Watch: GOP Congressman Jim Jordan Says He's Never Heard Trump Lie, Fumbles When Confronted With Evidence
CNN host Anderson Cooper put Ohio Representative Jim Jordan in the hot seat Monday night, grilling the conservative lawmaker on the topic of whether he'd ever heard President Donald Trump lie. After trying to deflect the question, Jordan eventually shook his head and said, "I have not."
"I've never heard the president... He's always been square with me, that's for darn sure," Jordan said when asked if he'd heard Trump make false claims. When Cooper pressed the lawmaker on whether Trump had said untrue things to the public, Jordan attempted to deflect the question, hesitating over his answer, and then said, "I don't know of it. Nothing comes to mind."
Cooper then brought up the widely circulated compendium of the president's lies, published by The Washington Post. Jordan said he had not seen the article.
The two had been involved in a discussion about Former FBI Director James Comey when the exchange took place, specifically referring to Comey's claim that Trump is a "serial liar" who is "morally unfit" to be president. Jordan didn't hesitate to call Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, a liar.
"So you're very bold in calling out Andrew McCabe, not so bold on the president of the United States," Cooper said.
Trump has a long history of making false claims and misstating facts during public speeches and interviews. In November, The Washington Post published a tally of untrue claims Trump had made over a 298-day span. There were 1,628 of them, averaging 5.5 claims a day. In several instances, he made the same untrue claim between 40 and 60 times.
The New York Times also analyzed Trump's history of falsehoods and compared it to Obama's track record of making provably false statements. In his first 10 months in office, Trump told six times as many lies as Obama did during his entire term, according to that analysis.
Some of those falsehoods have been made during speeches when Jordan, as a member of Congress, would have been expected to listen or be in the audience, including during the State of the Union delivered in January 2018.
