WASHINGTON—Donald Trump did a campaign rally in Nashville on Tuesday night.

It was supposedly intended to support Tennessee Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn. As always, it was about Donald Trump.

The president briefly mentioned Blackburn four times. The rest of the speech, he lied, told elaborate stories that very much appeared to be fabrications, lobbed insults at Democrats, talked about the street gang MS-13, boasted of his own successes, and made a few vague promises.

Here is a minute-by-minute account of what happened:

8:11 p.m.: “I love country music,” Trump says.

8:14: Trump talks about how people said he could never earn the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the presidency, but then he did.

8:15: Trump says of reporters: “There they are, right back there. They’re fake. They are fake.” The crowd boos loudly. “Look how many of them. Look how many. Oh boy. That’s a lot of people back there. That’s a lot of people. Fake news.”

8:16: Trump calls up Blackburn. Her pitch: “Tennessee needs a senator who is going to support President Donald Trump.”

8:19: Trump says: “There has never been an administration — and even some of our enemies are begrudgingly admitting this — that has done what we’ve done in the first year and a half.” None of Trump’s enemies are saying this.

8:19: Trump boasts of creating 3.3 million jobs in the 18 months since election day, then claims that, if he had promised he was going to do this, the media would have “not have accepted it” and would have subjected him to a brutal “onslaught.” In fact, his jobs record is unexceptional: more jobs, 3.9 million, were created under Barack Obama under the previous 18 months.

8:20: Trump falsely claims wages are rising “for the first time in many, many years.” Wages have been rising since 2014. The current pace of growth, 2.6 per cent, is lower than the 2.7 per cent pace in Obama’s final full month in office.

8:22: “Most importantly, our country is respected again all over the world. We’re not making apologies. We’re not making excuses. We’re respected again as a country,” Trump says. A big “U-S-A” chant breaks out. “Respected” can mean various things, but Pew polling shows that public opinion of the U.S. has plummetted around the world since Trump’s election, with the exception of Russia, Israel and a smattering of other countries.

8:24: Trump says he has “never heard of” Blackburn’s Democratic opponent Phil Bredesen, who served as both two-term mayor of Nashville, where he is speaking, and two-term governor of the state. “I never heard of this guy. Who is he? Who is he?”

8:24: Trump calls House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi “the MS-13 lover.” He adds: “She loves MS-13, can you imagine.” There is no basis for this claim. Pelosi merely objected to Trump’s use of the word “animals” at an immigration event (it was not entirely clear whether he was talking specifically about MS-13, as he says he was, or more broadly about unauthorized immigrants); Pelosi, who alleged that Trump made the remark about unauthorized immigrants broadly, said that every human has a “spark of divinity” within them.

8:25: Trump says of MS-13: “We’re taking them out of our country by the thousands. Out, out, by the thousands.” This is an exaggeration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says 405 MS-13 members were arrested in the first quarter of fiscal 2018; there is no word on how many were unauthorized immigrants or deported.

8:26: Trump says “Crooked Hillary.” There is a loud “lock her up” chant.

8:27: Trump brings up the FBI’s use of an informant to try to find out if members of his campaign had nefarious dealings with Russia: “So how do you like the fact they had people infiltrating our campaign? Can you imagine, can you imagine, can you imagine people infiltrating our campaign? Is there anybody in this big beautiful arena right now that’s infiltrating our campaign? Would you please raise your hand? That would take courage.”

8:27: Trump refers to “Crazy Bernie Sanders.” He says Sanders “got screwed” in the 2016 election, suggesting, with no evidence, that there was foul play involved.

8:27: Trump says he got much bigger 2016 crowds than Hillary Clinton, who, he says, had to resort to getting rapper Jay-Z to perform to fill her arenas.

8:28: Trump embarks on a rant about Jay-Z’s “filthy” language. “He’d use the F-word,” the president complains.

8:31: Trump repeats an elaborate fictional story. He says San Diego begged him to build a border wall (which has not happened; even San Diego’s Republican mayor is opposed to the wall)…and he started wall construction in San Diego (he hasn’t)…but then he had “second thoughts” and decided not to build the wall there so he’d have a city putting pressure on “crazy” California Gov. Jerry Brown (San Diego’s government has not pressured Brown)…but then a military general told him it’d cost $7 million to halt construction of the wall in San Diego (construction, again, hasn’t begun), so he decided, “All right, keep building it.”

8:34: Trump says of NAFTA: “We have such a bad deal with Mexico. We have such a bad deal with Canada.”

8:34: “We lose with Mexico over $100 billion a year with his crazy NAFTA deal. Think of it: it’s impossible.” The trade deficit with Mexico was $69 billion last year. It has never been $100 billion.

8:35: Trump complains of “catch and release” laws that don’t allow his administration to indefinitely detain people arrested crossing the border: “Then they’re supposed to show up to a court. There’s only one problem: they never show up.” That “never” is false. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 63 per cent of people who were free pending trial showed up for their hearings over the past two decades.

8:36: Trump repeats his 2016 campaign promise that Mexico will pay for a border wall: “They’re going to pay for the wall and they’re going to enjoy it.” Less than an hour later, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto writes on Twitter: “President @realDonaldTrump: NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”

8:37: Trump graphically retells the story of a 2017 terror attack in Manhattan in which a man used a truck to run over cyclists. “Missing a leg! Missing an arm!” One woman lost two legs in the attack. Nobody lost an arm.

8:38: “Look at what’s happening to Europe,” Trump says without elaboration, apparently talking about Islamic terrorism.

8:38: Trump lies that the alleged perpetrator of the Manhattan attack, Sayfullo Saipov, brought in “22 people” to the United States through “chain migration.” Even anti-immigration activists have said this number is wildly implausible, and Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse the president’s claim.

8:38: Trump makes fun of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer for becoming teary in a January 2017 speech denouncing Trump’s ban on refugees and on immigrants and visitors from some Muslim-majority countries. “Remember he was crying. He was so sad. He got up. He was crying. He was working those tears. He was trying so hard. Was trying so hard that actually they weren’t tears. It was sweat. He was working.”

8:39: For the 15th time, Trump lies about the U.S. diversity visa lottery program, falsely claiming that foreign countries send their worst citizens into the lottery to dump them on the U.S. “Let me ask you: so these countries that are sending people in, do you think they’re sending us their finest? …They come in and then we wonder why we have problems. We’re not going to be a stupid country anymore.”

8:40: Trump complains of crime in Chicago, then bashes Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “What the hell is that mayor doing? What is he doing?”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

8:41: “We have borders down 40 per cent,” Trump falsely claims. (By “borders,” he means illegal immigration.) Judging by the metric he has always used to make this claim, illegal immigration is spiking. After a steep decline, of more than 40 per cent, in 2017, apprehensions on the southwest border have jumped 77 per cent in the first four months of 2018.

8:41: “We are going to protect your Second Amendment,” Trump says of the constitutional provision protecting gun rights. Then he adds, falsely: “You won’t have a Second Amendment if the Democrats take over. You won’t have a Second Amendment.”

8:42: Trump claims the MS-13 gang has turned Long Island communities into “bloodstained killing fields” by savagely murdering, raping and mutilating people. “They want to do it with knives. They want to cut people up into little pieces because it’s more painful.”

8:42: “They’re not human beings,” Trump says. He asks the crowd to remind him what word he uses instead. “Animals,” the crowd shouts as one.

8:43: Trump tells a story about how, when ICE arrests MS-13 members on Long Island, “it’s like they’ve been liberated, like from a war.” He explains: “It’s like the enemy has been taken out and the people are dancing and they’re waving and they’re looking out their windows and they’re waving to the ICE people.”

8:46: Trump boasts of his rapid pace of judicial appointments.

8:46: “We put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, put our hands on our hearts, and we always proudly stand for our national anthem,” Trump says. Then, scoffing at NFL players who have protested racism and police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, he adds: “Thank you. What’s that all about?”

8:47: Trump tells his usual fictional story about how presidents after Reagan have not been able to pass tax cuts because they have foolishly branded it as “tax reform.” He again ignores George W. Bush’s major cuts, plus various cuts under Democratic presidents.

8:50: Trump criticizes Sen. John McCain, who is home dealing with brain cancer, for his crucial vote against Obamacare repeal. “A very terrible thing,” Trump says.

U.S. President Trump, in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, criticized Senator John McCain's 2017 vote against a Republican health care plan. McCain voted no by turning his thumb down. Trump said "somebody turned their hand in the wrong direction." (The Associated Press)

8:52: Trump retells the story about how he was not interested in opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — “who cares?” — until a friend in the oil business told him that previous Republican presidents, such as George W. Bush, were unable to accomplish this.

8:52: Trump refers to Bush, then pauses to let people boo the name. Not many do. He says Bush’s wars produced “a lot of death; death and blood and money.” He falsely claims, for the 14th time, that the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on Middle East wars. The highest recent estimate is $5.6 trillion.

8:56: Trump talks about how he, unlike previous presidents, kept his promise, under intense pressure, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there. He gets applause.

8:57: Trump tells an implausible story about how he signed the “Donald” on an executive order to spend $1 billion on the new embassy but then had a fiscal epiphany and figured out it could be done for $150,000 instead and so did not sign the “Trump.”

9:02: Trump boasts of the new embassy: “We opened it. It is totally beautiful. The finest stones, the finest marbles, the best location. It’s open. It opened in four months after we started building.” According to news reports, the U.S. has so far merely altered a small part of its existing Jerusalem consulate to accommodate the ambassador and additional staff.

9:04: Trump reminds the crowd that he said in 2016 that African-Americans have the “highest crime, bad education, bad this, bad that.” He boasts that the African-American unemployment rate is now the lowest on record. It dropped from 12.7 per cent to 7.8 per cent under Obama, then from 7.8 per cent to 6.6 per cent under Trump.

9:06: “We’ve become like a third-world country,” Trump says, complaining of the quality of America’s airports.

9:07: Trump promises to rebuild America’s infrastructure — then claims that, contrary to a frequent claim from some of his more juvenile opponents, he has big hands. “We will do it all with these big beautiful hands. Look at these hands.”

9:10: For the fourth time, Trump claims Americans build the Empire State Building in “less than one year.” It took 13 months.

9:10: Trump complains that the U.S. “gave away” the Panama Canal.

9:10: Trump takes credit for a supposed recent improvement in the U.S. space program: “You see what’s happening with NASA. See those rocket ships starting to go up again.” When he has made this claim in the past, he has been referring to launches by SpaceX, a private company separate from NASA.

9:11: “I say it and I say it all the time: we are so respected again. I can’t even tell you really the degree to which people respect our country again. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.”

9:12: The grand finale: “We are one people, we are one family, and one glorious nation under God. Without a question. Without a doubt. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again.”

Read more about: