People who bet on how many lies Trump would tell during his Oval Office address won more than $270,000
- President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night to discuss border security.
- Betting website Bookmaker.eu had people place wagers on how many times Trump would lie during the speech, using The Washington Post's Fact Checker as the judge.
- By the end of the speech, The Post's fact checkers had corrected six of Trump's statements.
- Because the gambling site had so many people betting that Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies, it will have to pay out $276,424, odds consultant John Lester told Buzzfeed News.
People who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies during his Oval Office address on Tuesday night will win part of a jackpot totalling $276,424, Buzzfeed News reports.
Betting website Bookmaker.eu offered users the chance to gamble on how many lies Trump would tell during his speech. The site used The Washington Post's fact-checking live blog as the judge on the president's truthfulness.
According to The Post's live blog, fact checkers corrected six of Trump's statements about immigration and the border during his speech.
Bookmaker.eu offered odds of 145 for more than 3.5 lies and +115 for fewer than 3.5 lies, which meant that if a person bet $145 on Trump telling more than four lies, they would win an additional $100.
The maximum wager online was set at $2,000, and the biggest bets on Trump lying were set at $25,000, $20,000, and $15,000, odds consultant John Lester told BuzzFeed News.
Lester said that 92% of the betters gambled on Trump lying a lot, and that Bookmaker.eu would have to pay out $276,424 to gamblers.
"It's a bad day for Truthiness and Bookmaker," he said. "We knew we were in trouble early with this one."
Among the fallacies in his speech, Trump declared that there was a new crisis at the US-Mexico border, wrongly accused Democrats of refusing to pay for border security, and wrongly described how drugs come into the United States.
- Read more about President Donald Trump:
- Trump compares his border barrier to the walls of 'wealthy' politicians' homes
- 'How much more American blood must we shed?': Trump addresses the nation amid government shutdown over border-wall funding
- The Trump administration keeps getting called out for misleadingly linking migrants at the US-Mexico border with terrorism
- Trump is considering a raid on the Pentagon budget to fund his border wall, report says