WASHINGTON—U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t only fill his public speeches with false claims. He also fills his private speeches with false claims.

Trump’s Wednesday speech at a closed-door fundraiser for a Missouri Republican candidate, which cost attendees $5,000 to $50,000, made news first because of his admission that he said something about trade to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau without having any idea if it was true. Then there was a second wave of headlines about Trump’s fictional story about Japan testing the quality of cars by dropping bowling balls on them.

Read more: It’s no surprise Trump boasted he made up numbers on trade with Canada — he’s made at least 85 false claims about trade deficits

There was more. There were 13 more. Trump’s false claims about the trade balance with Canada and “the bowling ball test” were merely two of the 15 false claims he uttered to the crowd of loyal partisans.

He made 13 additional false claims over the course of the week, for a total of 28. Trump is now up to 1,342 false claims for the first 423 days of his presidency, an average of 3.2 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? The answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

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