenses as the latter refuses to listen to logic. Controls from the last game are slightly revised; players must spell out a phrase in the correct order at the end of the section rather than firing a specific Truth Bullet. In the Closing Argument, players fill in a comic strip depicting the events of a crime; panels are selected from stocks, and must be chosen correctly, rather than being available from the start.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: New gameplay elements have been added to the Class Trial. Rebuttal Showdowns take place when a student tries to refute the player's logic. In these sections, players must slash apart their opponents' argument to gain dominance in the conversation and reveal new information before using a "Truth Blade" to strike the correct weak point when it appears. Logic Dive is a snowboarding minigame in which players steer themselves down a logical tube while avoiding obstacles and pitfalls, and occasionally choosing between multiple routes based on a question to arrive at a logical conclusion. The final segment Spot Select requires players to examine an image and indicate an important spot.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Besides the Class Trials and Daily Event, "Goodbye Despair" also offers several mini-games. Players always have access to a virtual pet, accessed from the pause menu, that grows as players walk in the game and earns players rewards based on its Hope and Despair statistics. "Magical Girl Miracle☆Monomi" is a minigame in which players control Monomi, a mentor of the main characters, who fights waves of monsters. Island Mode, which is available after clearing the game once, is an alternative mode in which the students are not subjected to Monokuma's killing game and aim to make friends with each other and earn Hope Fragments, allowing players to bond with characters more easily than in the main story mode. "Danganronpa IF", a short story depicting an alternative storyline for "Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc", is also unlocked after clearing the game once.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: In "Goodbye Despair", players control Hajime Hinata, an amnesiac boy who has just become one of Hope's Peak Academy's "Ultimate" students alongside fifteen others who befriend the calm but mentally unstable Nagito Komaeda. The game is set on a remote tropical island called Jabberwock Island, where they have been marooned by their alleged teacher, a small, rabbit-like mascot named Usami, who claims it to be a field trip. However, the school's principal Monokuma announces the students cannot leave the island unless they murder another student and get away with it. If the students can identify a murderer in a Class Trial, that culprit is executed, but if they make the wrong assumption the killer goes free whilst everyone else is sentenced to death.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Several students are murdered over the course of the game, and, through Hajime's investigation, the killers are discovered and executed. Byakuya Togami (later revealed The Ultimate Impostor) is inadvertently killed by Chef Teruteru Hanamura in an attempt to stop Nagito from committing the first murder. Photographer Mahiru Koizumi is killed by swordswoman Peko Pekoyama, to prevent yakuza Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu from killing her to avenge his sister. Musician Ibuki Mioda and traditional dancer Hiyoko Saionji are killed by nurse Mikan Tsumiki as she was under the effects of Despair Disease. Team Manager Nekomaru Nidai is killed by animal breeder Gundham Tanaka in an honorable duel to prevent the rest of the students starving to death. As these murders occur, new areas of the islands are discovered and the group becomes aware of an organization monitoring them, the "Future Foundation". Nagito, through a convoluted process, arranges his own death so that Chiaki Nanami is considered his killer, and executed. During the graduation, it is learnt that she is actually an AI program created by the late Chihiro Fujisaki to observe and protect the students during the Future Foundation's experiment. After Chiaki's death, Hajime recovers a memory of arriving at the islands with Nagito, who had transplanted the arm of a woman, Junko Enoshima. As reality falls apart around him, Hajime learns that Nagito and his fellow students are surviving members of Ultimate Despair, a group Junko led, whose terrorist actions led to a crisis known as The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History, also known The Tragedy, which caused societal collapse worldwide.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The Future Foundation has been attempting to undo Ultimate Despair's damage. Makoto Naegi captured the surviving members but, rather than executing them, decided to rehabilitate them by erasing their memories and putting them in a virtual reality program. Makoto warns Hajime that an artificial intelligence copy of Junko has hijacked their program and is trying to manipulate events to possess the bodies of the deceased students, which are still intact in the real world, once the surviving students "graduate". Alter Ego Junko's ultimate plan is to download herself into every person on the planet. Makoto tells Hajime if the class votes not to graduate, it will allow him to reset the system and purge Alter Ego Junko.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Junko attempts to deter Hajime by revealing he is Izuru Kamukura, the former leader of Ultimate Despair. The other students hesitate, afraid of reverting to their original personalities, but Hajime eventually finds the inner courage to thwart Alter Ego Junko's plan, and persuades the other students, Fuyuhiko, princess Sonia Nevermind, mechanic Kazuichi Soda, and gymnast Akane Owari to refuse graduation, proposing that they create a future in which they do not have to forget. Hajime, Makoto and the others reset the system, delete Alter Ego Junko and retain their memories. In the epilogue, Makoto is confident the students will find a way to revive their friends.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: After the release of the first "Danganronpa" game, there were no plans for a sequel, and the game's development team was split up to work on other projects. As a result, writer Kazutaka Kodaka was attracted to the idea of creating the novel "Danganronpa Zero", which he decided to write after consulting producer Terasawa. While writing "Zero", Kodaka was approached by Terasawa with the idea of writing a sequel, and took on writing for both "Zero" and "Goodbye Despair" concurrently, eventually finishing with the former in October 2011. Kodaka considers the novels needed more structuring work than the game. As "Zero" foreshadows events of "Goodbye Despair", Kodaka recommends gamers read "Zero" before playing the sequel. The writer attempted to create unique storytelling methods for "Goodbye Despair"; this is more relevant to the second half of the story, in which Hajime starts playing a video game when the player is already controlling Hajime. In retrospect, Kodaka felt proud of the way the game's segments were developed. While he personally prefers the original "Danganronpa" over the second one, Kodaka felt more emotionally moved by the second half of "Goodbye Despair".


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: To bring more variety to the sequel, Monokuma was given a counterpart named Monomi (or Usami). Kodaka also said the islands were used to give players more content to explore, comparing the sequel to the television series "Lost" in terms of amount of plot twists and how different the narrative is. Kodaka said characters like Nagito, Byakuya and Gundham were created to confuse returning players due to their similarities with characters from previous games. However, he still feels he made the cast more human as the story progresses. The characters were designed by Rui Komatsuzaki. In early sketches, Hajime's design differed from those used for the series; his hair was originally meant to be longer, and at one point, he was designed to be wearing glasses. He was the earliest designed the character which generated a major contrast between his white clothing to Nagito's dark clothing.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Nagito was made to be an absolute rival to Hajime, with a relationship similar to the one between the Joker and Batman in "Batman" (1989). To confuse gamers and suggest the characters may be the same person, Makoto and Nagito were both voiced by female actor Megumi Ogata. The name "Nagito Komaeda" was conceived as an anagram for "Naegi Makoto da" ("I am Makoto Naegi") to infer it is a pseudonym. Ogata had problems playing Nagito because she did not understand him. Komaeda was introduced with the same Lucky Talent as Makoto Naegi but the staff considered them opposites based on their ideals of "hope". There was a lack of pre-release promotion materials for the original version of "Goodbye Despair" in its release year. This surprised Ogata because the anagram had been kept secret from the other developers and voice actors, including Ogata.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Other characters include the heroine Chiaki Nanami with whom Hajime would often interact and bond romantically; Kodaka said the relationship between Makoto and Kyoko Kirigiri, a skilled detective and supporting character from the previous game, was meant to help the player solve cases. In the Japanese version of the game, Hajime was voiced by Minami Takayama, famous for voicing the main character of the detective manga "Case Closed"; the staff put a reference to her career in the snowboarding minigame of "Goodbye Despair" as Jimmy Kudo often surfs a turbo skateboard. Junko's resurrection was left to the player's interpretation. Kodaka compared her to comic book villains like the Joker and Magneto who always survive. Kodaka said Junko can be killed and that she may be the strongest villain he ever created.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: "Danganronpa 2" was first released for the PlayStation Portable in Japan on July 26, 2012. A limited edition that includes a Monokuma PSP pouch, an art booklet, a soundtrack and audio commentary CD, keychains and badges, and a download code for a custom theme was available. A compilation of the game and its predecessor, "Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc", titled "Danganronpa 1・2 Reload", with new touch controls and high resolution graphics, was released in Japan for the PlayStation Vita on October 10, 2013.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: After releasing the Vita remake of the first game in North America and Europe in February 2014, NIS America released the sequel under the name "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" in Western territories in September 2014. Localization member Robert Schiotis said finding a voice actor for Nagito in the English-language version proved challenging because he is meant to clash with Makoto's ideals. Bryce Papenbrook voiced both characters, making the connections between them more interesting according to localization staff. Johnny Yong Bosch took the role of Hajime; Bosch found being immersed in Hinata's role difficult due to the lack of artwork depicting him. When a "Danganronpa" player asked him to sign a copy of "Goodbye Despair", Bosch could better understand the character he voiced. As well as a standard edition, a limited edition was released via NIS America's online store, including an art book, soundtrack CD, stickers, Monokuma medals, and a pair of sunglasses. "Danganronpa 1・2 Reload" was also released in North America and Europe for PlayStation 4 in March 2017. An enhanced version for Android and iOS, under the name "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Anniversary Edition", was released on August 20, 2020. This version features the gallery mode, allowing players to replay the character voices and view event illustrations. During E3 2021, it was announced that this version of the game will also be released for the Nintendo Switch in 2021, both as part of the "Danganronpa Decadence" bundle, as well as separately. It was also released for Xbox One and Windows via Microsoft Store on May 10, 2022. It was made available through Xbox Game Pass on the same day.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" received "generally favorable" reviews based on Metacritic reviews. Upon its release in North America, the game was met with praise for its plot. "VideoGamer" said ""Danganronpa 2" tells a great story that is worthy of your time" while "GameSpot" was "hooked from the get-go, enthralled by every surprise turn taken by the story, stunned by every unexpected character revelation, devastated at every death, and pumping my fist at every small victory against that bastard Monokuma". "Polygon's" reviewer found the cast's traits repetitive but enjoyed the dating sim elements. He found the trials more challenging and engaging than those of the original game, including the searches for clues when interacting with the cast. He said newcomers to the franchise would be confused by the story of "Goodbye Despair", which is connected with the plot of the first game. On the other hand, "Game Revolution" stated the mystery involving the connection between two "Danganronpa" games is obvious and it does not confuse newcomers, who would notice clues. The reviewer also said the humor is more adult and perverted than that of the first game, making it feel more innovative for its genre.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The class trials earned mixed responses; "Giant Bomb" praised the way the class trials become progressively more challenging. According to "Hardcore Gamer", "So much of "Dangranonpa 2" is an immediate, purposeful retread in both mechanics and storytelling" he felt there were not many improvements. "Hardcore Gamer" appreciated the new setting and enjoyed the multiple plot twists for being more difficult to understand than those of the previous game, and added references to other games made him feel the plot is self-aware. "Touch Arcade" praised the handling of the cellphone versions for being easy to handle but he criticized the poor handling of the camera in the cellphone game and wanted the developers to fix this issue. "GameSpot" enjoyed the class trials for staying true to the original formula but gave a negative response to the minigames, which the reviewer said feel unnecessary. "GameSpot" also praised the handling of the plot and cast. "GameRevolution" said the additions to the original class trial system are enjoyable because they provide more variety in terms of gameplay but found some mechanics annoying. Due to the multiple minigames of the class trials, "Game Revolution" wished the game had focused more on its visual novel style, which he felt is the part of the game that stood out the most. "Hardcore Gamer" enjoyed the hack-and-slash style in the form of the Rebuttals and the revised Hangman’s Gambit, which come across as improvements. According to "Video Gamer", the gameplay mechanics are one of the title's weak points.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The characters and their interactions with Hajime were the subject of praise. "Video Gamer" praised the returning villain Monokuma and said the cast provide enjoyment despite having mixed thoughts about their originality due to most being stereotypes previously seen in other games. "Joystiq" praised the balance between lighthearted moments and violent deaths, and said the characters are likable and distinct enough from each other enough to make their dating sim events enjoyable and easy. "Touch Arcade" liked the characters and their dating sim elements, favoriting Ibuki Moda and Nagito Komaeda. While originally viewing the cast as archetypes, "GameInformer" noted the writing was good at fleshing them out. "Hardcore Gamer" had mixed feelings in regards to the cast, viewing some as likable and others as annoying despite the more engaging narrative. Similarly, "Polygon" found few character bondings in the game worthwhile due to some being less likable than the original "Danganronpa" and the rest dying across the title.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" won an "Award of Excellence" at the Japan Game Awards 2013 ceremony. "Hardcore Gamer" awarded it "Best PS Vita Game", "Best New Character" (Monokuma) and "Best Adventure Game". "Famitsu" readers voted it the best game of 2012.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: The game sold 69,000 copies during its first week on sale in Japan and was the fifth best-selling game of the week. In Japan, the PSP version sold 162,408 copies during its life cycle.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Several manga publications based on "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" have been conceived. A direct adaptation began serialization in Enterbrain's "Famitsu Comic Clear" magazine from December 10, 2012. The spin-off manga "Dangan Island - Kokoro Tokonatsu Kokoronpa♪", "Chō-Kōkō-Kyū no Kōun to Kibō to Zetsubō", and "Nanami Chiaki no Sayonara Zetsubō Daibōken" were published by Mag Garden from October 2013. Another spin-off, "Nangoku Zetsubo Carnival!", was serialized in GA Bunko's magazine from April 2013. Other two include "4Koma Kings" and "Comic Anthology" compilations by various artists. Dark Horse Comics has released the "Chō-Kōkō-Kyū no Kōun to Kibō to Zetsubō" manga under the title "Danganronpa 2: Ultimate Luck and Hope and Despair" in North America on September 15, 2018. They also published the first of three volumes of the "Super Danganronpa 2: Sayonara Zetsubou Gakuen" manga, as "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" in North America, on March 25, 2020.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: Monomi appears at the end of the final episode of the first game's 2013 anime television adaptation "". An anime adaptation of "Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair" was initially planned but the producers instead chose to make an original anime series titled "", which aired between July and September 2016. The series' second part "Despair Arc" focuses on the characters of "Goodbye Despair" prior to the events of the first game.


title: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

text: A Monomi costume is available in the Japanese PS Vita and PlayStation 3 versions of "Terraria". Downloadable outfits based on Monokuma and Monomi also appear in the "Super Sonico" game "Motto! SoniComi".


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is an American confectioner, wholly owned by Swiss confectioner Lindt & Sprüngli. The company was founded by and is named after Italian chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, who, after working in South America, moved to California. The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was incorporated in 1852, and is the third-oldest chocolate company in the US, after Baker's Chocolate and Whitman's.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: In 1817, Domenico Ghirardelli was born in Rapallo, Italy, to an "exotic foods importer" and his wife. Domenico received his first education in the chocolate trade when he was apprenticed to a local candymaker as a child. By the time he was 20, Ghirardelli had sailed to Uruguay with his wife to work in a chocolate and coffee business. A year later, Ghirardelli moved to Lima, Peru, and opened a confectionery store. In 1847, nine years later, James Lick (Ghirardelli's neighbor) moved to San Francisco, California, with of Ghirardelli's chocolate. Ghirardelli remained and continued to operate his store in Peru.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: In 1849, Ghirardelli received news of the gold strike at Sutter's Mill and sailed to California. After doing some prospecting, Ghirardelli opened a general store in Stockton, California, offering supplies and confections to fellow miners. Ghirardelli's tent-based store was one of the first shops set up in the area.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Several months later, Ghirardelli opened a second store on the corner of Broadway and Battery in San Francisco, which became, in 1850, his first establishment in that city.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Ghirardelli had a general store in Hornitos, California, between 1856 and 1859, during a gold rush, where he perfected his chocolate recipes. The remains of the store can still be seen in town.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: A fire on May 3, 1851, destroyed Ghirardelli's San Francisco business, and a few days later, his Stockton store also burned down. However, in September of the same year, Ghirardelli used his remaining assets to open the Cairo Coffee House in San Francisco. This business venture proved unsuccessful, and Ghirardelli opened a new store, named Ghirardely & Girard,<ref name="ghirardelli/history"></ref> on the corner of Washington and Kearny Streets in San Francisco. Soon afterward, Ghirardelli was making enough money to send for his family, who were still living in Peru. He changed the company's name to D. Ghirardelli & Co. and, in 1852, imported of cocoa beans. The company was incorporated in 1852 and has been in continuous operation since.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: The next year, in 1853, the business relocated to the corner of Jackson and Mason Streets. By 1855, a larger manufacturing facility was needed, and so the factory was moved to the corner of Greenwich and Powell Streets, while the office remained at the previous location. During this time, the company sold liquor, but dropped their line of alcoholic products sometime after 1871. By 1866, the company was importing of cocoa seeds a year. By that time, the company not only sold chocolate, but also coffee and spices to the United States, China, Japan, and Mexico. In 1885, the company imported of cocoa seeds.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: In 1892, Ghirardelli retired as head of the company and was replaced by his three sons. Two years later, on January 17, 1894, Ghirardelli died at age 77 in Rapallo, Italy.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: By 1900, Ghirardelli's company was selling only chocolate and mustard, having sold its coffee and spices businesses. Further expansion over the years into different buildings allowed the company to expand into new markets and grow financially. In 1965, San Francisco declared Ghirardelli Square (where many of the Ghirardelli buildings were constructed) an official city landmark. Two years later, production facilities moved to San Leandro, California ().


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Since the 1960s Ghirardelli has also moved to focus on a restaurant division by selling ice cream sundaes, complete with their famous hot fudge chocolate sauce. In one of their earliest menus from the 1960s they featured five "Nob Hill Sundaes" all named after different landmarks, historical aspects, or local figures from San Francisco (Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Banana Split, Strike it Rich, The Rock, and the Emperor Norton). As of 2019, they featured over 15 different sundaes.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: In 1963, Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was bought by the Golden Grain Macaroni Company, maker of Rice-A-Roni. Later, in 1986, Quaker Oats bought Golden Grain, and thus Ghirardelli. In 1992, Quaker Oats sold the Ghirardelli Chocolate division to a private investment group. John J. Anton, from that group, became the president and CEO of the newly independent Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. Lindt and Sprüngli, from Switzerland, acquired Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in 1998 as a wholly owned subsidiary of its holding company.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: According to their own website, Ghirardelli is one of the few chocolate companies in the United States to control every aspect of its chocolate manufacturing process, rejecting up to 40% of the cocoa seeds shipped in order to select what the company calls the "highest quality" seeds. The company then roasts the cocoa seeds in-house by removing the outer shell on the seed and roasting the inside of the seed, or the nibs. The chocolate is then ground and refined until the particles are in size.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Ghirardelli produces several flavors of chocolate. The chocolate is sold in bar form or in miniature squares.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Ghirardelli also sells food service items, like chocolate beverages and flavored sauces, to other retailers.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: In 2015, an independent laboratory tested over 120 chocolate products for lead and cadmium, and found that 96 of the 127 of them contained lead and/or cadmium above the safety threshold defined by California's Proposition 65.


title: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

text: Based on these results, As You Sow filed notices with over 20 companies, including Ghirardelli and Trader Joe's, for failing to provide the legally required warning to consumers that their chocolate products contain cadmium, lead, or both. The suit was settled in 2018.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century is a 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie directed by Kenneth Johnson and starring Kirsten Storms as the eponymous heroine. The film was based on the book "" written by Marilyn Sadler and Roger Bollen. The film was originally conceived as a pilot for a potential television series. The film was the first under the Disney Channel Original Movie banner to produce a sequel, "" (2001). A third and final installment was also produced, "" (2004).


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: The year is 2049 and Zenon Kar is a 13-year-old girl who lives with her family on an Earth-orbiting space station. After Zenon gets into trouble with the space station's commander, Edward Plank, her parents punish her by sending her to Earth to live with her Aunt Judy. On Earth, Zenon experiences trouble fitting in with other kids, who consider her name, space-station stories and slang to be weird. Likewise, Zenon considers the children at her school woefully out of touch with pop culture. Eventually, Zenon makes friends on Earth with two boys, Andrew and Greg (with whom she develops a relationship). Along the way the kids learn to be more accepting of one another and to look past first impressions.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: During her time on Earth, Zenon uncovers a plot masterminded by station bigwig Parker Wyndham to use a computer virus to crash the space station and collect the insurance money. When Zenon tries to warn her parents of the danger, Commander Plank, who sees all children as troublemakers, convinces Zenon's parents not to listen to her. Plank believes that her story is only a ploy to get back onto the space station to attend an upcoming concert by her idol Proto Zoa and his pop-rock group Microbe.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: Andrew and Greg join in to help Zenon find a way to save the people on the space station. Andrew creates a computer anti-virus, but Zenon must get Andrew's disk to the space station. Zenon goes to the launch yard, hoping to sneak onto a rocket to the space station. Proto Zoa, who is about to depart for the concert, recognizes Zenon from a "Dance with Proto Zoa" contest has her join him on the launch to the station. Wyndham and Lutz enter the rocket to try to stop Zenon, and Aunt Judy follows them. Upon arrival, Commander Plank is shocked to see Zenon, but lets her stay when he becomes smitten with Aunt Judy. Plank still won't believe Zenon's story, especially when Wyndham accuses her of trying to sabotage the station. Zenon manages to load Andrew's anti-virus program on the station's computers in time. Wyndham is arrested with his assistant Lutz while everyone else enjoys the Microbe concert.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: "Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century" was a failed pilot for a proposed television series. It was directed by Kenneth Johnson. The film was produced by de Passe Entertainment for Disney Channel, and executive produced by Suzanne de Passe and Suzanne Coston.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: Filming began in August 1998, in Vancouver, British Columbia. The rocket launch yard scenes were filmed at the Plaza of Nations.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: "Zenon" was originally slated to air on the Disney Channel in December 1998, but ultimately premiered on January 23, 1999. Walt Disney Home Video released it on VHS in September 2000.


title: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 62% based on audience scores. The film and its sequels have since developed somewhat of a cult following.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: 19-2 is a Canadian police procedural crime drama television series developed by Bruce M. Smith, based on the Canadian French-language series of the same name created by Réal Bossé and Claude Legault. It was produced by Sphere Media Plus and Echo Media, in association with Bell Media; Smith served as showrunner. The series premiered on Bravo in Canada on January 29, 2014, and aired for three seasons, before it moved to CTV for its fourth and final season. It finished its four-year run on September 18, 2017, with 38 episodes.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Set in Montréal, "19-2" follows the professional and personal lives of patrol officers from the Montréal Police Service's Station 19, which covers an inner-city area of the City. The series' name comes from the callsign of the patrol car of the two main characters. Adrian Holmes and Jared Keeso star as Nick Barron and Ben Chartier. The two are joined by principal cast members Benz Antoine, Mylène Dinh-Robic, Laurence Leboeuf, Dan Petronijevic, Conrad Pla, Bruce Ramsay, Sarah Allen, Victor Cornfoot, Tyler Hynes and Maxim Roy, with Richard Chevolleau, Lisa Berry, Tattiawna Jones, Alexander De Jordy, Krista Bridges, Joe Pingue, and Darcy Laurie joining them in later seasons.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: "19-2" has received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for its characterization, pacing, writing, and acting. The series has been nominated for 37 Canadian Screen Awards, winning five, including Best Dramatic Series and Best Performance by an Actor for both Holmes and Keeso, and was also nominated for Best Drama Series at the 44th International Emmy Awards.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Nick Barron and his partner Jean-Pierre Harvey are shot responding to a burglary. While Barron is spared by his body armour, Harvey is shot in the head and left hospitalized for life. Replacing Harvey is Ben Chartier, a veteran constable from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), who transferred to Montreal to escape troubles in his hometown. As officers from Station 19 deal with the challenges of police work, they struggle with their own personal challenges as well. Chartier is estranged from his family after he personally arrests his own father for drunk driving. Barron struggles with his continuing feelings for his estranged wife, colleague Detective Isabelle Latendresse. Tyler Joseph struggles with alcoholism. Jean-Marc Brouillard abuses his wife. Commander Marcel Gendron struggles to protect the station's image in the face of pressure from the public and his superiors alike. By the end of the first season, Chartier's former employer, the SQ, assigns him to find a mole within the station.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: The second season begins with Barron and Chartier responding to reports of a snake at a daycare centre. Chartier encounters an armed civilian: Barron's cousin Cassius Clemont. Barron's unsavoury relationship with Clemont makes Barron the prime suspect of the SQ's investigation into the mole in 19. When Chartier brings Barron into the investigation, Barron and Clemont burgle a suspect's house and make a rash decision that endangers both of them. The third season starts in the aftermath of the mole's suicide. The reputation of Station 19 has been destroyed by the revelation of the mole, along with other incidents such as the arrest of Brouillard for domestic violence. Cassie Clemont is discovered dead, having been brutally tortured for days. Barron and Chartier must deal with the fallout of Barron's actions, as the station is scrutinized by an inspector from Internal Affairs.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: The series features a fourth season that was not based on the 2011 French version and is completely original, containing 8 additional episodes.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: In July 2012, CBC Television ordered a pilot for an English-language adaptation of the popular French-language television series "19-2" created by and starring Réal Bossé and Claude Legault, to be adapted by Bruce M. Smith and directed by Louis Choquette. CBC Television did not pick up the series for its 2013 season; instead, the adapted series was picked up by Bravo for a season of ten episodes in June 2013 at the Banff World Media Festival, with Smith serving as showrunner. The series was renewed for a second season in April 2014, a third in April 2015, and a fourth in May 2016. On September 23, 2016, Bell Media announced that the fourth season would be the show's final season. The series had a $500,000 per episode budget bump over the original series.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: In August 2012, Adrian Holmes and Jared Keeso were cast as Nick Barron and Ben Chartier, respectively. In September 2013, Bravo announced that Benz Antoine would reprise his role as Tyler Joseph from the original series, with Maxim Roy, Laurence Leboeuf, Dan Petronijevic, Mylène Dinh-Robic, Conrad Pla, and Bruce Ramsay cast as Detective Isabelle Latendresse, Audrey Pouliot, J.M. Brouillard, Beatrice Hamelin, Sergeant Julien Houle, and District Commander Marcel Gendron, respectively. Additional cast include Sarah Allen as Catherine Lariviere, Victor Cornfoot as Jean-Pierre Harvey, and Tyler Hynes as Vince Legare. In July 2014, Richard Chevolleau and Lisa Berry joined the cast for the second season as Cassius "Kaz" Clemont and Rita George, respectively. Tattiawna Jones, who recurred as Amelie de Grace, throughout the first season, was subsequently promoted to the principal cast in the second season. In August 2015, Alexander De Jordy was announced to be cast as Richard Dulac, while Krista Bridges was announced as Inspector Elise Roberge, and Joe Pingue as Charlie Figo. Darcy Laurie joined the cast for the fourth season as Sergeant Roy Suarez.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: On the show filming in Montreal, executive producer Jocelyn Deschênes stated, "CBC said – 'We want to see Montreal'. They asked for it. Montreal hasn't been shown that much on English-Canadian TV and it's a very cinematic city. They really want us to show Montreal from angles that we've never seen." Production on the pilot took place at the end of September 2012, for ten days, while production on the remaining episodes began in September 2013, and concluded in December.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Production on the second season began in July 2014 until October. The season two premiere, "School", features an uninterrupted, 13-minute single-camera tracking shot of a school shooting, based on the 2006 Dawson College shooting in Montreal. Podz, director of the French-Canadian version of the show who had helmed the school-shooting episode in that series, was brought back to helm the episode of the English-Canadian adaptation. The scene, which was shot in the same school as the original, involved intense research and rehearsal, at least a half-dozen rooms, a two-storey building, roughly a hundred extras, and required thirteen takes. Production on the third season began in August 2015, while filming for the fourth and final season began in September 2016. Filming for the series ended in December 2016.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: "19-2" aired on Bravo in Canada, for its first three seasons, each consisting of 10 episodes, before it moved to CTV for its fourth and final season, consisting of eight episodes. The first season originally aired from January 29 to April 2, 2014, while the second season aired from January 19 to March 23, 2015. A third season premiered on June 20, 2016, concluding on August 22, and the fourth season premiered on July 31, 2017, and concluded on September 18.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Content Television & Digital bought the international distribution rights in January 2014. In the United States, the series began streaming on Acorn TV, with the first season premiering on January 18, 2016, the second on May 16, the third on October 24, and the fourth on September 22, 2017. In the United Kingdom, Season 1 premiered on Spike UK on July 15, 2015; and Season 2 on July 6, 2016. In Latin America distribution, Kew Media sold three seasons of the series to Grey Juice Lab in 2018, for broadcast rights in Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: The complete first season was first released on DVD in Region 1 on April 26, 2016, with the complete second season released on August 30, 2016, the complete third season released on December 13, 2016, and the complete fourth season is scheduled to be released on November 7, 2017. CraveTV has exclusive Canadian streaming rights to the series, with all episodes available on the video on demand service and new episodes of the fourth season available one day earlier, 10 p.m. on Sunday, than their original broadcast on CTV, beginning on July 30, 2017. Episodes of the first three seasons were available on Bravo.ca, and the Bravo GO app after their broadcast premiere.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: The premiere episode of "19-2" was watched by 140,000 viewers, making it Bravo's most-watched premiere of an original Canadian series since "The Borgias" in 2011. Its conventional television debut aired on CTV the following day on January 30, 2014, and was watched by 872,000 viewers. The second episode was watched by a mere 76,000 viewers, which was attributed to many viewers who watched the premiere on CTV assuming the main network was its home. Due to this, Bell Media decided to air a second "special primetime" broadcast of the second episode on February 9, which led to a series-high for the show's third airing on Bravo, with 178,000 viewers tuning in. Regarding Bell Media's cross-platform promotion, Scott Henderson concluded, "It shows that the sampling works. It may have taken a few weeks to find the home, but now the series is doing well." After factoring DVR recordings, the second episode on Bravo was watched by a total of 150,000 viewers, up 96 percent from the preliminary data.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: The first season finished as Bravo's number one new series of the 2014–15 television season, drawing an average of nearly 200,000 viewers per episode, and reaching a total of 3 million unique viewers. The second season grew its timeslot audience, 10 p.m. on Monday, by 54 percent compared to the same weeks in the previous year and over the course of the season reached a total of 2.5 million viewers.


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: In a review for "HuffPost Canada" Denette Wilford wrote: ""19-2" is not just your average procedural. It's a character-driven drama that follows two not-so-different men from very different worlds as they learn to work with one another. The acting is solid and organic, the pace is perfect, the writing is real and natural and believable, and the stories hit home." A.R. Wilson of Digital Journal also reviewed it positively saying, "Instead of depending on constant action sequences and endless doses of adrenaline, it spaces its major crimes out, patiently mining the aftermaths of these events for compelling storylines... It's realistically written, beautifully acted, and gorgeously shot in and around Montreal. Most of all, it's a keenly observed character drama that manages to make the cop show genre feel fresh by placing people over procedural."


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Phil Harrison and Gwilym Mumford for "The Guardian" said "This Canadian series, set in Montréal's Precinct 19, boasts all the tropes of post-"Shield" police dramas: antiheroes, mavericks, shaky verité camerawork. Yet what 19-2 lacks in originality it makes up for in action from the off". "The New York Times"s Neil Genzlinger described the series as "a slow burn" and stated, "There are tropes in "19-2" – the police genre is too crowded for there not to be – but the writing is sublime, turning each episode into a sort of tone poem, a slice of urban and police life carefully observed. The series is in the tradition of shows like "The Wire", portraying law enforcement less flashily and less noisily than others, and thus more accurately." Bill Brownstein of the "Montreal Gazette" said, ""19-2" works so effectively because it grasps the reality of both conflicted cops and citizens in this city. Nothing is black and white here. Characters come in a variety of shades. All of which makes the chemistry between partners Barron and Chartier so credible and so captivating." Conversely, "The Globe and Mail"s John Doyle was more critical of the series, feeling "the set-up is as plain as a poke in your eye", noting "The series flirts with grimness but points to the timidity of Canadian drama at the moment – its limitations and inability to challenge and horrify as well as entertain. Both Adrian Holmes and Jared Keeso are fine, it's the material that is less soulful and nuanced than it seems."


title: 19-2 (2014 TV series)

text: Nancy deWolf Smith of "The Wall Street Journal" praised the season two premiere, "School", calling it "the most agonizingly realistic sequence imaginable of a mass shooting and the close-action chase after an active shooter." She added, "Something about the setting, and the differences – even subtle ones – in the way Canadians approach issues such as race, sex, gender and justice, also makes "19-2" exciting in a wholly new way." Wilford also applauded the season two opener and wrote, "Look, every hour of "19-2" is quality television and, at times, it can be a little too sombre. The premiere is like nothing you've ever seen, from the way it was shot, to every actor involved, to the subject matter... It's a powerful, compelling, exhausting hour – one that definitely should not be missed."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: During his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. "The Washington Post"s fact-checker had tallied the number as 30,573 by January 2021, an average of about 21 per day by the end of his presidency. The "Toronto Star" had tallied the number of false claims as 5,276 by June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Characterized as a use of the firehose of falsehood propaganda technique, commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of his mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of these falsehoods became a distinctive part of both his business and political identity. Trump often denied having made false or controversial statements.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: By June 2019, after initially resisting to do so, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies". "The Washington Post" said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election. Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of the big lie propaganda technique.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: "It has long been a truism that politicians lie," wrote Carole McGranahan for the "American Ethnologist" journal in 2017. However, "Donald Trump is different" from other politicians, stated McGranahan, citing that Trump is the most "accomplished and effective liar" thus far to have ever participated in American politics. McGranahan felt that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented" as a result of Trump.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University stated that past U.S. presidents have indeed "lied or misled the country," but none of them were a "serial liar" like Trump. Donnel Stern, writing in the "Psychoanalytic Dialogues" journal in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal," because Trump "lies as a policy," and he "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described lies having "always been an integral part of politics and political communication". However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale" in U.S. politics, both during his presidential campaign and during his presidency. Skjeseth also commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: "Fabrications have long been a part of American politics," wrote Sheryl Gay Stolberg in "The New York Times" in 2017, as several presidents in the previous 50 years have lied. Stolberg cited that Dwight Eisenhower lied about a U.S. spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, Lyndon Johnson lied to justify U.S. policies regarding Vietnam, and Bill Clinton lied to conceal his sexual affair. Meanwhile, Stolberg recounts that Richard Nixon was accused of lying in the Watergate scandal, while George W. Bush was accused of lying about the need for the Iraq War (with Donald Trump being one accuser of Bush lying). However, Stolberg states that "President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called 'the conflict between truth and politics' to an entirely new level ... Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Mark Barabak of the "Los Angeles Times" described in 2017 that U.S. presidents "of all stripes" have previously misled the public, either accidentally or "very purposefully". Barabak provided examples of Ronald Reagan, who falsely stated that he had filmed Nazi death camps, and Barack Obama, who falsely stated that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" under his Affordable Care Act. However, Barabak goes on to state that "White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations" is unparalleled.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Within years of expanding his father's property development business into Manhattan in the early 1970s, Trump attracted the attention of "The New York Times" for his brash and controversial style, with one real-estate financier observing in 1976, "His deals are dramatic, but they haven't come into being. So far, the chief beneficiary of his creativity has been his public image." Der Scutt, the prominent architect who designed Trump Tower, said of Trump in 1976, "He's extremely aggressive when he sells, maybe to the point of overselling. Like, he'll say the convention center is the biggest in the world, when it really isn't. He'll exaggerate for the purpose of making a sale."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: A 1984 "GQ" profile of Trump quoted him stating he owned the whole block on Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. "GQ" noted that the two buildings Trump owned in that area were likely less than a sixth of the block.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In a 2005 interview with "Golf Magazine", Trump said he was able to purchase Mar-a-Lago in 1985 by first purchasing the beach in front of it, then announcing false plans to build large houses between Mar-a-Lago and the ocean (to lower the price of Mar-a-Lago by blocking its view).


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In his 2016–2020 financial reports, he claimed that the Trump Hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. had revenue of over $150 million. In 2021, the House Oversight and Reform Committee revealed that, to the contrary, the property had a net loss of $70 million during that period.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, has opened a civil investigation into Trump's business practices, especially regarding inflated property values. Additionally, she joined the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation into possible property tax fraud by the Trump Organization. The company is suspected of significantly misrepresenting its property values: inflating reports to apply for loans, deflating reports to lower tax bills. In February 2022, amid the ongoing civil and criminal probe, Mazars informed the Trump Organization that it would no longer support the accuracy of the previous decade of financial statements it had prepared for the organization, suggesting that the Trump Organization had provided it with false information. Mazars said that, furthermore, it would no longer serve as the accountant for the Trump Organization nor would it file personal tax returns for Donald and Melania Trump.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 1984, Trump posed as his own spokesman John Barron and made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including by claiming he owned over 90 percent of his family's business. Audio recordings of these claims were released in 2018 by journalist Jonathan Greenberg.<ref name="Greenberg_4/20/2018"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: When the stock market crashed in October 1987, Trump told the press he had sold all his stock a month before and taken no losses. But SEC filings showed that he still owned large stakes in some companies. "Forbes" calculated that Trump had lost $19 million on his Resorts International holdings alone.<ref name="Malanga_5/12/2016"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump said he had very little debt. Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering at least some of the $100 million his bank had lent Trump, said "During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: A 1998 "New York Observer" article entitled "Tricky Donald Trump Beats Jerry Nadler in Game of Politics" reported that "Nadler flatly calls Mr. Trump a 'liar'," quoting Nadler stating, "Trump got $6 million [in federal money] in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it" by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: During a 2005 deposition in a defamation lawsuit he initiated about his worth, Trump said: "My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings... and that can change rapidly from day to day".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: David Fahrenthold investigated the long history of Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true.<ref name="Fahrenthold_10/4/2016"></ref><ref name="NPR_Farenthold_9/28/2016"></ref> Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York.<ref name="Eder_10/3/2016"></ref> The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses.<ref name="Fahrenthold_11/22/2016"></ref> Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump's claimed charitable giving<ref name="Farhi_4/10/2017"></ref> and casting "doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities".<ref name="Pulitzer_4/10/2017"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 1983, when Trump was forming a business relationship with the New Jersey Generals football team, he spoke about the team at a public forum. "He promised the signing of superstar players he would never sign. He announced the hiring of immortal coaches he would never hire. He scheduled a news conference the next day to confirm all of it, and the next day never came," CNN reporter Keith Olbermann recalled in 2021. Following the forum, Trump approached Olbermann and, rather than waiting for interview questions, began speaking into Olbermann's microphone about "an entirely "different" set of coaches and players than he had from the podium."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 1996, Trump claimed he wagered $1 million on 20-to-1 odds in a Las Vegas heavyweight title boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. The "Las Vegas Sun" reported that "while everyone is careful not to call Trump a liar," no one in a position to know about such a sizable wager was aware of it.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In a 2004 book, "The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports", Trump claimed to have hit "the winning home run" when his school played Cornwall High School in 1964, garnering a headline "TRUMP HOMERS TO WIN THE GAME" in a local newspaper. Years later, a journalist discovered that Trump's high school did not play Cornwall that year, nor did any such local headline surface. (Furthermore, a classmate recalled a separate incident in high school in which Trump had hit "a blooper the fielders misplayed," sending the ball "just over the third baseman's head," yet Trump insisted to him later: "I want you to remember this: I hit the ball out of the ballpark!" The event had happened at a practice field, not a ballpark.)


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: After purchasing the Trump National Golf Club in 2009, Trump erected The River of Blood monument between the 14th hole and the 15th tee with a plaque describing the blood of Civil War casualties that turned the river red. No such event ever took place at this site.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: After three Trump casino executives died in a 1989 helicopter crash, Trump claimed that he, too, had nearly boarded the helicopter. The claim was denied 30 years later by a former vice president of the Trump Organization.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Promoting his Trump University after its formation in 2004, Trump asserted he would handpick all its instructors. Michael Sexton, former president of the venture, stated in a 2012 deposition that Trump selected none of the instructors.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: During a 2018 interview, television personality Billy Bush recounted a conversation he'd had with Trump years earlier in which he refuted Trump's repeated false claims that "The Apprentice" was the top-rated television program in America. Bush recalled Trump responding, "Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: The architect Philip Johnson said in 1984 that Trump often lied, adding "But it's sheer exuberance, exaggeration. It's never about anything important."<ref name="Geist_4/8/1984"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Alair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York City during the 1980s, and a former publisher of "Crain's New York Business", said "I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized." Leona Helmsley later used this line as her own when she spoke about Trump in her November 1990 interview in "Playboy" magazine.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump often appeared in New York tabloid newspapers. Recalling her career with "New York Post"s Page Six column, Susany Mulcahy told "Vanity Fair" in 2004, "I wrote about him a certain amount, but I actually would sit back and be amazed at how often people would write about him in a completely gullible way. He was a great character, but he was full of crap 90 percent of the time." (Trump told the magazine, "I agree with her 100 percent.")


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive vice president who worked for Trump from 1978 until 1998, said "he would tell the staff his ridiculous lies, and after a while, no one believed a single word he would say".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Tony Schwartz is a journalist who ghostwrote "Trump: The Art of the Deal". In July 2016, Schwartz was interviewed by Jane Mayer for two articles in "The New Yorker".<ref name="Mayer_7/20/2016"></ref> In them, he described Trump, who was running for president at the time, highly unfavorably, and described how he came to regret writing "The Art of the Deal".<ref name="NPR_ghost_7/21/2016"></ref> When Schwartz wrote "The Art of the Deal", he created the phrase "truthful hyperbole" as an "artful euphemism" to describe Trump's "loose relationship with the truth". This passage from the book provides the context, written in Trump's voice: "I play to people's fantasies... 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 it's a very effective form of promotion".<ref name="Croucher_2/24/2017"></ref> He said Trump "loved the phrase".<ref name="Page_1/24/2017"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Schwartz said "deceit" is never "innocent". He added, "'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'" Schwartz repeated his criticism on "Good Morning America" and "Real Time with Bill Maher", saying he "put lipstick on a pig".<ref name="Winsor_7/18/2016"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Trump's father, Fred Trump, began claiming Swedish descent. The falsehood was repeated by Donald to the press and in "The Art of the Deal",<ref name="Hansler_11/28/2017"></ref><ref name="Carlström_11/28/2017"></ref> where he claimed that his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child".<ref name="Daly_3/24/2016"></ref> In the same book, Donald also said his father was born in New Jersey.<ref name="Mayer_7/25/2016"></ref> When asked during his U.S. presidency why he upheld the false narrative about his father being Swedish, Trump said, "My father spent a lot of time [in Sweden]. But it was never really something really discussed very much." Additionally, as president, Trump on at least three occasions claimed his father was born in Germany. Trump's father is of German descent but was born in the Bronx, New York. In one case Trump said his father was "born in a very wonderful place in Germany," and another time stated, "I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all," invoking an ethnic slur for a German (particularly a soldier of either world war). "The Guardian" pointed out the irony of Trump previously supporting the "birtherism" conspiracy theory asserting Barack Obama was born in Africa.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: On September 11, 2001, after at least one of the World Trade Center towers was destroyed, Trump gave a telephone interview with WWOR-TV in New York. He said: "40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it's the tallest." Once the Twin Towers had collapsed, the 71-story Trump Building at 40 Wall Street became the second-tallest building in Lower Manhattan, shorter than the building at 70 Pine Street.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: At a rally in Columbus, Ohio, in November 2015, Trump said "I have a view—a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center." He added "and I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit ... I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, 'Wow that's unbelievable.'" At the time, Trump lived in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, more than away from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In another rally in 2015 on November 21 in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump claimed seeing "thousands and thousands" of Arab Americans cheering during the collapse of the World Trade Center on the other side of the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey. Several news organizations like the Associated Press (AP), "The Washington Post", and "The Star-Ledger" reported rumors of 9/11 celebrations in New Jersey but they were each found to be "unfounded", unsourced, or finding that people were memorializing the event rather than celebrating it. Nobody else was known to remember seeing masses of thousands of people celebrating after 9/11. Furthermore, Trump, living in Midtown Manhattan would not have been able to hear or see people cheering in New Jersey with a clear view.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump promoted a number of conspiracy theories that have lacked empirical support. These have included those related to Barack Obama's citizenship from 2011. Known as "birther" theories, these allege that Obama was not born in the United States.<ref name="Gass_1/12/2012"></ref><ref name="Keneally_9/18/2015"></ref><ref name="Epps_2/26/2016"></ref> In 2011, Trump took credit for pushing the White House to release Obama's "long-form" birth certificate, while raising doubt about its legitimacy, and in 2016 admitted that Obama was a natural-born citizen from Hawaii. He later falsely stated that Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy theories.<ref name="FactCheck_9/16/2016"></ref><ref name="PolitiFact_9/16/2016"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In September 2015, "Boing Boing" reproduced newspaper articles from 1927, which reported that Trump's father had been arrested that year at a Ku Klux Klan march, though had been discharged. Multiple articles on the incident list Fred Trump's address (in Jamaica, Queens), which he is recorded as sharing with his mother in the 1930 census and a 1936 wedding announcement. Trump, then a candidate for U.S. president, admitted to "The New York Times" that the address was "where my grandmother lived and my father, early on." Then, when asked about the 1927 story, he denied that his father had ever lived at that address, and said the arrest "never happened", and, "There was nobody charged."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Within six months of Trump's announcement of his presidential campaign, FactCheck.org declared Trump the "King of Whoppers", stating, "In the 12 years of FactCheck.org's existence, we've never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 2016, Trump suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.<ref name="Evans_5/29/2018"></ref> He also accused Cruz of stealing the Iowa caucuses during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: During his campaign, Trump claimed that his father, Fred Trump, had given him "a small loan of a million dollars," which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion," denying Marco Rubio's allegation that he had inherited $200 million from his father. An October 2018 "New York Times" exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8," and that he had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60 million ($140 million in 2018 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% "isn't reflective [of reality]... I've seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment". PolitiFact rated this claim "Pants on Fire," its rating for the most egregious falsehoods. Jeremy Adam Smith, writing for the "Greater Good Magazine", said Trump's falsehoods may be "blue lies," which are "told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group". As a result, he posited, Trump's dishonesty does not cause him to lose the support of his political base, even while it "infuriates and confuses almost everyone else".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In November 2015, Buzzfeed News' Andrew Kaczynski reported that Trump, despite having claimed to have the best memory in the world, actually had a history of "conveniently forgetting" people or organizations in ways that benefit him. In July 2016, PolitiFact's Linda Qiu also pointed out that despite Trump's boast for his memory, he "seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements". Both Kaczynski and Qiu cited examples of Trump's stating he did not know anything about former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, despite past statements showing he clearly knew who Duke was.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Over three months before the 2016 presidential election, Trump claimed the election was going to be "rigged".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Throughout his campaign and into his presidency, President Trump repeatedly claimed that he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto said that his country would not pay for the wall, and ultimately never did. While not unusual for a campaign promise to not pan out, Trump's insistence that Mexico would pay for it was a central element of his campaign and continued for years afterward. At the February 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump again reiterated that Mexico would be paying for the wall, saying, "Mexico is paying for it and it's every bit—it's better than the wall that was projected."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump's statements as president have engaged a host of fact-checkers. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged—resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting."<ref name="Burman_2/11/2017"></ref> The situation is getting worse, as described by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true."<ref name="Parker_6/19/2018"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Glenn Kessler said in 2017 that in his job as a fact-checker for "The Washington Post" there was no comparison between Trump and other politicians. Kessler gave his worst rating to other politicians 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, but gave it to Trump 63 percent to 65 percent of the time.<ref name="Milbank_7/1/2016"></ref> Kessler wrote that Trump was the most fact-challenged politician that he had ever encountered and lamented that "the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up". Kessler and others have described how Trump's lying has created an alternate/alternative reality.<ref name="Schwartz_6/24/2020"></ref><ref name="Buchanan_2/9/2021"></ref> David Zurawik says we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards"<ref name="Zurawik_8/26/2018"></ref> because that's "how to cover a habitual liar".<ref name="Stelter_Bernstein_Sullivan_Zurawik_8/26/2018"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: "The Washington Post" fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in December 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio," for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to "The Washington Post," Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.<ref name="Kessler_12/10/2018"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: At the end of 2018, Kessler provided a run-down summary of Trump's accelerating rate of false statements during the year:


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: As late as June 2018, the news media were debating whether to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's falsehoods. That month, however, many news organizations, including CNN, "Star Tribune," "Financial Times," "Los Angeles Times," "Chicago Tribune," "The New Yorker," and "Foreign Policy" began describing some of Trump's false statements as lies. The "Toronto Star" was one of the first outlets to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's statements, and continues to do so frequently. Still, some organizations have continued to shy away from the term.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: On June 5, 2019, Paul Farhi wrote that Glenn Kessler, author of "The Washington Post" "Fact Checker" column, had used the word "lie" only once to describe Trump's statements, although he has sometimes used other terminology that implies lying. Since then, "The Washington Post"s fact-checking team has written the 2020 book "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth. The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies".<ref name="Kessler_Wittes_6/23/2020"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: By October 9, 2019, "The Washington Post"s fact-checking team documented that Trump had "made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days".<ref name="Kessler_Rizzo_Kelly_10/14/2019"></ref> On October 18, 2019, the "Washington Post" Fact Checker newsletter described the situation:


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: After departing the White House on the final day of his presidency, January 20, 2021, Trump gave a farewell address at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland prior to departing on Air Force One for his residence in Palm Beach, Florida. The AP fact-checked his speech, and reported that it included a number of false statements about his presidency and his administration's accomplishments. These included the statements that he passed the largest tax cuts in history; that the U.S. economy during his tenure was the greatest in U.S. history; that he achieved record job creation; that his administration rebuilt both the U.S. military and the American manufacturing industry; that he destroyed the ISIS caliphate; and a reiteration of his previously repeated falsehood that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act. These falsehoods added to the 30,573 falsehoods that "The Washington Post"s fact-checker had tallied by the end of Trump's presidency, an average of 21 falsehoods a day.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: According to a September 2018 CNN-SSRS poll of 1,003 respondents, only 32% percent found Trump honest and trustworthy, the worst read in CNN polling history. The number was 33% on election day, November 8, 2016.<ref name="Cillizza_9/11/2018"></ref> In June 2020, a Gallup poll of 1,034 adults within the United States found that 36% found Trump honest and trustworthy. By comparison, 60% of respondents found President Obama honest and trustworthy in June 2012 during his re-election campaign.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: As president, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks.<ref name="Kessler_Lee_5/1/2017"></ref> Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office according to "The New York Times", and 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of "The Washington Post". By the "Post"s tally, it took Trump 601 days to reach 5,000 false or misleading statements and another 226 days to reach the 10,000 mark. For the seven weeks leading up to the midterm elections, it rose to an average of 30 per day from 4.9 during his first 100 days in office. The "Post" found that Trump averaged 15 false statements per day during 2018.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: The "New York Times" editorial board frequently lambasted Trump's dishonesty. In September 2018, the board called him "a president with no clear relation to the truth".<ref name="NYT_Editorial_Board_9/7/2018"></ref> The following month, the board published an opinion piece titled, "Donald Trump Is Lyin' Up a Storm".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: James Comey had frequent discussions with Trump, and in his first major interview after his firing he described Trump as a serial liar who tells "baffling, unnecessary" falsehoods:<ref name="Perper_4/15/2018"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: "The Washington Post" commentator Greg Sargent pointed out eight instances where government officials either repeated falsehoods or came up with misleading information to support falsehoods asserted by Trump, including various false claims about terrorists crossing or attempting to cross the Mexican border, that a 10% middle class tax cut had been passed, and a doctored video justifying Jim Acosta's removal from the White House press room.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: James P. Pfiffner, writing for "The Evolving American Presidency" book series, wrote that compared to previous presidents, Trump tells "vastly" more "conventional lies" that politicians usually tell to avoid criticism or improve their image. However, Pfiffner emphasized that "the most significant" lies told by Trump are instead "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts," because by causing disagreements about what the facts are, then people cannot properly evaluate their government: "Political power rather than rational discourse then becomes the arbiter."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Selman Özdan, writing in the journal "Postdigital Science and Education", describes that "many" of Trump's statements in interviews or on Twitter "may now be classed as bullshit," with their utter disregard for the truth, and their focus on telling "a version of reality that suits Trump's aims". She added that these statements are "often" written in a way which criticizes or mocks others, while offering a misleading version of Trump's accomplishments to improve his image.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Daniel Dale, writing for "The Washington Post", described fact-checking Trump as being "like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true", noting that Trump had repeatedly and falsely claimed that he had passed the Veterans Choice Act and that U.S. Steel was building six, seven, eight or nine plants (the company had invested in two existing plants). Dale added: "Many of Trump's false claims are so transparently wrong that I can fact-check them with a Google search."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump's presidency began with a series of falsehoods originating from Trump himself. On the day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. He then exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up his claims.<ref name="PolitiFact_1/21/2017"></ref><ref name="Snopes_1/22/2017"></ref><ref name="FactCheck_1/23/2017"></ref><ref name="Rein_3/6/2017"></ref> When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,<ref name="Davis_Rosenberg_1/21/2017"></ref><ref name="Makarechi_1/22/2017"></ref><ref name="Kessler_1/22/2017"></ref> Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by saying he merely presented alternative facts.<ref name="Jaffe_1/22/2017"></ref> Todd responded by saying, "Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods".<ref name="Blake_1/22/2017"></ref>


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In September 2018, a government photographer admitted that he, at Trump's request, edited pictures of the inauguration to make the crowd appear larger: "The photographer cropped out empty space 'where the crowd ended' for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama's in 2009."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump went on to claim that his electoral college victory in 2016 was a landslide;<ref name="PolitiFact_12/11/2016"></ref><ref name="FactCheck_11/29/2016"></ref><ref name="Seipel_12/11/2016"></ref> that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had "serious voter fraud"; and that he didn't win the popular vote because Clinton received 3 million to 5 million illegal votes.<ref name="PolitiFact_11/27/2016"></ref><ref name="Snopes_1/25/2017"></ref> Trump made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice twice refuted. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason," but "The Wall Street Journal" reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentioned the issue of an FBI investigation into links between Trump associates and Russian officials, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a rationale seconded by Sessions. On May 11, Trump said in an NBC News interview: "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story". On May 31, Trump wrote on Twitter, "I never fired James Comey because of Russia!"


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 2017 and in the first half of 2018, Trump repeatedly praised his personal attorney Michael Cohen as "a great lawyer," "a loyal, wonderful person," "a good man" and someone Trump "always liked" and "respected". In the second half of 2018, with Cohen testifying to federal investigations, Trump attacked Cohen as a "rat," "a weak person, and not a very smart person" and described Cohen as "a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work... He represented me very little".


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 2018, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he did not know about a payment of $130,000 that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels or where Cohen had obtained the money from. Glenn Kessler of "The Washington Post" described this statement as a lie, as Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen for the payment.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In 2021, several lawyers who had previously worked with Trump reportedly declined to assist him in asserting executive privilege over the subpoenas served by the House Select Committee on January 6. One of these lawyers was William Burck, who had once represented 11 Trump associates regarding the Mueller investigation. When Trump was asked about the refusal of his former lawyers to involve themselves in his current legal battle, he said: "I don't even know who they are... I am using lawyers who have been with us from the beginning."


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false Spygate conspiracy theory<ref name="Blake=5/23/2018"></ref> alleging that the Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's campaign to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: During the 2018 California wildfires which ultimately caused $3.5 billion in damages and killed 103 people, Trump misrepresented a method that Finland uses to control wildfires. After speaking with President of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Trump reported on November 17, 2018, that Niinistö had called Finland a "forest nation" and that "they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem." Trump's comments sparked online memes about raking leaves. President Niinistö later clarified that there is "a good surveillance system and network" for forest management in Finland and that he did not recall having mentioned raking.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: In March 2019, Trump asserted that the special counsel investigation was "illegal". Previously in June 2018, Trump argued that "the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" However, in August 2018, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: The "Mueller Report" asserted that Trump's family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of falsehoods from Trump himself (mostly while he was president), whether unintentional or not, to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION". However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against the President. In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Through his first 28 months in office, Trump repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: As of March 2019, Trump's most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency more than a hundred times, were that a U.S. trade deficit would be a "loss" for the country, that his tax cuts were the largest in American history, that the economy was the strongest ever during his administration, and that the wall was already being built. By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the United States or other NATO members.


title: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump

text: Trump claimed during the campaign that the U.S. real GDP could grow at rate of "5 or even 6" percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 2.9%, the same rate as 2015 under President Obama. Longer-term projections beyond 2019 by the CBO and Federal Reserve are for growth below 2%. President Obama's advisers explained growth limits as "sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire".