Donald Trump Campaign's Newest Idea: Getting Facts Straight

A Donald Trump campaign official said Thursday on CNN that wildly inaccurate statements made on air by a campaign spokeswoman "won't happen again" and that the campaign is "fixing it."

Katrina Pierson, a fierce defender of Trump and his policies whom the campaign regularly puts in front of cameras, has offered up some major doozies to television networks this week as she does damage control over Trump's feud with the Muslim family of an American soldier killed in combat.

On Tuesday, for example, she placed the blame for Capt. Humayan Khan's death on President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

“It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost his life," she told Wolf Blitzer.

Khan was killed in 2004. Obama did not take office until 2009, when Clinton became his secretary of state.

Clinton was for sending troops into the Middle East after September 11. But so was Trump's running mate Mike Pence, along with scores of other GOP lawmakers.

Trump himself is also on record supporting the Iraq War.

Pierson went back on CNN on Wednesday and admitted her timeline was wrong but ended up digging herself into a deeper hole.

"That's why I used 'probably,' because I was just going through the timeline," she said. "Because since then, we have had tens of thousands of soldiers that have been lost. One million wounded."

Those numbers aren't even close.

According to numbers from the Department of Defense, fewer than 5,000 Americans have died fighting in the Middle East since 2001, and around 50,000 have been wounded. Staggering numbers, to be sure, but hardly "tens of thousands" of deaths and a million wounded.

Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis told CNN that "Facts are important to me."

"Honestly, I have no idea. I'm not throwing Katrina under the bus — I didn't hear the report, I didn't see the report — I have no idea where she got her information," he said. "I think we're fixing it. I guarantee you that won't happen again with her."

Hours after Clovis's interview Thursday, at a rally in Portland, Maine, Trump again referenced a secret video of the United States handing money over to Iran that the campaign on Wednesday night said was just Fox News b-roll.

Trump himself has hardly been a truthful candidate.

According to Politifact, which fact checks statements by major political figures, 69 percent of Trump's statements have been dubbed "mostly false," "false" or "pants on fire." Clinton has gotten those ratings 27 percent of the time.