He Says His Book Predicted 9/11. His Book Does Not Say That.

In March 2026, with the Iran war going catastrophically and his foreign policy judgment under scrutiny, Trump told reporters: "I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did it. I said, 'You'd better get him, he's a bad guy.' I watched him be interviewed one time and I said, 'That's a bad guy. You'd better get him.' One year before, exactly — I wrote it in a book. You can even check — about a year before the World Trade Center came down." This is a lie he's been telling, in various forms, for more than a decade. Reporters checked. The book — "The America We Deserve," published in 2000 — contains no warning about bin Laden. No prediction. No advice on how to deal with him. Nothing.

The Iran War Lie Bundle.

The bin Laden claim wasn't the only fabrication Trump deployed during the Iran war to retroactively portray himself as prescient. CNN's Iran war fact-check documented the full inventory. He claimed he predicted that Iran would use the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon. He has made similar "I predicted this" claims about NATO, trade, and the Middle East for years. He also claimed that media outlets should face treason charges for spreading AI-generated fake videos of a US aircraft carrier on fire — but the White House could not name a single US media outlet that had actually promoted those videos. The media treason accusation was invented to redirect attention from the war's mounting chaos.

He Also Lied About His Uncle and MIT.

While we're cataloging the self-aggrandizing history revision: Trump has repeatedly claimed his uncle, Professor John Trump, had university degrees "in nuclear, chemical, and math." In reality, Prof. Trump held a Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Science in electrical engineering, and a Master of Science in physics. MIT — where Trump has falsely claimed Ted Kaczynski studied — confirmed that Kaczynski attended Harvard and the University of Michigan, not MIT. Kaczynski cannot correct Trump because Kaczynski died in 2023. On March 3, 2026, Trump told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that his father "was born there" — gesturing at Germany. Fred Trump was born in New York City. Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed his father was born in Germany.

"President Trump Is Right." — The Official White House Fact-Check Strategy.

This is worth its own post, but CNN documented a pattern from the first three months of 2026 alone: when confronted with specific Trump falsehoods, White House spokesperson Raj Desai's go-to response is to open with "President Trump is right" — and then pivot to something tangentially related without providing any evidence for the original claim. When Trump falsely claimed Walmart was closing 250+ stores in California because of a $22/hour minimum wage (Walmart wasn't, and California's minimum wage is $16.90), Desai opened: "President Trump is right." He then talked about California Democrats broadly. When Trump claimed the LA Police Chief had said his force would lose control of LA during the 2028 Olympics, Desai said "President Trump is right" and provided no corroboration. When Trump claimed there was no inflation, Desai said "President Trump is right" — then stated inflation was at a 2.3% annualized rate, which directly contradicted Trump's "no inflation" claim. The official position of the White House on Trump lies is: he is right.