Caught again: Trump's new Sharpie tale joins a growing list of his debunked whoppers
Source: Alternet.org · Bias: Left
Summary
At a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, President Donald Trump told a lengthy story about negotiating the creation of a personalized Sharpie pen. The only problem: the company that produces Sharpies denies it ever happened.Theoretically, Trump’s tall tale was an attempt to prove his skill at saving money. It started with complaints about cost overruns tied to the renovation of the Federal Reserve building, but then the pen he was holding caught his attention, and it was tangent time. “This pen is an interesting example,” before relating a presumably improvised story in which he called “the guy” and told him, “I’d like to use your pen, but I can’t have a great thing with a big S on it saying Sharpie as I’m signing a $1 trillion airplane contract to buy brand new fighter jets.” “The guy,” said the President, offered to provide personalized black pens with “the White House” written in gold free of charge, until Trump insisted on paying $5 a pen. Setting aside that this story does not, in fact, prove Trump’s thrift — were it authentic, he would have successfully negotiated the price up from free to $5 — it also turned out that it simply wasn’t true. According to a spokesperson from the manufacturer of Sharpie, “We don’t have any information about the conversation described.”So with another Trump whopper in the news, here are five of his biggest and most baffling lies from the past several years.1. “They’re eating the dogs.” Who can forget when, at a presidential debate against Kamala Harris, Trump claimed that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the city’s pets? Apparently voters forgot, and fast, because they elected him president shortly thereafter.2. Wind energy is “driving whales crazy.” Earlier this week, the Trump Administration agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to stop the construction of wind farms off the U.S. coast. He’s given all manner of justifications for his hatred of wind turbines over the years, but arguably the most nonsensical is his assertion about their effect on whales.3. Impossible drug prices. Over the past year, Trump has frequently claimed that his administration would cut drug prices by “900, 600, 500, 1,200” percent, and many other numbers. These numbers are, of course, impossible because math doesn’t work that way. If drug prices were reduced by 100%, they’d be free, and anything more than that, and they’d be paying you to take them.4. His uncle knew the Unabomber. Last year, Trump boasted that his Uncle John was a professor of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski at MIT, but it was quickly pointed out that that couldn’t be possible. First off, Kaczynski never went to MIT. Second, Uncle John died in 1985, and Kaczynski wasn’t revealed to be the Unabomber until 1996, so there was no way Unk could have spoken to Trump about the terrorist a decade before he was found to be one.5. He warned us all about Osama bin Laden. Just recently, Trump brought back a lie he’s told before: that the book he published in 2000 contained a warning that Osama bin Laden was going to commit a major attack. “I wrote it in a book. You can even check — about a year before the World Trade Center came down.” Indeed you can check, and people have, finding no such prediction.
Related Coverage
- Feds tout 'well-prepared' Trump fair after blistering heat wave hospitalized attendees (Far Left — Raw Story)
- Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce married at New York City’s Madison Square Garden (Center Left — US news | The Guardian)
- Trump Heads to Mount Rushmore, Where He Wants to See His Face (Center — WSJ.com : U.S. News)
- Trump announces new pardons after privately weighing "Diddy" clemency, sources said (Center — Politics - CBSNews.com)
- 'Total disaster' at Trump's fair as scorching heat leaves 7 on 'advanced life support' (Far Left — Raw Story)
- Trump, ballot seizures and a ‘declaration’: Gavin Newsom teases tiresome July 4 address to the state (Right — New York Post)
- 'Not mentally well': MAGA suspects Trump sabotaged by liberals armed with weather machines (Far Left — Raw Story)
- 'God is angry': Internet bemused as Mother Nature comes for Trump's Mount Rushmore speech (Far Left — Raw Story)
Daily Analysis
Read the full Parallax Pulse for March 27, 2026 — an AI-powered analysis of how Left and Right media covered the biggest stories this day.
More Headlines From March 27, 2026
- Ted Cruz unleashes on Dems for risking American lives with DHS shutdown: 'Radical open-border base' (Right)
- Senate agrees to fund DHS, except ICE and Border Patrol, in bid to end 40-day shutdown (Center Left)
- Heroic ICE agent miraculously saves unresponsive child in TSA line (Right)
- Johnson accuses Democrats of taking government hostage over ‘crazy’ immigration agenda (Right)
- Vance says Biden admin 'turned off' anti-fraud protections, debuts new task force with focus on Somali schemes (Right)






