As World Looks For Level-Headed Leadership, President Trump Slaps Out More Angry Lies

WASHINGTON, DC — Faced with protesters taking to the streets in cities across the country and a world looking for level-headed leadership as the U.S. military goes on the offensive, President Trump spent part of Sunday blasting out angry, off-the-hook lies about peaceful protests around the United States.

Trump's most recent baseless claims focused on the Americans marching to demand that the president release his income tax returns. Rather than acknowledge their right to march, answer their questions about his secretiveness or simply ignore them, Trump went after their credibility.

"Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday," he tweeted without explaining who that "someone" should be. "The election is over!"

And, in a separate Easter Day tweet: "I did what was an almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College!" he tweeted. "Now Tax Returns are brought up again?"

Accusing liberal protesters of being paid became a frequently spouted canard after Trump was elected and immediately faced millions of people marching in opposition around the world. Other politicians have used the same "they were paid" tactic about rowdy detractors attending lawmaker town halls in Republican-held districts across the country. But there's no evidence for this claim.

Neither Trump's claims nor the lawmakers' have any basis in truth, as far as anybody, including the accusers, have been able to show.

When trying to defend the idea that protesters at the Women's March were paid, for example, some defended their claims by pointing to a New York Times op-ed — whose author made no such claims. Other supposed evidence for paid protesters include a viral fake news article and a few Twitter photos of buses from a user who later realized they had nothing to do with the protests.

Of course, the protests have been organized, and one key organizing group is called "Indivisible," a non-profit that formed by three former Democratic congressional staffers. Though they do take some donations, they are not paid and do not pay their volunteers, so it's not clear why anyone should "look into" who is paying for the rallies.

Trump himself promised to release his tax returns multiple times during the campaign. "I don’t mind releasing — I’m under a routine audit," he said during the first presidential debate when asked about the returns. "And it’ll be released. And — as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released." Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said the same thing after the election.

The IRS has said an audit does not prevent the release of tax records. Trump could release them any time if he wanted to.

It's also not clear why Trump thinks having won the election — which, though he says it was "easy," was won with a slim margin of 70,000 or so votes in key states while losing the national popular vote — means he doesn't have to follow through on something he agreed to do.

As tiring as it may get, the "truthiness" record of the president of the United States is worth scrutiny and review whenever more or his statements hit the Twittersphere.

But for Trump, making false claims and going back on his campaign promises is a pretty frequent occurrence. Politifact's investigations of his claims found that 69 percent deserved ratings of mostly false, false, or "Pants on Fire" — which just means egregiously false. In the first 84 days of Trump's presidency, the Washington Post has counted 394 of his false or misleading claims.

One of his biggest whoppers — that President Obama "wiretapped" him — has absolutely no evidence to support it and yet continues to receive extensive attention and investigation as the White House tries to justify the claim. He later said he believed former National Security Advisor Susan Rice did something illegal when she requested the unmasking of Americans in intelligence reports, even though there is no evidence anything illicit happened.

Other claims, like his assertion that millions and millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election — and all of those votes against him — have been swept under the rug and largely forgotten, despite the administration's insistence that it would conduct a full-scale investigation.

But as long as he's president, people are going to have to listen to what he has to say, whether it's unsupported claims about paid protesters, false votes, or the activities of his predecessor. And some people are sure to believe him.

Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images News/Getty Images