President Trump’s claim that ‘when I came in, we had no ammunition’

— President Trump, in a news conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the White House, Oct. 16

“We were very low. I could even say it stronger. I don’t want to say, ‘No ammunition,’ but that gets a lot closer.”

— Trump, in remarks at the White House, Sept. 16

This is a good example of how Trump’s most-repeated claims tend to become more exaggerated over time. The president has insisted in recent weeks that when he took office in 2017, the U.S. military brass told him there was no more ammunition.

As the two quotes above show, the claim quickly grew from snowball to avalanche. Trump hedged in September: “We were very low … I don’t want to say ‘no ammunition.’ ” But one month later, the hedges were gone: “One of our generals came in to see me and he said, ‘Sir, we don’t have ammunition.’ I said, ‘That’s a terrible thing you just said.’ He said, ‘We don’t have ammunition.’ ”

Had the president stuck to his formulation in September, we might have skipped this fact check. Near the end of President Barack Obama’s term, military leaders publicly warned that stockpiles of precision-guided munitions were running low.