One of the first claims he made upon taking office was that his inauguration was the most watched in history. This was disproven by evidence, which led to one of his acolytes defending the use of “alternative facts.” It has been downhill since then.

Trump soon claimed that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote because of massive voter fraud, without offering or finding evidence. He lied about a meeting with Russians — and his own lawyers admit he lied. He said firing the FBI director had nothing to do with the Russia investigation, then said on national TV that it did, then claimed that it didn’t. He said he is “a very stable genius.”

OK, OK, that last one is open to interpretation; it is an opinion. But of the more than 500 Trump statements vetted by Politifact, 32 percent have been rated as false and 15 percent are “pants on fire.” Last month, The Washington Post reported that Trump had made 3,001 false or misleading claims in his first 466 days in office.

And, according to Lesley Stahl of CBS, Trump explained to her why he criticizes the media: “He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ ” Very stable, indeed.

Most important is Trump’s assertion that his campaign did not collude with Russia and that the “witch hunt” of an investigation has turned up no wrongdoing. But the investigation has resulted in five guilty pleas and nearly 20 indictments. Whether the campaign is guilty, I don’t know; but I do know the country would be in a better place if the president had said, “These are serious allegations. Let’s get to the bottom of it.”