(CNN) Vice President Mike Pence is pretty familiar by now with cleaning up messes created by President Donald Trump's tendency to say things that have zero factual basis. And yet he doesn't appear to be getting any better at it.

Take Pence's failed attempt Tuesday morning to explain away Trump's truth-free claim that past presidents had told him that building a border wall was necessary.

Trump, who prides himself on not being like anyone who has held the office before him and has frosty relationships with the living past presidents, somehow had a conversation with some of them in which it was made plain to him that they knew they should have built a border wall on their watch?

A few calls to the offices of the living presidents revealed the falsehood. All four ex-presidents said they had not spoken with Trump about the wall at all, which makes it impossible for them to have told him that they knew he was doing the right thing with the wall -- and that they should have done the same thing.

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