Trump no expert on Ohio election history

President Donald Trump perhaps was confident he would never face an Ohio-centric fact check while talking to the president of Mexico.

A transcript obtained by The Washington Post shows that Trump invoked the Buckeye State in a call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Jan. 27: “In Ohio, they are having rallies for Trump right now because Trump has taken a hard stance on Mexico.”

“We lost a lot of factories in Ohio and Michigan, and I won these states — some of these states have not been won in 38 years by a Republican, and I won them very easily,” Trump said. “So they are dancing in the streets. You probably have the same thing where they are dancing in your streets also but in reverse.”

We’re hard-pressed to recall any Ohio rallies for Trump in the first weeks after he took office, particularly involving partying in the streets over his get-tough talk about Mexico.

And Trump’s recall of election history in Ohio and Michigan is deeply flawed as well.

Reporter Randy Ludlow observes that Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by a healthy 8.1 percentage points. But Trump’s belief that he was the only Republican presidential candidate to carry Ohio since 1978 was wrong — five times wrong.

George W. Bush narrowly won Ohio in 2000 and 2004. His father, George H.W. Bush, won in 1988. And Ronald Reagan carried the Buckeye State in both 1980 and 1984. And, with the exception of the one by “Dubya,” all those GOP wins came by larger margins than Trump’s.

As for his brag of winning “very easily,” Trump defeated Clinton by less than 0.3 percent in the state up north. And, Michigan, post-1978, also twice went with Reagan and once with the elder Bush.

That was then ...

July 22, 2016 — Trump after WikiLeaks publishes about 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Hillary Clinton’s State Department server.

Aug. 4, 2016 - Trump tweets: “President Obama should ask the DNC about how they rigged the election against Bernie,” another of his numerous references to the leaked material.

Fast-forward one year to Aug. 3, 2017, when Trump’s deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters is asked about the leaked transcript of the Trump call to the president of Mexico:

■ “I’m not going to comment on leaked calls.”

■ “This was a conversation that was leaked out. I’m not going to get into commenting on that conversation.”

■ “I’m not going to get into leaked conversations.”

This is now ...

Fact-checkers found little major to quibble with after Trump’s speech Thursday just across the Ohio River in Huntington, W.Va., including his emphasis on the stock market hitting an all-time high. However, The Washington Post compiled a partial list contrasting Trump tweets from when the market was rising under President Barack Obama:

■ “So bloated” (June 2015) ■ “Inflated … that’s a bad sign” (April 2016)

■ “Not pretty … a big bubble” (August 2016)

■ “They’re keeping the rates artificially low … It’s a very false economy” (September 2016)

■ “A big, fat, ugly bubble” (September 2016)