During a Fox News interview that ran on Wednesday evening, President Trump touted an aspect of his agreement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that will allow for repatriation of the remains of American soldiers who died during the Korean War.

“One of the things that really I’m happy is that the soldiers that died in Korea, their remains are going to be coming back home,” Trump said. “And we have thousands of people that have asked for that — thousands and thousands of people.”

It’s true that there are families of veterans who fell in Korea who are still trying to recover remains. But Trump then told a story about parents of Korean War veterans who purportedly approached him during the 2016 presidential campaign.


“So many people asked when I was on the campaign,” Trump said. “I’d say, ‘wait a minute, I don’t have any relationship’ — but they said, ‘when you can, president, we’d love our son to be brought back home’ — you know, the remains.”

There’s just one problem — American involvement in the Korean War ended in 1953. If we most generously assume that the parent of a future solider was 18 when their child was born, and that their child was 18 when he was killed on the last day of the war, that means a parent would have been 99 in 2016.

While almost all parents of fallen Korean War veterans would’ve been much older than that in 2016, it’s not inconceivable that a 99-year-old parent of a fallen Korean War veteran might have approached Trump during the campaign. But note that Trump claimed multiple parents approached him to say, “we’d love our son to be brought back home.” That seems exceedingly unlikely, at best.

Not only does Trump’s story reveal how easily he lies, but the lack of follow up by host Bret Baier says something about how Fox News covers the president. Instead of trying to get the president to explain his implausible anecdote, the interview immediately moved on to other topics.