If Pinocchio had been in the room, his nose might have grown long enough to equal several of the 115,000 sections of 40-foot steel pipe that would be needed to construct the mythical mirage of the Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline project that has mesmerized state leaders for decades.

There were that many lies spewed in the Oval Office during President Donald Trump’s Sept. 30 announcement that South Korea would unconditionally invest $54 billion in the Alaska project.

“Thanks to the agreements my administration has secured with the Republic of Korea, they will invest … at long last the Alaska liquefied natural gas pipeline,” Trump said. 

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the deal with the South Korean government included “just over $50 billion invested in Alaska for the Alaska LNG project.”

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the two members of the state’s congressional delegation facing tough reelection battles this fall all heaped praise on Trump as if they were getting paid by the pound. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich couldn’t have been happier over the free publicity for their Republican campaigns, sharing in the credit for supposedly getting done what no Democrat had been able to accomplish.

Everyone in the room was smiling over the fake news that South Korea would invest in an Alaska natural gas pipeline and export project — which has lacked investors since it was first proposed in the early 1980s.

But missing from the room was the investor who the president and his loyal entourage of yes men proclaimed would back the project. No one from South Korea was at the Oval Office event.

The South Korean government had plenty to say later about the White House announcement that the check was as good as in the mail.

At an Oct. 1 press briefing in Seoul, South Korea Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan objected to the U.S. characterization of the country’s Alaska LNG investment. “Putting out figures, or using definitive language, goes far beyond what was agreed,” he said.

“This morning (after the announcement), I lodged a strong protest with Lutnick as the announcement went far beyond what was agreed, as the countries agreed to proceed with the Alaska project only on the premise that commercial reasonableness is guaranteed,” Kim told reporters.

The South Korean government felt the misleading announcement was so extreme that it required more than just a response from the industry minister. President Lee Jae Myung took to social media to correct Trump’s misleading announcement. “We agreed to begin working on the Alaska LNG project on the conditions that, first, its commercial viability is confirmed and, second, it complies with Korea’s legal procedures,” he posted on X on Oct. 1.

Trump, never one to take no for an answer to his dishonesty, the day after South Korean officials poured cold water on his hot gas project threatened to double U.S. tariffs on South Korean goods if they don’t agree to make his lie come true.

What the president should have done is learn a lesson from Pinocchio and told the truth: The Oval Office announcement was a political publicity stunt to help keep Republicans in Alaska’s congressional seats and to tell anyone gullible enough to listen that energy prices would soon come down, even though Alaska natural gas has nothing to do with gasoline prices at the pump.

If Trump really wants to help Sullivan and Begich win reelection, he could write a personal check to the candidates’ campaign funds rather than use the White House for political commercials.