AP fact check: Trump says he hasn't left White House in 'months.' Actually, he has.

Politics Jan 14, 2019 10:31 AM EST

By — Hope Yen, Associated Press

By — Calvin Woodward, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Eager to defend a prolonged government shutdown over his border wall, President Donald Trump is pretending that he’s holed up nonstop at the White House waiting for a deal with Democrats. He’s also rewriting history regarding his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall.

Trump says he hasn’t left the White House in “months,” including during the partial shutdown that began Dec. 22. Actually, he has ventured out numerous times — to the Mexico border just this past week, for instance — and will again on Monday to New Orleans.

Trump also is claiming that he didn’t mean it when he told crowds over and over that Mexico would put up money for the wall. It was always intended for Mexico to pay “indirectly,” he now says, an assertion contradicted by his words and his plan in the campaign.

The remarks capped a week in which he also spread misleading rhetoric about the 2016 election, the FBI investigation into his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, prescription drug prices and dire threats from the south.

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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-trump-says-he-hasnt-left-white-house-in-months-actually-he-has