With the first one hundred days of his Presidency in full swing, Donald Trump has been a source of constant media scrutiny. His comments, as well as the comments of his administration, on everything from human rights to foreign policy have been under constant analyzation and criticism. His lack of prior political experience has been pinpointed by some as the cause of his less-than-eloquent speech style. As he begins to implement more and more policies and get rid of former President Obama’s executive orders, President Trump is facing a mass media frenzy. Every time he speaks, reporters are gathering facts that he is dispersing and checking them for accuracy; this is called political fact checking.

 
The comments that President Trump has made in press briefings, as well as comments made by his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, have been heavily investigated by the media. President Trump himself made a comment that was named “Lie of the Year” in 2015 by political fact-checking website, Politifact. Recently, Trump has made many controversial claims about everything from the Affordable Care Act to immigration. In this article, Trump and Spicer’s claims will be put to the fact or fiction test.

 
1)“Terrorism in America and abroad has gotten so intense, that it isn’t being reported.”

Politifact rates this claim as “Pants on Fire,” meaning that it is completely and utterly untrue. Terrorism is in fact heavily reported in the Western world, with terrorism in Europe listed on the Global Terrorism Database, according to reporting and fact checking by The Chicago Tribune.

 
2) “It is almost impossible for Christian refugees to receive entry to the United States but Muslim refugees have a much easier time.”
According to FactCheck.Org, this claim is false. Christian refugees in the 2016 fiscal year numbered in at 37,521, with Muslim refugees totaling 38,901. This difference is not extremely significant or “unfair” as Trump suggested because, in many countries in which the US received Christian refugees from, Christianity was not a major religion. Refugees escaping religious persecution often go through the same process and are accepted at the same rate, regardless of religion, as long as they can prove persecution.

 
3) “Trump’s inauguration was the largest audience at an inauguration ever.”
This claim made by both Trump and Press Secretary Spicer was proved incorrect by the Washington D.C. Metro public transit system. In a report by The Atlantic, 570,577 riders used the Metro on Inauguration Day, compared to the 1.1 million who used it on the day of President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. 30.6 million viewers watched Trump’s inauguration on January 20th, which is 19 percent less than the 37.8 million who tuned in for Obama’s first inauguration, according to the Los Angeles Times.

 
Trump has made claims that have been somewhat true, such as the claim that homicide rates have increased by 17 percent in the fifty largest American cities, which comes after a 25-year decline. Although some truths have emerged, the majority of claims made by Trump and Spicer, as well as White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway, who also ran the Trump campaign, have been primarily false. Conway even went so far as to claim a “massacre” that had gone unreported in Bowling Green, Kentucky. No such massacre ever occurred.

 
The Trump White House has already endured mass chaos in the wake of the election. Since his inauguration, the President has done nothing to ease the minds of millions of worried and upset Americans, who are unsatisfied with the direction he is taking the country. President Trump needs to take control of not just his staff and their false claims, but also of his own comments. The lies he is spreading to the American people is creating a further divide between the citizens of this country, and without control, restraint and fact checking of their own, the Trump White House is in for an extremely bumpy ride.