AP FACT CHECK: Trump's epic speech is laced with fabrication

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump uttered a dizzying number of false statements in his epically long weekend speech, to an audience that didn't seem to mind at all.

He got the unemployment rate wrong. He misstated his winning margin in the election. He reprised some of his most frequently told fictions and dusted off old ones, even going back to the size of his inauguration crowd.

A look at some of his words in his two-hour-plus speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday:

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team has "13 of the angriest Democrats in the history of our country."

THE FACTS: Mueller is a longtime Republican and party affiliation cuts both ways — or no way at all — in the varied background of the team. Some have donated campaign money to Democrats. The team is not known to be particularly or historically angry.

VETERANS

TRUMP, on the Choice program for veterans: "I got that approved after 44 years of being unable to get it approved for our veterans."

THE FACTS: False. Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and President Barack Obama signed it into law. Trump is expanding it.

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TRUMP: "We are taking care of our veterans like they have never been taken care of before. We just got them Choice so they can now go see a doctor. Now they can go see a doctor instead of waiting on line for weeks and weeks and weeks."

THE FACTS: Veterans still must wait for weeks.

SHUTDOWN

TRUMP: "I flew to Iraq — the first time I left the White House, because I stayed at the White House for months and months because I wanted the Democrats to get back from their vacations from Hawaii and these other places."

THE FACTS: Trump actually left the White House plenty of times during the "months and months" surrounding the partial government shutdown that began Dec. 22.

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