Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
How many false or misleading claims did Donald Trump make per month compared with Joe Biden and Barack Obama?
Executive summary
Available sources do not provide a single, consistent dataset that counts “false or misleading claims per month” for Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Barack Obama; reporting and fact‑checks instead document many individual false or misleading claims by Trump across 2024–2025 and note specific false narratives tied to Trump allies or administration actions (for example, repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election, Ukraine aid and Obama’s conduct) [1] [2] [3]. Reporting and official releases show contested claims about the Obama administration’s intelligence around 2016 that became the subject of partisan dispute in 2025, but those materials do not translate into a per‑month rate of false statements by Obama or Biden [4] [5] [6].
1. No single “per‑month” comparison exists in the available reporting
None of the provided documents supply a monthly tally of false or misleading claims for Trump, Biden or Obama; instead, outlets like CNN, The Guardian, PBS, Reuters and fact‑check organizations catalogue specific false claims or episodes — for example, multiple fact‑checks of recent Trump statements and a White House “hoaxes” roundup for the Biden era — but they do not produce comparable per‑month rates across the three presidents [1] [7] [8] [3].
2. Most available fact‑checking in these sources targets Trump’s statements
The corpus supplied is heavily weighted toward fact‑checking and analysis of Donald Trump’s public claims in 2024–2025: CNN documented at least 18 false claims in one “60 Minutes” interview and followed up on repeated incorrect assertions about grocery prices and Ukraine aid [1] [2]. Local and national fact‑checks (Mercury News, The Guardian) similarly list numerous false claims by Trump — e.g., the “$350 billion” Ukraine figure and false claims about Obama receiving Obamacare royalties — but these are incident lists, not normalized monthly rates [3] [9].
3. Examples show patterns but not normalized rates
Taken together, the items show recurring categories of false or misleading claims by Trump: election fraud claims about 2020, inflation and grocery‑price themes, and allegations about Obama and other political adversaries [3] [2] [9]. These patterns explain why fact‑checkers repeatedly flag his remarks, but available reports do not convert such patterns into a statistically comparable “claims per month” metric for him or for Biden or Obama [1] [2].
4. Biden and Obama: documented disputes and selective fact‑checks, not comprehensive counts
The supplied items include a White House compilation called “100 Days of Hoaxes” that lists false claims alleged against the Biden administration’s opponents, and BBC/Reuters coverage of Obama challenging Trump’s claims about 2016; however, these are episodic rebuttals or political responses, not comprehensive tallies of Biden’s or Obama’s misleading statements per month [7] [10] [6]. The ODNI/Gabbard releases and rebuttals present contested intelligence claims originating in 2025 that Democrats called false, but the documents represent a partisan evidentiary fight rather than a vetted count of false presidential statements [5] [4] [6].
5. Partisan context and possible agendas in the available sources
Several items reflect explicit partisan frames: the ODNI press releases from Tulsi Gabbard’s office make sweeping accusations about the Obama administration’s intelligence products [5] [4], while mainstream outlets like CNN and Reuters focus on debunking or contextualizing Trump’s claims and reporting reactions from Obama, Biden and Democrats [1] [2] [10]. FactCheck.org and PBS provide watchdog perspectives on misleading assertions. Readers should note that ODNI/Gabbard materials and some opinionated tabloid coverage carry political motivations and have been labeled misleading or partisan by other outlets cited here [11] [6].
6. What would be needed to produce a fair per‑month comparison
To create an accurate, comparative “false or misleading claims per month” metric you would need (a) a clear, replicable definition of “false or misleading claim,” (b) a consistent corpus of public statements for each president and time period, and (c) transparent coding and independent review by fact‑checkers across administrations. The current sources document many individual falsehoods (mostly about Trump) and contested claims about Obama, but they do not contain the standardized dataset or methodology required to compute per‑month rates [1] [3] [4].
7. Practical next steps if you want the comparison
If you want a comparable monthly rate, commission or consult a longitudinal fact‑checking dataset (for example from PolitiFact, FactCheck.org or the Washington Post’s Fact Checker) and insist on a published methodology that covers all three administrations across the same number of months; the materials here point to many specific examples but do not supply that standardized dataset [11] [3].
Limitations: this analysis uses only the documents you provided and therefore cannot assert broader counts or rates beyond those sources; available sources do not mention any comprehensive per‑month tallies comparing Trump, Biden and Obama [1] [5] [7].