Notes:

In addition to the list of lies and misstatements compiled here, The Toronto Star maintains an ongoing list which you can access here.

For more information about this topic, check out the "More" section at the bottom of this post.

June 23, 2017 - An article in The New York Times entitled "Trump's Lies".

March 22, 2017 - Trump's interview with Michael Scherer of Time

Trump was interviewed by Time Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer for a cover story about how Trump has handled truth and falsehood. Scherer's story was published the same day.

Read a transcript of the interview here.

Here are a few quotes from Scherer's cover story:

The more the conversation continued, the more the binary distinctions between truth and falsehood blurred, the telltale sign of a veteran and strategic misleader who knows enough to leave himself an escape route when he tosses a bomb. Rather than assert things outright, he often couches provocative statements as "beliefs," or attributes them to unnamed "very smart people."

Trump has in this way brought to the Oval Office an entirely different set of assumptions about the proper behavior of a public official, and introduced to the country entirely new rules for public debate. In some ways, it is not surprising. For years, we have known Trump colored outside the lines of what was actually real because he told us. As a businessman, Trump wrote in praise of strategic falsehood, or "truthful hyperbole," as he preferred to call it. Sometimes his whoppers were clumsy, the apparent result of being ill informed or promiscuous in his sources. Sometimes he exaggerated to get a rise out of his audience. But often Trump's untruths give every sign of being deliberate and thought through.

Trump's alternative reality is dark, divisive and pessimistic, and it tends to position him and his supporters as heroic victims of injustice. Despite this--or maybe because of it--his reckless assertions are weapons that often work. He commandeers the traditional news cycle and makes visceral connections with voters.

Trump has discovered something about epistemology [the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity] in the 21st century. The truth may be real, but falsehood often works better.

TIME reviewed the 298 tweets Trump has sent since being elected President as of March 21. Fifteen included clear falsehoods, like the wiretap claims. The false messages were retweeted an average of 28,550 times. Those that were not clearly false were retweeted on average 23,945 times. The viral effect of falsehood being repeated on the news was many times more pronounced.

For Trump's allies, this is a measure of strategic brilliance, not defective character. "He understands how to make something an issue and elevate the discussion by saying things that are contrary, perhaps even unproved," explains Roger Stone, a former adviser to Trump, who has his own penchant for spreading false conspiracy theories. "He has the ability to change the subject to what he wants to talk about."

The credibility Trump toys with is no longer just his own. For generations, the world has looked to American leadership in times of crises, one grounded in an historic fidelity to basic facts and a sobriety of rhetoric. What does it mean if the President now needs to use that credibility to rally support in a new confrontation with North Korea? Will the world have time or patience to consider which words he has put air quotes around?

Read Michael Scherer's entire cover story here.

There's no place for Trump's hyperbole in the Oval Office | The Washington Post

March 7, 2017 - Trump's statement about Gitmo prisoners released by the Obama Administration

Via Twitter, Trump said the following:

122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!

Apparently, Trump was responding to this Fox News tweet released about 30 minutes earlier:

Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism

According to a report submitted by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence entitled "Summary of the Reengagement of Detainees Formerly Held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba", 113 of the 122 prisoners referenced were released under the Bush administration, not the Obama administration.

During a press conference the same day, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the tweet by a reporter:

Reporter:

Will the President offer a correction to his tweet this morning that states that 122 prisoners were released from Gitmo by the Obama administration and then returned to the battlefield?

Spicer:

Obviously the President meant in totality, the number that had been released on the battlefield - that have been released from Gitmo since, since individuals have been released. So, that is, that is correct.

Source:

Shelbourne, Mallory. (March 7, 2017). "Trump incorrectly blames Obama for release of 122 'vicious' Gitmo detainees". The Hill. Retrieved 2017-03-10.

Easley, Jonathan. (March 7, 2017). "White House corrects Trump's erroneous Gitmo tweet". The Hill. Retrieved 2017-03-10.

February 7, 2017 - Trump speaking to members of the National Sheriffs Association

And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that -- I'd say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn't tell it like it is. It wasn't to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it's been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years.

Source:

Trump, Donald. (February 7, 2017). "Remarks by President Trump in Roundtable with County Sheriffs". whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 2017-02-10.

Trump made this same claim several times during the presidential campaign in October and his statements are evaluated and declared "FALSE" on factcheck.org in a post entitled "Trump Wrong on Murder Rate".

In the factcheck.org post there is a chart entitled "The U.S. Murder Rate (per 100,000 people)". The data for that table came from the U.S. FBI's "Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)" program (click on the link in the second paragraph of the factcheck.org post which says "4.9 per 100,000 inhabitants" to see the FBI data used to create the chart).

Looking at the chart, it's clear that the murder rate at the end of 2015 is near it's lowest level in 45 years.

To verify factcheck.org's data, I used the FBI's "UCR Data Tool" which allows you to select parameters and generate custom charts from the UCR database. I used the tool and generated the exact same set of information as factcheck.org.

Regarding the UCR Program, the FBI states the following:

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media, and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation. The program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet the need for reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics.

Source:

FBI. "Uniform Crime Reporting". ucr.fbi.gov. Retrieved 2017-02-12.

An article on the NBC News website entitled "Why President Trump's Misleading Image of American Crime Matters" discusses why Trump's lie about the murder rate matters.

February 3, 2017 - Trump's response to a CNN/ORC poll

A CNN/ORC poll by telephone conducted January 31 through February 2, 2017 showed that 53% of Americans polled oppose Trump's executive order on immigration, 47% favor it, and 55% think it's an attempt to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. The poll also said that 60% oppose Trump's plan to build a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

Trump's response via Twitter was this:

Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

Source:

Agiesta, Jennifer. (February 3, 2017). "CNN/ORC poll: Majority oppose Trump's travel ban". CNN. Retrieved 2017-02-06.

Donald Trump Says 'Negative Polls Are Fake News' | The New York Times

Trump on immigration order's popularity: 'Negative polls are fake news' | Fox News

February 2, 2017 - Kellyanne Conway's reference to the "Bowling Green Massacre"

Speaking with MSNBC's Hard Ball host Chris Matthews about Trump's executive order on immigration, Conway made reference to the "Bowling Green Massacre":

I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. I mean, most people don't know that because it didn't get covered [by the media].

Source:

MSNBC. (February 3, 2017). "Conway cites "Bowling Green Massacre" to defend refugee ban". MSNBC. Retrieved 2017-02-12.

Trump adviser cites non-existent 'massacre' defending ban | CNN

On January 29, 2017, Conway made the same reference in interviews with Cosmopolitan and TMZ.

Third instance of Conway discussing Bowling Green attack surfaces | The Hill

Kellyanne Conway Actually Mentioned That Nonexistent Attack in Bowling Green in 3 Different Interviews | Cosmopolitan

That MSNBC Interview Was Not the First Time Kellyanne Conway Referred to the "Bowling Green Massacre" | Cosmopolitan

On February 3, 2017, Conway tweeted this correction to her "Bowling Green Massacre" references:

On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" as reported here: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131

Here are the facts:

• two Iraqi refugees living in Bowling Green, Kentucky (Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadii) were arrested in May of 2011
• both refugees passed all required background checks and were thoroughly vetted before settling in Kentucky
• both agreed to plead guilty to supporting terrorism (links to the use of IED's in Iraq) and admitted their al Qaeda-Iraq past, Alwan receiving 40 years and Hammadi receiving a life term
• there was no "massacre" or attack in Bowling Green, nor were any people killed by Alwan and Hammadii in the U.S.

Source:

Gordon Meek, James; Galli, Cindy; Ross, Brian. (November 30, 2013). "Exclusive: US May Have Let 'Dozens' of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees". ABC News. Retrieved 2017-02-12.

CNN staff. (February 3, 2017). "Trump adviser cites non-existent 'massacre' defending ban". CNN. Retrieved 2017-02-12.

January 22, 2017 - Kellyanne Conway's statement about "alternative facts"

Speaking with Chuck Todd, the host of NBC's Meet the Press, about Sean Spicer's press briefing where he spoke about the crowd size at Trump's inauguration, Conway coined the term "alternative facts".

In the interview, Todd asked Conway five times to answer a simple question about why Spicer claimed falsehoods about the crowd size.

Here's Todd asking for the third time:

Answer the question of why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood? Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office.

Conway:

No it doesn't...Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. What -- You're saying it's a falsehood. And they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains...

Todd interrupts Conway asking:

Wait a minute -- Alternative facts?...Four of the five facts he uttered, the one thing he got right...was Zeke Miller. Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

Source:

NBC News. (January 22, 2017). "Meet The Press 01/22/17". NBC News. Retrieved 2017-01-22.

January 21, 2017 - Sean Spicer's claim that Trump's inauguration drew the largest crowd ever for a presidential inauguration

During a speech at CIA headquarters, Trump claimed that the media misreported the size of the crowd at his inauguration ceremony. Read more about this and watch video of Trump speaking here.

Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press briefing where he continued the claim of false media reporting about crowd size. Read more about this and watch video of Spicer here.

Ari Fleischer, press secretary for George W. Bush, tweeted "This is called a statement you're told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching."

Here's what a Fox News article (written by the Associated Press) said:

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong. Photos of the National Mall from his inauguration make clear that the crowd did not extend to the Washington Monument. Large swaths of empty space are visible on the Mall.

Thin crowds and partially empty bleachers also dotted the inaugural parade route. Hotels across the District of Columbia reported vacancies, a rarity for an event as large as a presidential inauguration.

And ridership on the Washington's Metro system didn't match that of recent inaugurations. As of 11 a.m. that day, there were 193,000 trips taken, according to the transit service's Twitter account. At the same hour eight years ago, there had been 513,000 trips. Four years later, there were 317,000 for Obama's second inauguration.

There were 197,000 at 11 a.m. in 2005 for President George W. Bush's second inauguration. The Metro system also posted that only two parking lots at stations were more than 60 percent full.

But the exact size of the crowd may never be known since the National Park Service, which used to provide those estimates, stopped doing it in the 1990s.

Source:

Associated Press. (January 21, 2017). "FACT CHECK: Trump overstates crowd size at inaugural". Fox News. Retrieved 2017-01-21.

Here's what a Fox News article (written by Fox News) said regarding Spicer's briefing:

He [Spicer] went on to say inauguration photos were framed to minimize their "enormous" support on the National Mall, while suggesting the reason crowds looked smaller was because floor covering used to protect the grass highlighted where people weren't standing – and fences kept supporters from quickly accessing the scene.

Spicer also pushed back on what he called inaccurate crowd estimates, stressing, "No one had numbers," since the National Park Service, which oversees the National Mall where spectators stand, no longer makes public an official crowd count.

Yet Spicer went on to put out their own estimate based on the capacity of certain spaces stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and declared: "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe."

Source:

Fox News. (January 21, 2017). "Spicer accuses media of 'false reporting' in fiery briefing". Fox News. Retrieved 2017-01-22.

November 27, 2016 - Ned Resnikoff article on ThinkProgress

In an article entitled "Trump's lies have a purpose. They are an assault on democracy." Ned Resnikoff, senior editor at ThinkProgress, talks about Trump's lies, his tweets, and his contradictions.

He talks about how some politicians and their teams create their own new "realities". He compares what Trump has done with what happened in the George W. Bush administration. He says that Steve Bannon is Trump's Karl Rove.

He compares former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov (and current advisor to Vladimir Putin) to Karl Rove and refers to Surkov as "the real Master of the Dark Arts". He talks about how the Trump campaign kept the media attention on Trump (because of his constant lies, contradictions, and claims) and how that strategy muddied the water as to what is fact and what is fiction.

He also says that Trump is "speaking the language of dictators".

Here are some excerpts from Ned's insightful article:

If Bush and Rove constructed a fantasy world with a clear internal logic, Trump has built something more like an endless bad dream. In his political universe, facts are unstable and ephemeral; events follow one after the other with no clear causal linkage; and danger is everywhere, although its source seems to change at random. Whereas President Bush offered America the illusion of morality clarity, President-elect Trump offers an ever-shifting phantasmagoria of sense impressions and unreliable information, barely held together by a fog of anxiety and bewilderment.

It is tempting to suppose Trump built this phantasmagoria by accident — that it is the byproduct of an erratic, undisciplined, borderline pathological approach to dishonesty. But the president-elect should not be underestimated. His victories in both the Republican primary and the general election were stunning upsets, and he is now set to alter the course of world history. If he does not fully understand what he is doing, his advisers certainly do.

Steve Bannon, former head of the white nationalist outlet Breitbart News, is Trump's Karl Rove. He knows. In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Bannon suggested that the key elements in his strategy are dissimulation and "darkness."

Bannon is a skilled practitioner of the "darkness" strategy, but he is not its inventor. The real Master of the Dark Arts is another Karl Rove equivalent: Vladislav Surkov, a top adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Because of the constant media focus on his campaign, Trump was able to bombard the airwaves with an unending stream of surreal falsehoods...But the sheer volume of these stories had their intended effect. When fake news becomes omnipresent, all news becomes suspect. Everything starts to look like a lie.

It makes sense that the man who would pioneer this style of rhetoric [Trump] in an American context is someone who used to host a reality television show and appear in pro wrestling events...For Trump, politics is a reality show..."One thing that should be distinguished here, is the media is always taking Trump literally," said Thiel [tech billionaire and prominent Trump supporter Peter Thiel] during an October appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take him seriously but not literally."

It is tempting to take solace in the belief that, if Trump cannot be taken literally, his extreme rhetoric might conceal a secret moderate streak. But that hope would be misplaced. Non-linear warfare is intrinsically authoritarian. The president-elect is speaking the language of dictators.

American democracy has always been deeply flawed, but political actors used to at least agree on a set of shared premises and ground rules...When political actors can't agree on basic facts and procedures, compromise and rule-bound argumentation are basically impossible; politics reverts back to its natural state as a raw power struggle in which the weak are dominated by the strong...That's where Donald Trump's lies are taking us. By attacking the very notion of shared reality [agreed upon facts], the president-elect is making normal democratic politics impossible. When the truth is little more than an arbitrary personal decision, there is no common ground to be reached and no incentive to look for it.

If the United States is to remain a liberal democracy, then Trump's non-linear warfare needs to fail. Politics needs to once again become grounded in some kind of stable, shared reality...First, social media companies need to be held accountable for facilitating the spread of misinformation...Second, journalists need to understand what Trump is doing and refuse to play by his rules...They must also give up their posture of high-minded objectivity — and, along with it, any hope of privileged access to the Trump White House...The incoming president has made clear that he expects unquestioning obedience from the press, and will regard anyone who doesn't give it to him as an enemy. That is the choice every news outlet faces for the next four years: Subservience and complicity, or open hostility. There is no middle ground.

For the next four years, Donald Trump will seek to shred any institution that threatens his ability to unilaterally determine what is real...If he fails, then the United States may yet keep its republic. But if he succeeds, then the very notion of political reality will have been reduced to little more than a bad joke. The logic of democratic discourse will have been wholly replaced with the surreal anti-logic of nightmares.

Ringside With Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect's Strategist Plots "An Entirely New Political Movement" (Exclusive) | The Hollywood Reporter

December 1, 2016 - Corey Lewandowski remarks at Harvard University

At a post-election discussion in Cambridge, Massachusetts sponsored by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the following:

This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn't. They understood it. They understood that sometimes — when you have a conversation with people, whether it's around the dinner table or at a bar — you're going to say things, and sometimes you don't have all the facts to back it up.

Source:

Tumulty, Karen; Rucker, Phillip. (December 1, 2016). "Shouting match erupts between Clinton and Trump aides". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-12-07.

Trump and Clinton Aides Clash During Election Forum | The New York Times

May 16, 2016 - President Obama speaking at Rutgers University

During a commencement address at Rutgers University in Brunswick, New Jersey on May 16, 2016, President Obama said the following:

Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science -- these are good things. (Applause.) These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.

But if you were listening to today's political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from. In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. (Applause.) It's not cool to not know what you're talking about. (Applause.) That's not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. (Laughter.) That's not challenging political correctness. That's just not knowing what you're talking about.

But when our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they're not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we've got a problem.

The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science -- that is the path to decline.

Source:

Obama, Barack. (May 16, 2016). "Remarks by the President at Commencement Address at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey". whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 2016-11-08.

November 30, 2016 - NPR's The Diane Rehm Show

The Diane Rehm Show aired a one-hour program entitled "How Journalists Are Rethinking Their Role Under A Trump Presidency".

Diane's guests were:

• James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic
• Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post
• Glenn Thrush, senior political correspondent for POLITICO
• Mark Baldwin, executive editor for Rockford Register Star and The Journal-Standard of Freeport
• Scottie Nell Hughes, former Donald Trump surrogate, political editor of RightAlerts.com, and contributor to CNN

Here are a few highlights from the discussion:

Rehm:

I'm sure you've heard James Fallows talk about lies that Donald Trump has put out there in tweets, in things he's said. What do you make of that?

Hughes:

Well, I think it's also an idea of an opinion. And that's -- on one hand I hear half the media saying that these are lies, but on the other half there are many people that go, no, it's true. And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts, they're not really facts. Everybody has a way, it's kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.

Thrush:

There are no objective facts? I mean, that is -- that is an absolutely outrageous assertion. Of course there are facts.

Fallows:

So there are matters of opinion -- I think that it was very revealing, an important thing that Scottie Nell Hughes is saying, which is that there are no facts. I think it actually is an intended result of this campaign and administration to think, well, really there aren't any facts, it's all opinion, so we're going to sort of manipulate the things that we care about. I believe that the job for the media and civil society now is essentially to say there are such things as facts. So the line may be drawn here.

Later, regarding facts, Hughes contradicted herself by saying the following:

And the facts -- there are such things as facts, but facts, however, the media has taken them and skewed them so much that it depends on -- you can look at reports at people like Daily Caller, Breitbart, Washington Times, even things, you know, that don't necessarily go along with your opinion, and you will say those are not facts.

Regarding how journalists should behave going forward, Hughes said:

The problem is that journalists today going forward are going to have to start saying I'm giving you an opinion, or I am giving you just the straight facts, I'm leaving the why out of it, my explanation out of it, if we're going to restore credibility into this field... Pick and choose what is important, what you actually think the American people need to know and don't go off on all of these side tangents and actually cut off with, you know, leave out the drama and stick with exactly the things that the American people need.

Thrush:

But your guy, and I will say this with complete objectivity, I covered Rudy Giuliani, I've covered a mass of politicians, your guys dissembles, lies, makes stuff up at a frequency that no one has ever seen before. I mean, I think -- if you're going to talk about bias, this thing that you are calling bias, this is where you are blurring the line incredibly dangerously.

It is not biased to call out problems with fact and interpretation. That does not make us biased. I don't think you ever heard, for instance, us using the term lie as frequently as we had with Mitt Romney, George W. Bush...I think your candidate has an estranged relationship with fact.

Later in the program, Steve (a caller) makes the point about "false equivalents":

I just wanted to suggest that the job of journalists going forward needs to be recognizing and rejecting false equivalencies. In this era of science denial, it's important to recognize that anecdotal evidence is not the same thing as empirical evidence. And the most important one to me is that it's important to recognize that Fox News is not the equivalent of the organizations that your panelists work for. It essentially is and always has been the PR arm of the Republican Party.

Later still, Baldwin makes this point:

Because, because by flooding traditional media with an array of messages, you create an environment in which no one really knows what's true and what's not. And, you know, I think Trump is simply the most savvy user of, or maybe the most evolved inhabitant of, this new information ecosystem.

November 27, 2016 - Trump's claim that millions voted illegally

Trump tweeted the following:

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

Source:

LoBianco, Tom. (November 28, 2016). "Trump falsely claims 'millions of people who voted illegally' cost him popular vote". CNN. Retrieved 2017-02-07.

On January 23, 2017, in a private meeting with congressional leaders Trump repeated his claim, this time saying that 3 million to 5 million voted illegally.

Source:

Thomas, Ken (Associated Press); Werner, Erica (Associated Press). (January 23, 2017). "AP report: Trump advances false claim that 3-5 million voted illegally". PBS. Retrieved 2017-02-27.

On January 24, 2017 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said he's seen "no evidence" of voter fraud, and Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) said the following to CNN:

...if the President of the United States is claiming that 3.5 million people voted illegally, that shakes confidence in our democracy — he needs to disclose why he believes that.

I would urge the President to knock this off; this is the greatest democracy on Earth, we're the leader of the free world, and people are going to start doubting you as a person if you keep making accusations against our electoral system without justification...This is going to erode his ability to govern this country if he does not stop it.

Source:

Fabian, Jordan. (January 24, 2017). "WH: Trump believes millions voted illegally". The Hill. Retrieved 2017-02-07.

Raju, Manu; LoBianco, Tom. (January 24, 2017). "Graham blasts Trump after latest voter fraud claim". CNN. Retrieved 2017-02-07.

One piece of evidence that's been referenced to support Trump's claim is a 2012 Pew Research study entitled "Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs and Upgrade" (read a brief summary of the report here).

Another piece of evidence is an October, 2014 article in The Washington Post entitled "Could non-citizens decide the November election?".

Factcheck.org investigated Trump's claim, further researched the two articles referenced above, and posted their analysis on October 19, 2016. Factcheck.org also posted a new "revisited" version of the original post on January 25, 2017.

The original post entitled "Trump's Bogus Voter Fraud Claims" breaks Trump's claim down into three parts. Here are the three parts along with factcheck.org's conclusions:

• dead people are voting in large numbers

[The 2012 Pew Research study]...did not find evidence of wrongdoing, and numerous studies have found such voter fraud is virtually nonexistent.

• illegal immigrants (non-citizens) are voting

...citing research by Old Dominion professors who say noncitizen voters may have benefited Democrats in 2008. But a Harvard professor who manages the data used in the Old Dominion study said the data was misused and the study's conclusions are wrong.

• voter fraud is very common

...numerous academic studies and government inquiries have found in-person voter fraud to be rare.

The 2012 Pew Research study reports the following statistics:

Approximately 24 million — one of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.

More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.

Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

Trump has referenced these statistics to support his claims. The key point here is that nowhere in the study does it give any statistics about the volume of "dead people" voting, or the volume of illegal immigrants voting, or that there is widespread voter fraud. The study simply presents results and suggests that our voting registration system needs an upgrade:

States'systems must be brought into the 21st century to be more accurate, cost-effective, and efficient.

The Washington Post article was written by Jesse Richman and David Earnest, Old Dominion University professors who conducted a study based on data from the "Cooperative Congressional Election Study". In the article, Richman and Earnest state the following:

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections.

There are obvious limitations to our research, which one should take account of when interpreting the results. Although the CCES sample is large, the non-citizen portion of the sample is modest, with the attendant uncertainty associated with sampling error. We analyze only 828 self-reported non-citizens. Self-reports of citizen status might also be a source of error, although the appendix of our paper shows that the racial, geographic, and attitudinal characteristics of non-citizens (and non-citizen voters) are consistent with their self-reported status.

Richman and Earnest's conclusions are discussed and/or disputed in The Washington Post in several articles in October and November of 2014 (see links below), and again in a January 25, 2017 article entitled "Trump wants to investigate purported mass voter fraud. We pre-debunked his evidence".

The article concludes that Richman and Earnest's analysis is statistically flawed because it uses a very small sample of an already small sample (a "subpopulation") and then extrapolates as if it were representative of some larger population. The conclusion of the article was confirmed in a "letter signed by over 100 professional political scientists", most of whom are affiliated with major colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

Richman and Earnest wrote a follow-up rebuttal which appeared in The Washington Post on November 2, 2014 entitled "Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections? A reply to our critics.".

Methodological challenges affect study of non-citizens' voting | The Washington Post

What can we learn about the electoral behavior of non-citizens from a survey designed to learn about citizens? | The Washington Post

Are non-citizens following American election laws? | The Washington Post

It's also worth noting that in a press conference held on January 24, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the following:

There was one [study] that came out of Pew in 2008 that showed that 14 percent of people who had voted were non-citizens. There's other studies that have been presented to him. It's a belief he maintains.

First, the 14 percent statistic Spicer mentioned came from the Richman and Earnest study, not Pew. Second, the 14 percent statistic refers to the number of non-citizens registered to vote, not the percentage of non-citizens that voted. What Spicer said makes it sound like 14 percent of everyone that voted were non-citizens.

Source:

Miller J., Zeke. (January 24, 2017). "A White House Spokesman Said President Trump 'Believes' False Claim on Voter Fraud". Time. Retrieved 2017-02-26.

Factcheck.org's "revisited" post entitled "Trump's Bogus Voter Fraud Claims Revisited" discusses additional information which helps disprove the claim of millions of illegal votes, including this tweet by the primary author of the Pew report, David Becker:

We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted.

More:

• All the President's Lies | The New York Times
• Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty | The New York Times
• Myth of Voter Fraud | Brennan Center for Justice
• Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth | Brennan Center for Justice
• Juan Williams: The dangerous erosion of facts | The Hill
• How to Deal With the Lies of Donald Trump: Guidelines for the Media | The Atlantic
• A More Detailed Guide to Dealing With Trump's Lies | The Atlantic
• Trump's Biggest Lie? The Size of His Twitter Following | Vanity Fair
• Do Illegal Votes Decide Elections? | The Wall Street Journal
• Here Are The Problems With The Trump Team's Voter Fraud Evidence | NPR
• Trump's desperate search for a 'Reichstag Fire' | Aljazeera
• Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying | The New York Times
• Why 'false equivalence' usually isn't — and elections make us dumber | The Washington Post
• Unlike most people accused of dishonesty, Clinton and Trump are true liars | Los Angeles Times
• The Truth About 'False Balance' | The New York Times