His voters don’t know that and he knows it. He understands that to them, a bigger number simply sounds better. When your voter base is largely uninformed, you can throw out any nonsense that sounds good. No questions asked, no thinking required. Those who do know better often don’t care because they’re single-issue voters who’ll back him no matter what he says or does, as long as he promises them that one thing they care about. They never stop to ask themselves: “If he’s lying about this, could he be lying about my issue too?”