Tag Archives: police killing

Which happens more often: Trump tells a bald faced lie, or a cop kills a citizen?

During the last 347 days of the Trump presidency, Donald Trump has lied 1,950 times, according to the Washington Post, which is keeping track.

The same newspaper tracks the number of times the police in the US shoot and kill a person. During the 365 days of 2017, that happened 987 times.

So, Donald Trump lies about 6.62 times a day.

So, american cops kill about 2.7 people a day.

This means that by the time Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address later this month, he will have lied approximately 100 more times. This does not mean that he will give us 100 more distinct lies. Many of his lies are repeats. Then, in the inaugural itself, we’ll probably get another big batch.

Between now and the inaugural address, about 40 of us will be gunned down in the streets or in our homes by the cops. (For perspective, the total rate of death of Americans in this country’s longest war, in Afghanistan, averages out to about one killed every three days, while the number of Americans killed in Viet Nam, which is actually hard to estimate, is two to three times the rate at which the cops kill us. So, the cops kill us at a rate that is about the same order of magnitude as a recent, modern, war.)

Happy January!

By the way, I’m enjoying Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.