CNN reporter Daniel Dale is marking ten years of fact-checking Donald Trump, a beat that began at the Toronto Star during the 2016 campaign.

Dale joined CNN in June 2019 to write a regular ‘Facts First’ column. By September 2020, he had logged more than 8,500 false claims by Trump and stopped trying to catch every one. There were too many to keep up with.

In a retrospective published this week, Dale reflects on 15 lessons from a decade of verification work. The effort reshaped political journalism: major newsrooms built dedicated fact-checking teams, and real-time verification became a standard part of campaign coverage.

One recurring theme is that falsehoods are far harder to correct once they circulate. Misinformation has contributed to eroding public trust in political figures and institutions, the piece notes.

The decade also brought new methods. Fact-checkers developed faster workflows for live events and new ways to track repeated claims across platforms.

Dale’s work made him one of the most recognized reporters of the Trump era. His chyrons, such as ‘Trump’s rally featured 15+ false claims over 76 minutes,’ became a signature of CNN’s coverage.