The Washington Post has documented more than 10,000 times when President Donald Trump has made false or misleading claims.

They won’t call them lies. I will.

Trump has repeatedly made stuff up out of whole cloth.

He tells lies about immigration. He tells lies about trade. He tells lies about Stormy Daniels, and he tells lies about the Mueller investigation. He tells lies about his taxes. He tells lies about your taxes.

He lies about big things. He lies about small things.

In a recent interview he said 45 things that just weren’t true. In a campaign speech, he told 61 lies.

He lies so often, he probably doesn’t even realize he’s lying.

He LIES.

LIES.

LIES.

LIES.

LIES.

That’s why I was stunned recently when I read Scott Jennings' column in the Courier Journal in which he went back 21 years to document six false or misleading claims — or perhaps lies — by Democrats, to convince you they are just as dishonest as Trump. They aren’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Democrats don’t always tell the truth. They’ve told some whoppers over the years.

They are politicians, and some politicians will say anything to get elected or reelected.

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It doesn’t matter if they are Whigs or Tories or members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Or Democrats. Or Republicans.

Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.

But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.

Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.

Trump’s arc bends more toward James “Honest Dick” Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1988 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.

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You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.

I'd trust Jeffery Dahmer with a scalpel before I'd trust the perjurer-in-chief.

Jennings noted that President Barack Obama was given PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award in 2013 for saying that under Obamacare, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

He failed to mention that Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.

The first award was not for a single lie but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”

“In considering our annual Lie of the Year, we found our only real contenders were Trump’s — his various statements also led our Readers’ Poll. But it was hard to single one out from the others. So we have rolled them into one big trophy.”

In 2017, he was given the award for saying that Russian election interference was a “made-up story.”

“When the nation’s commander-in-chief refuses to acknowledge a threat to U.S. democracy, it makes it all the more difficult to address the problem. For this reason, we name Trump’s claim that the Russia interference is a hoax as our Lie of the Year for 2017,” PolitiFact wrote.

And in 2016, when "Fake News" was named the Lie of the Year, PolitiFact singled Trump out as a "willing enabler" of that fake news.

Jennings clutches his pearls because “Democrats lie all the time about stuff that matters; they just don’t pay the same price as Donald Trump for their untruthfulness.”

Nor should they. Nor should Republicans.

Many of them make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.

Trump lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer.

Trump’s first instinct is to lie.

In his effort to make you fear and hate brown people, he has claimed there are as many as 34 million illegal immigrants in the United States while researchers pin that number at about 11 million.

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In his effort to make you hate Muslims, he said he watched as thousands in New Jersey cheered as the World Trade Center fell. Did. Not. Happen.

He has wrongly claimed that there is not a system in place to vet refugees entering the United States — a disgusting effort to make you despise poor people who are simply seeking a better life here.

These aren’t garden variety lies.

This isn’t, “Read my lips. No new taxes.”

It’s not even, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

While Trump tells many lies that don’t matter — how can he not, averaging 12 whoppers per day — these are lies that tear at the heart of our country. They are lies that are designed to divide us and make us hate one another.

And they’ve had an impact. Just look at the rise of white supremacy in the United States, including last week’s attack on the Poway Synagogue in California.

When someone tells you a politician or a political party doesn’t have moral standing to talk about Trump’s lies, It’s just because they don’t want to talk about Trump’s lies. All 10,000 of them.

Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.