PBD #852 Said Trump Was "Never Charged With Anything"

PBD Podcast #852 said Donald Trump has been accused of a great deal and "never charged with anything." We rate that mostly-false, truth score 0.25.

The narrow version — never criminally charged with a sex offence — is true. The sentence as spoken is not: four indictments, 88 counts, 34 felony convictions, and a civil sexual-abuse judgment paid in full ten weeks before the episode aired.

In a Lindsay Clancy segment on 7 September 2026, the host lists accusations against Trump, says "never accused of anything," hears the wrong word, and repairs it to "never charged with anything." In audio, a live self-correction reads as precision — here it produced the stronger false claim instead of the weaker true one.

We steelman the narrow reading before we land the verdict. No prosecutor anywhere has brought a criminal sex charge against Trump. The 2016 "Katie Johnson" child-rape filings were dismissed or voluntarily withdrawn without ever being tested, and their provenance is genuinely compromised — the publicist promoting them, "Al Taylor," was later confirmed to be Norm Lubow, a former Jerry Springer producer. Ghislaine Maxwell, questioned by DOJ in July 2025, said she never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting.

What fails is the word "anything." A Manhattan jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts on 30 May 2024; he was sentenced to an unconditional discharge on 10 January 2025 and the conviction stands. A federal jury found him liable in May 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The Supreme Court denied cert on 29 June 2026, and more than $5.6 million was disbursed on 9 July 2026.

This is record rounding: a real ledger of adjudications stated as zero, because only zero makes the argument automatic. Swap in "a sex offence" and the sentence is true — and the hypocrisy point still works.