Editor's note: Chris Hawke is a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a journalist who has reported for over two decades from Beijing, New York, the United Nations, Tokyo, Bangkok, Islamabad and Kabul for AP, UPI and CBS. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

During Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, he hammered away at three big lies that are the basis of his re-election campaign.

The first lie is that Black Lives Matter protesters are "violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens."

The second is that China is a menace that is "stealing our jobs, ripping us off, and robbing our country blind."

The third is that Joe Biden is a "Trojan horse for socialism" who will be the "destroyer of American greatness."

At the beginning of Trump's term, I remember debating with other well-meaning journalists about whether it was proper to refer to Trump's statements in print as "lies" – it seemed beneath the dignity of the presidency and the profession of journalism.

We've gotten over it. Here is a sample of headlines after Trump's speech. From the Guardian, "Trump unleashes diatribe of falsehoods and baseless attacks." From the Washington Post, "Trump speech was a tidal wave of false claims and revisionist history." From the New York Times, "Trump accepts the nomination, assailing Biden with misleading claims."

Let's consider Trump's three big lies.

Trump characterizes Black Lives Matters as dangerous, violent, and radical, but the summer's protests are the largest in the country's history, with at minimum 15 million people taking part by the beginning of June, according to the New York Times.

Protesters are responding to shocking acts of violence against Black people by police. Sadly, this violence continues, most recently the shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake in the back in front of his three kids. Violence by some protesters is pointless, counterproductive, and sometimes tragic. However, this rioting is not occurring in a vacuum.

The coach of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers Doc Rivers, who is Black, said on Wednesday in response to the rhetoric at the Republican convention: "We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones that we're denied to live in certain communities. We've been hung. We've been shot. All you do is keep hearing about fear. It's amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back. It's really so sad."

Contrary to Trump's claims, Black Lives Matter protesters are best characterized as everyday Americans responding to police violence.

Trump attacked China multiple times during his speech, promising, "We are taking our business out of China. We are bringing it home." Trump blames China for gutting the U.S. manufacturing industry and promises to revive manufacturing jobs.

Trump is right that blue-collar workers have been left behind by globalization. The blame for this does not lie with Beijing, but a series of policy decisions that have led to the rich becoming richer as everyone else's income stagnates.

Blaming China won't change anything. Trump's tariffs on China have not resulted in the boom in manufacturing jobs he promised. So far, the manufacturers that have left China have mostly relocated to places like Vietnam and Mexico. Trump claims he created "the greatest economy in history" prior to the pandemic. However, U.S. economic growth at that time did not surpass the peak years of the Obama or George W Bush administrations.

Trump also blames China again for the COVID-19 pandemic battering the United States. Trump and his surrogates have said China deliberately hid information about the virus in order to unleash it on the world. However, U.S. intelligence agencies' report finds that this is not true, the New York Times reported on August 19. Trump is deliberately lying to distract people from his mind-bogglingly inadequate response to the pandemic, which focused on the economy at the cost of 181,000 lives. Even at the acceptance speech, people were crowded together and not wearing masks, as if the United States did not have over 40,000 new COVID-19 cases a day.

Trump conjured a cartoon villain version of his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, claiming Biden wants to defund the police, raise taxes on all American families, and abolish oil, coal, and natural gas production in the United States.

He calls Biden's agenda, a moderate disliked by the progressive wing of the party, "the most extreme set of proposals ever put forward by a major party nominee."

None of this is true.

Trump combined his smears, linking Biden to China with lines like "Joe Biden's agenda is made in China. My agenda is made in the USA," and claiming Biden wants to shut down the country to stop the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone knows Donald Trump lies because he does so frequently and shamelessly. His sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a federal judge, was recorded talking about her brother's "lies" and "cruelty." His former personal attorney Michael Cohen warned Trump is going to "blatantly lie" at the convention. The Washington Post has kept a database of over 20,000 Trump lies, an average of 15 a day since he took office.

Lying can be remarkably effective, and the bigger the lie, the better.

Trump told Vanity Fair 30 years ago, he had a book Adolf Hitler's speeches, given to him by a friend. His first wife, Ivana, reportedly said he kept the book by his bed and read it.

Hitler, a master of manipulating crowds, once wrote that a big lie appeals to ordinary people's emotions rather than their intellect, and seems more believable. "In the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."

Whether Trump ever read this particular passage, and he denies he did, it is a principle he understands well. It remains to be seen how well the American public understands it, and if his lies even bother them at all.

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