‘Gobsmacking analysis’: Mark Hamill shares the ‘impressive’ number of lies Donald Trump told while in office, according to NPR

By now, it’s painfully obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that former president Donald Trump is allergic to the truth. 

During his recent news conference, which could be mistaken for his last-ditch effort to cling to power, Trump performed what can only be described as a verbal Houdini act. With Kamala Harris now the Democratic front-runner, Trump’s strategy seemed to be a desperate blend of fear-mongering and reality distortion. His fabrications spanned from wildly exaggerated threats facing the nation to personal achievements that, frankly, exist only in the confines of his imagination.

Never one to let Trump’s lies slide, actor and activist Mark Hamill promptly took to social media to expose the former president’s unhinged relationship with reality. Hamill, who has been a vocal Trump critic for years and even helped raise $4 million for Harris’ “White Dudes for Harris” campaign, shared an NPR fact-check that tallied an astonishing 162 lies crammed into a mere 64 minutes of Trump’s verbal diarrhea. That’s over two lies per minute!

Throughout his calamitous four-year reign of terror, he spewed a staggering 30,573 lies, an average of 21 whoppers per day according to the Washington Post’s meticulous fact-checking. Some of his most egregious lies include: 

• Repeatedly insisting that his inauguration crowd was larger than the Women’s March and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, despite photographic evidence proving otherwise. 
• Claiming that COVID-19 would magically “disappear” like a “miracle”, downplaying a pandemic that has now killed over one million Americans. 
• Falsely declaring that he won the 2020 election “by a landslide” and that it was “rigged” and “stolen”, a baseless Big Lie that fueled the deadly January 6th Capitol insurrection, which he claims was nothing more than a peaceful protest. 
• Absurdly boasting that he’s “done more for Black Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln”, despite his long history of racism, from housing discrimination to birtherism.

It’s a wonder Trump’s nose hasn’t grown like Pinocchio and poked out Chris Christie’s eye. His complete divorce from reality would be comical if it wasn’t so terrifying, like watching a deranged clown juggle lit sticks of dynamite. When the likely nominee of a major political party displays such a brazen disregard for the truth, it imperils the very foundation of our democracy.

While the entire spectacle was a tour de force of Trumpian dishonesty, one lie stood out as particularly egregious: his claim that “nobody was killed” during the January 6th Capitol riot. Five people died as a direct result of the mayhem that day, including a Capitol Police officer beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by the MAGA mob. Another 140 officers were injured, many seriously, as they fought to defend the seat of our democracy from a horde of delusional QAnon fanatics and neo-Nazi thugs. To deny these basic, incontrovertible facts is to spit on the graves of the fallen and piss on the wounds of the wounded. And it’s utterly disqualifying for anyone seeking the highest office in the land.

This is precisely why figures like Hamill, Stephen King, and George Takei feel compelled to use their platform to expose Trump’s lies at every turn. For them, calling out his relentless dishonesty has become a moral imperative. Just as Luke stood up to the tyranny of Darth Vader and the Empire, Hamill is using his platform to resist the tyranny of untruth. And just as the Rebel Alliance ultimately triumphed over the forces of darkness, Hamill clearly believes that the truth will win out in the end.