Benen started documenting Romney's false claims the first week of January. "Little did I know at the time that Romney would become an ambitious prevaricator, whose rhetoric would come to define post-truth politics. Nearly 11 months after Greg Sargent's harmless suggestion, I've published 40 installments in this series, which, before today, featured 884 falsehoods. (If you include today's edition, the new total is 917 falsehoods for the year.)"
According to our count, Benen has documented 893 lies through the first 40 installments and 926 through Nov. 2.
The biggest lie this past week was in his ad that suggested that Jeep production is moving "to China." Romney first floated the lie on Oct. 26, at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," he said. "I will fight for every good job in America, I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair, America will win."
But Benen noted that, as Chrysler itself explained, the company intends to build Jeeps in China to be sold in China, but isn't moving American jobs abroad. But Romney then doubled and tripled down on, even as industry executives called him out for lying. Unfortunately for the Republican, the story isn't going away.
The New York Times editorialized today, "It's bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it." What's more, the Toledo Blade chastised Romney for "conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign."
But that was only the biggest whopper Romney told. Benen listed 32 more, in what he said
As I said earlier, there is a discrepancy in the total number of lies, though we both agree there are more than 900 and Romney is unlikely to reach 1,000 lies before Tuesday. But Benen said the 41st probably will be the final installment of his weekly series chronicling Mitt's mendacity.
Count them yourselves from previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL
And note new lies between Friday and Election Day in the comments.
