| Trump says anything that comes into his head, regardless of whether it is true, or even reasonable. |
| From Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention - July 18, 2014: An inflation crisis “is just simply crushing our people, like never before — they’ve never seen anything like it.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022, but that is considerably lower than its peak of nearly 15 percent in the early 1980s. Republicans will sometimes point out that the inflation methodology has changed since then — meaning that we are measuring price increases differently — but even accounting for those tweaks, economists have said that inflation was lower in 2022 than it was four decades earlier. Inflation is not, based on the data, crushing people like never before. “Our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III, and this will be a war like no other.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This lacks evidence. While there is an active war between Russia and Ukraine, and between Hamas and Israel, and fighting in Sudan, Myanmar and other countries, there is no evidence that a third world war is imminent. “We will drill, baby, drill, and by doing that we will lead to a large-scale decline in prices.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This needs context. More drilling doesn’t always cause gasoline prices to plunge. Case in point: The United States is actually producing significantly more crude oil today under the Biden administration than it did under the Trump administration, yet gasoline prices are still higher than they were four years ago. That’s because gasoline costs are also influenced by broader market forces that can cause the global price of crude oil to rise or fall. For instance, a big reason prices increased in 2022 was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted the flow of crude across the globe. All else equal, an increase in U.S. oil drilling should put downward pressure on prices, but those other global factors also play a considerable role. “We gave you the largest tax cuts.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. The $1.5 trillion tax cut, enacted in December 2017, ranks below at least half a dozen other tax cuts by several metrics. The 1981 Reagan tax cut was the largest as a percentage of the economy and by its reduction to federal revenue. The 2012 Obama tax cut amounted to the largest reduction in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year. “We built most of the wall.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. During Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, he promised to build a wall spanning at least 1,000 miles along the southern border and have Mexico pay for it. That did not happen. Overall, the Trump administration constructed 458 miles of border barriers — most of which upgraded or replaced existing structures. Officials put up new primary barriers where none previously existed along only 47 miles. “And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again. The election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Mr. Trump has continued to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. His assertions about widespread cheating are unsubstantiated. Since the election, the former president has used claims mischaracterizing the voting and counting process, cited baseless examples of fraud and peddled conspiracy theories. “By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs? The jobs that are created? 107 percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Official estimates of employment do not support Mr. Trump’s statement, which makes little sense. And estimates from various groups show that the population of unauthorized immigrants has grown in recent years, but not nearly enough to take all the jobs created during Mr. Biden’s presidency. “Our current administration, groceries are up 57 percent, gasoline is up 60 and 70 percent.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Grocery prices are up substantially since Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office in early 2021, but not by 57 percent: The Consumer Price Index’s food-at-home index is up about 21 percent. Gas prices are up about 35 percent, depending upon the measure used. “We will reduce our debt, $36 trillion, and we will reduce your taxes still further.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. Mr. Trump suggested that the national debt would be paid down by jump-starting economic growth. He made this promise during his first term, promising that $2 trillion of tax cuts would pay for themselves, and ended up approving more than $8 trillion of borrowing. The Republican platform this year makes no mention of debt or deficits but does call for cutting wasteful spending. Also, the national debt currently stands at $34.9 trillion, not $36 trillion. “They want to raise your taxes four times.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Many elements of the 2017 tax cut Mr. Trump signed into law will expire in 2025, and Mr. Biden has proposed some tax increases on high-income earners and corporations. But this does not amount to a quadrupling of taxes. “I will end the electric vehicle mandate on Day 1, thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now, and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands per car.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. There is no electric vehicle mandate. “We’re going to bring back car manufacturing.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This needs context. The American auto industry lost jobs under the Trump administration, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler all closed factories during Mr. Trump’s presidency. “Probably the best trade deal was the deal I made with China, where they buy $50 billion worth of our product.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is exaggerated. The trade agreement that Mr. Trump signed with China in 2020 was quickly derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, and China never fulfilled its obligations to purchase American goods. And Mr. Trump gave an incorrect total for how much American product China was supposed to buy. A 2022 analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that China had bought none of the extra $200 billion of U.S. exports in the trade pact. “Democrats are going to destroy Social Security and Medicare.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. President Biden has pledged not to make any cuts to America’s social safety net programs. Mr. Trump suggested this year that he was open to scaling back the programs when he said there was “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting.” He later walked back those comments and pledged to protect the programs. But if changes to the programs are not made, the programs’ benefits will automatically be reduced eventually. Government reports released earlier this year projected that the Social Security and disability insurance programs, if combined, would not have enough money to pay all of their obligations in 2035. Medicare will be unable to pay all its hospital bills starting in 2036. “The whole world was at peace. And now the whole world is blowing up around us. Under President Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under President Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under the current administration, Russia is after all of Ukraine. Under President Trump, Russia took nothing.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Under Mr. Trump’s presidency, there was not global peace. While Mr. Trump was in the Oval Office, there was an active war in eastern Ukraine between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, he authorized airstrikes and ground combat operations against fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and he ordered the assassination of an Iranian military leader in Iraq. “I stopped the missile launches from North Korea.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. North Korea continued to test missiles during Mr. Trump’s time in the White House, a fact that the former president continually dismissed at the time. “We also left $85 billion worth of military equipment” in Afghanistan. — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Mr. Trump was once again referring to the total amount that the United States spent on security in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years — not the value of equipment left behind in the 2021 withdrawal. “We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland. And this great Iron Dome will be built entirely in the U.S.A. and Wisconsin.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. The U.S. military’s budget continues to grow year by year, and the Iron Dome missile defense system is effective only against relatively short-range rockets and missiles. Installing an Iron Dome across the country would in no way ensure that an enemy could not strike the United States. “They spent $9 billion on eight chargers.” — Former President Donald J. Trump. This is false. This is an inflated claim of another false statement Mr. Trump has made on the campaign trail about electric vehicle charging stations. (He recently said that the Biden administration had “opened seven chargers for $8 billion.”) Source: by Jeanna Smialek, John Ismay, Brad Plumer, Linda Qiu, Angelo Fichera, Alan Rappeport, Lisa Friedman - NY Times - 7/19/2024 From the first 2024 debate on June 27, 2024: “He wants to raise your taxes by four times.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Many elements of the 2017 tax cut that Mr. Trump signed into law will expire in 2025, and Mr. Biden has proposed some tax increases on high-income earners and corporations. But this does not amount to a quadrupling of taxes. “But Social Security, he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Mr. Trump has this backward. Undocumented workers often pay taxes that help fund Social Security. But, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office once noted, “most unauthorized immigrants are prohibited from receiving many of the benefits that the federal government provides through Social Security and such need-based programs as food stamps, Medicaid (other than emergency services) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.” “Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago on tape to her daughter who’s a documentary filmmaker, or they say what she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this.’ Because I offered them 10,000 soldiers are National Guard. And she turned them down.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. Mr. Trump is distorting what Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, said. Ms. Pelosi did not admit to turning down National Guard troops. She does not have such authority. “You look at the cost of food, where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Grocery prices are up significantly since early 2021, but they have not doubled, tripled or quadrupled overall because of inflation. The “food at home” inflation index that tracks grocery prices is up about 20 percent since then, for instance. “I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. Mr. Trump established a voluntary $35-per-month cap on insulin costs for Medicare beneficiaries, something only a limited number of Medicare plans participated in. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden in 2022, required plans to cap insulin costs at $35 each month, increasing the number of Medicare beneficiaries who would be covered by the policy. Mr. Biden has pushed to make the cap applicable to people with commercial insurance, a provision that was removed from the Inflation Reduction Act before it became law. “And what he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years he called them superpredators.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Mr. Trump has previously made this claim about Mr. Biden, including at an October 2020 debate. But it was Mr. Trump’s 2016 political rival, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, who once used that term — not Mr. Biden. “The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Official estimates of employment do not support Mr. Trump’s statement. And estimates from various groups show that the population of unauthorized immigrants has grown in recent years, but not nearly enough to take all the jobs created under President Biden. “No indictments, no political opponents stuff, because it’s the only way he thinks he can win.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has claimed repeatedly that his numerous legal woes were orchestrated by President Biden. Of the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump, two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning that the Justice Department itself has no control over them. The other two criminal cases against Mr. Trump are overseen by a special counsel, whom Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. There is no evidence that Mr. Biden is personally directing the cases against his political opponent. Mr. Biden has publicly emphasized the independence of the Justice Department. “He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Mr. Trump’s claim that President Biden orchestrated his conviction has no basis in fact. The investigation began while Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, was president. The case was brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a local Democrat who does not answer to Mr. Biden’s administration. And Mr. Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers. “They moved a high-ranking official, a D.O.J., into the Manhattan D.A.’s office to start that case.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Mr. Trump regularly claims that a Justice Department official from the Biden administration was the driving force behind his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan. In fact, the investigation into Mr. Trump had begun years before that former Justice Department official even joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The former official was one of several prosecutors to work on the case, which recently ended with Mr. Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. But the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, was responsible for bringing the case. “We have the largest deficit with China.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. The U.S. trade deficit with China in goods and services was $252 billion last year, the lowest level since 2009. “He gets paid by China.” — Former President Donald J. Trump. False. Mr. Trump was referring to President Biden and appeared to be nodding to payments from a company called C.E.F.C. China Energy and its affiliates to entities associated with Mr. Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James. No evidence has emerged that any portion of these payments, which started after Mr. Biden left the vice presidency, went to Joseph R. Biden Jr. “He caused this inflation.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is misleading. Independent economic research has found that government stimulus spending approved by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden contributed to the soaring inflation the nation experienced in the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency. But no evidence blames government spending, by Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, for the majority of the inflation the country experienced. A 2023 research paper by the economists Ben S. Bernanke and Olivier Blanchard found “most of the rise in inflation in 2021 and 2022 was driven by developments that directly raised prices rather than wages, including sharp increases in global commodity prices and sectoral price spikes driven by a combination of pandemic-induced kinks in supply chains and a huge shift in demand during the pandemic to goods from services.” “And because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in and killing our citizens at a level we’ve never — we call it migrant crime. I’d call it Biden-migrant crime.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is exaggerated. While there have been highly publicized cases of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants, these cases do not represent a broader trend. Numerous studies have found that immigration does not push up crime rates. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes and less likely to be incarcerated than American citizens. “He did nothing to stop it. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”. — Former President Donald J. Trump, referring to the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s preparation to invade Ukraine . . This is false.. The Biden administration sent William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, to Russia in November 2021 to tell President Vladimir V. Putin that U.S. intelligence knew of his plans to invade Ukraine and warn him not to invade. President Biden also declassified intelligence about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine in an effort to dissuade Russia from invading and rally allied support for Ukraine. . . Mr. Biden threatened — and wound up imposing — vast economic sanctions against Russia’s economy and political leadership. “I made great trade deals with the European nations.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump engaged in trade negotiations with the European Union during his presidency and the talks culminated in a limited agreement in August 2020. That deal was much smaller than what people typically refer to as a trade deal, and it did not shift the balance of trade in the United States’ favor. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services with the European Union grew steadily over Mr. Trump’s term to $146 billion in 2021 when he left office, up from $89 billion in 2017. “Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke, they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything, no money for terror.”. — Former President Donald J. Trump . . False.. Even under sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration, Iran’s economy plugged along. It wasn’t strong, but it wasn’t broke, and it kept trading with many nations. Mr. Trump made no mention of the fact that his withdrawal from an Obama-era nuclear deal freed Iran to resume nuclear production. “We’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This lacks evidence. The concept of international “respect” can be subjective, but what hard data exists shows that President Biden enjoys more approval overseas than does Mr. Trump. The latest international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, released earlier this month, found that “Biden is viewed more positively than his rival.” In a poll of citizens in 34 countries, 43 percent said they have confidence in Mr. Biden “to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” while just 28 percent said the same thing about Mr. Trump. In 24 of those countries, Pew found, Mr. Biden rated at least five points higher than did Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump fared better in only two: Tunisia and Hungary. “Just take a look at where they are living. They are living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Tens of thousands of migrants who crossed the border into the United States were offered free bus rides to Democratic cities under a program started by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas in an attempt to spread the burden of the large influx. Some cities, like New York and Denver, have housed migrants in hotels, especially during the winter months. The migrants were not in luxury hotels. “He allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions — to come into our country and destroy our country.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has not provided any evidence for this claim, and immigration experts have said that they could not corroborate Mr. Trump’s claims. “He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in. They’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Unauthorized immigrants actually improve the financial health of both Social Security and Medicare. Federal law bars them from receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits, but they pay into both programs. In a 2013 report, the Social Security Administration estimated that 3.1 million unauthorized immigrants were working and paying Social Security taxes. They contributed about $12 billion to the trust in 2010 and about $100 billion over a decade. A 2016 study estimated that unauthorized immigrants contributed about $35.1 billion to Medicare from 2000 to 2011. And Mr. Biden has proposed plans to shore up Social Security and has vowed for years not to cut the program. During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed increasing taxes on high-income earners to pay for additional Social Security benefits and reduce the program’s financial shortfall. This election cycle, Mr. Biden has also said he would raise taxes on the wealthy, make no cuts to the program and opposes raising the retirement age. “The fraud and everything else was ridiculous.” — Former President Donald J. Trump, referring to the 2020 election This is false. The Associated Press combed through potential cases of fraud in battleground states during the 2020 election and came away with 475 possible cases of voter fraud. That is far less than the hundreds of thousands of falsely counted or changed votes claimed by Mr. Trump and his associates and supporters. “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, ninth month, even after birth.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Mr. Trump was describing the Biden administration’s approach to abortion policy. Abortion “after birth” would be infanticide, which is illegal in every state. And abortions late in pregnancy are very rare: In 2021, less than 1 percent of abortions happened after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics collected from state and other health agencies. More than 90 percent of abortions happened within 13 weeks of pregnancy, which is dated to the start of a woman’s last monthly period. “This is something that everybody wanted.” — Former President Donald J. Trump This is false. Mr. Trump was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to disagree with that decision. “Not going to drive them higher.”. — Former President Donald J. Trump on whether tariffs would increase prices . . This is false.. Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industries by raising the price of foreign products, and economists anticipate that any increase in tariffs would result in some increase in prices. . . Economic studies found that the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term were largely paid by American consumers, rather than Chinese companies. In a recent letter, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote that there was concern that Trump’s policies, including his plan to impose blanket tariffs on most imports, would reignite inflation. “I gave you the largest cut in history.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. The $1.5 trillion tax cut, enacted in December 2017, ranks below at least half a dozen others by several metrics. The 1981 tax cut enacted under President Ronald Reagan is the largest as a percentage of the economy and by its reduction to federal revenue. The 2012 cut enacted under President Barack Obama amounted to the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year. “The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen.” — Former President Donald J. Trump False. Economic research suggests that the tax cut Mr. Trump signed in 2017 spurred some additional economic growth and income growth, but nowhere close to what Mr. Trump and Republicans promised. Researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department found in an analysis this year that the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: About $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker. Source: "Debate Fact Check: Biden and Trump on the Economy, Immigration and Foreign Policy" By The New York Times June 27, 2024 Trump and his allies have spent months falsely portraying America as a nation terrorized by a wave of violent crime, pointing the finger at migrants and claiming that President Biden is responsible. Here’s what actually happened: We experienced a substantial rise in homicides in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Trump was in the White House. After Biden took his place, the homicide rate first plateaued, then began a steep decline that seems to be continuing. Murders, in particular, dropped rapidly in 2023 and seem to have plunged further this year. It seems quite likely that the homicide rate in 2024 will turn out to be lower than it was in any year of the Trump presidency. Or to put it another way, if you want to play this by MAGA rules, under which the president is held responsible for national crime rates on his watch, then you’d have to say that Biden ended the Trump crime wave. Source: "Biden Ended the Trump Crime Wave" By Paul Krugman - NY Times - 6/27/24 Over the weekend, at a campaign rally in Nashville, Tennessee, he pledged to “keep A.M. radio in our cars,” patted himself on the back for making Israel the capital of Israel and promised to get rid of the Education Department except for “one desk, one person, just to make sure everyone’s speaking English.” Source: "How Trump and his allies made a Biden debate win much easier" By Michael A. Cohen - MSNBC - 6/27/24 “It’s hard to believe they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth.” — Mr. Trump in an interview on Fox News in June False. No state has passed a law allowing the execution of a baby after it is born, which is infanticide. Abortions later in pregnancy in general are very rare: In 2021, less than 1 percent of abortions happened after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The level of crime in the cities, in these big cities, is out of control. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.” — Mr. Trump on the “All-In” podcast in June False. Violent crime and property crime are near the lowest level in decades, despite public perception to the contrary. And while there was an increase in crime during the pandemic, including the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency, violent crime was higher in 2020 under Mr. Trump than under Mr. Biden so far. “They kill the birds. They kill the whales. But on the ocean floor, surveys for their construction are causing tremendous problems with the fish and the whales and everything else.” — Mr. Trump at a May rally in New Jersey This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has long been an ardent critic of wind turbines and insisted, hyperbolically, for more than a decade that they are a top driver of avian deaths. Now, he has claimed with no evidence the turbines are killing whales, too. By one estimate, as many as 328,000 birds die each year flying into wind farms, but other things — inanimate and living — pose a far greater threat. Cats kill as many as four billion birds annually in the United States, fossil fuel power plants 14.5 million and collisions with buildings as many as 988 million. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and marine biologists have said they are unaware of any whale deaths caused by offshore wind turbines, surveys or construction. “They say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years, one-eighth of an inch, which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?” — Mr. Trump in a June interview on Fox News False. Mr. Trump is vastly understating the impact of climate change. Sea levels have risen eight to nine inches since 1880 and by an eighth of an inch per year over the last three decades. Source: "Fact-Checking Biden’s and Trump’s Claims on Domestic Policy" By Linda Qiu - NY Times - 6/27/24 “BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME! It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” — Mr. Trump, in a fund-raising email Source: "Trump Falsely Claims Biden Administration Was ‘Locked & Loaded’ to Kill Him" By Maggie Astor - NY Times - 5/22/24 This idiotic statement doesn't even warrant a response. In his 2016 {Republican National Convention} speech, Mr. Trump exercised some caution, declaring the United States “one of the highest taxed nations in the world” and the Iran nuclear deal “one of the worst deals ever made” that brought the United States “nothing.” At the time, the United States ranked No. 31 of 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product and No. 19 in tax revenue per capita. Whether the Iran deal was the “worst” is a matter of opinion, but the deal lifted economic sanctions placed on Iran in exchange for limiting the country’s nuclear abilities — not “nothing.” Eight years later, {the 2024 Republican National Convention} the superlatives were more emphatic and his record no longer “one of” but simply the best. Mr. Trump claimed to have presided over not just a strong border and a healthy economy but the “most secure border and the best economy in the history of the world,” and signed not just a large tax relief bill but the “biggest tax cuts ever.” Inflation under Mr. Biden, in his telling, was not just making life more difficult for American families but “the worst inflation we’ve ever had.” None of that was true. Even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the economy, annual average growth was lower under Mr. Trump than Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan and the unemployment rate was still higher than historical lows. Apprehensions of unauthorized border crossings at the southern border fell to the lowest point since the 1970s in the 2017 fiscal year, but increased in subsequent years and reached the highest level in a decade in the 2019 fiscal year. Tax cuts enacted under Mr. Reagan and Mr. Obama were larger than the 2017 tax cut. And peak inflation under Mr. Biden was lower than rates in the 1980s. Similarly, in his acceptance speech this year, Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Biden would “destroy Social Security and Medicare” through illegal immigration and that his administration wanted “to raise your taxes four times.” None of these claims were true either. Mr. Biden has vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare, and unauthorized migrants actually improve the financial health of both programs because they pay taxes but cannot take benefits. And Mr. Biden proposed raising taxes on the very wealthy and corporations — not tax hikes across the board — and even those proposals would not amount to an increase of 300 percent. Source: "Trump’s 2024 Convention Speech Had More Falsehoods Than His 2016 One" By Linda Qiu - NY Times - 7/24/2024 Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill last week to visit with House Republicans. According to most reports of the meeting, he rambled. People present told the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS that the former president “treated his meeting as an opportunity to deliver a behind-closed-doors, stream-of-consciousness rant” in which he “tried to settle scores in the House G.O.P., trashed the city of Milwaukee and took a shot at Nancy Pelosi’s ‘wacko’ daughter.” It was “like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.” That same week, Trump met with a group of chief executives at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable. Attendees, CNBC reports, were disappointed. “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one executive. Others said that Trump was “remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.” Source: "The Lazy Authoritarianism of Donald Trump" By Jamelle Bouie - NY Times - 6/21/24 There are roughly 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, according to a recent estimate by the Pew Research Center. Trump’s number of “probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million” is pulled from nowhere — an assumption based on the inchoate sense that the official numbers are wrong and there must be more “illegals” to apprehend than anyone truly realizes. Source: "Trump’s Taste for Tyranny Finds a Target" By Jamelle Bouie - NY Times - May 24, 2024 Mr. Trump has famously dismissed the overwhelming scientific evidence that the planet is heating as a result of the burning of oil, gas and coal as “a hoax.” He is heavily courting the fossil fuel industry oil and gas industry, telling executives at one recent private dinner they should donate $1 billion to his campaign so he could retake the White House and reverse Mr. Biden’s climate policies. A second Trump administration could hinder electric vehicles in several ways, by rolling back the regulation that limits tailpipe pollution and by changing the rules set by the Treasury that determine the number of electric vehicles eligible for tax credits. Source: "Can Trump Really Slam the Brakes on Electric Vehicles?" By Coral Davenport and Jack Ewing - NY Times - 5/27/2024 The Washington Post reported on Monday {5/27/24} that the promise was made on May 14 at a roundtable event in New York when one of the donors present complained about the student protests that took place at universities across the country: “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event. Source: "Trump Pledges to Deport American College Students Protesting Israel in Private Meeting With Donors" by Jamie Frevele - Mieiaite.com - May 27th, 2024 Mr. Trump, of course, had some data points of his own as he marketed his presidency as having “the greatest economy in history,” a bygone utopia of low inflation and cheap gasoline. “Everybody was better off under a man named President Donald J. Trump,” he said last week. “Have you ever heard of him?” He claimed that he “had a record low poverty rate for Black Americans.” In fact, the rate’s low point occurred in 2022 under Mr. Biden, according to U.S. census data. Source: "A ‘Laundry List’ or a ‘Feel’: Biden and Trump’s Clashing Appeals to Black Voters" By Shane Goldmacher - NY Times - May 30, 2024 More fFrom the first 2024 debate on June 27, 2024: Defended the end of Roe v. Wade, saying “it’s been a great thing.” Said that the pro-Trump Nazi march in Charlottesville was “made up.” Said on January 6th that “we were respected all over the world.” Defended his 34 felony convictions, saying the system was “rigged” and he did nothing wrong. Source: “Tell Your Friends After The Debate” by Rob Flaherty - Deputy Campaign Manager - Biden for President - via Mediaite - Tommy Christopher - Jun 30th, 2024 The former president {Trump} has also repeatedly and falsely said he oversaw the lowest Black unemployment rate in American history, which Mr. Biden on Wednesday called one of “Trump’s MAGA lies.” (In fact, the Black unemployment rate dipped lower under Mr. Biden.) Source: "Biden Asks What Trump Would Have Done if Capitol Rioters Were Black" By Nicholas Nehamas and Maya King - NY Times - 5/29/24 {Related to the guilty verdict handed down by a jury in the "hush money trial" on May 30, 2024} So, he repeated the one I think he’s repeated most frequently throughout the course of the trial. And now, after saying this was all done by Biden and his people, the case was in conjunction with the White House and DOJ. Not a shred of evidence of that. This case was brought by a local elected yes Democratic prosecutor, no evidence whatsoever of any communication with Joe Biden or his aides about it. And Trump also repeated his claim, Wolf, that crime in New York is at levels nobody’s ever seen before. As anyone who lived through the early 1990s in New York knows, that is not remotely true. For example, murders in New York, there are 391 last year. Well, there were 2,262 in 1990, so not even close. And it’s further come down this year. And lastly, Wolf, former President Trump said that Michael Cohen got in trouble with the law for stuff that had nothing to do with him. Trump he said Cohen’s taxi medallion business and so on. Well, that is misleading at best, because yes, Cohen did get in trouble for lying about his taxes, lying about things related to the taxi medallion business, but also got in trouble for campaign finance offenses related to the very same hush money scheme that Trump got in trouble for, so directly related to Trump and his prison sentence, Wolf was also related to Cohen lying to Congress related to a negotiations or discussions with Russia about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. So this was not, you know, Cohen’s own thing, own nothing to do with Trump. Some of it at least, was directly related to the former president. Source: "‘A Whole Bunch Of Lies Here!’ CNN Fact-Checks Trump Presser They Dumped Out Of" Tommy Christopher - Mediaite - May 31st, 2024 Speaking to the Fox hosts, Trump denied saying the words that were the refrain to his first presidential campaign: “I didn’t say, ‘Lock her up.’” That is, of course, a preposterous lie, the kind that demonstrates Trump’s strongman ability to get his followers to accept absurdities. Source: "‘Lock Her Up’ Was Not Just a Slogan" By Michelle Goldberg - NYTimes - 6/3/24 Mr. Trump has also repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the United States has “ended oil exploration and production.” While Mr. Biden did expand limits on new drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, his administration issued thousands of new permits to drill on other federal lands — outpacing Mr. Trump’s record. The United States is producing oil and natural gas at record highs. During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, the national debt grew by around $8 trillion despite his 2016 campaign promise to eliminate the entire national debt within eight years by renegotiating trade deals and promoting economic growth. Mr. Trump typically denies that import taxes raise prices. But R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist who also served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, said multiple studies using different methodologies had confirmed that the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed were “completely passed on to consumers.” Source: "Trump Vows to Lower Prices. Some of His Policies May Raise Them." By Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan - NY Times - 6/8/24 Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, the burial place for 1,800 U.S. Marines, whom Donald Trump famously called “suckers” and “losers” and had refused to honor with a visit in 2018 because it had been raining. Trump, president at the time, had been scheduled to visit the cemetery about 60 miles from Paris but canceled because of the rain. He told his then-chief of staff John Kelly: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Later on the same trip, he called servicemembers who died for their country “suckers.” Two days after refusing to visit Aisne-Marne, Trump was posting on social media that he wanted to go but just couldn’t. “By the way, when the helicopter couldn’t fly to the first cemetery in France because of almost zero visibility, I suggested driving. Secret Service said NO, too far from airport & big Paris shutdown,” he first wrote on Nov. 12, 2018, repeating the false story that his press staff had been putting out. In fact, the Marine 1 helicopter, a Sikorsky VH-3D, can fly in precipitation, and on multiple occasions carried Trump through light rain and drizzle from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland back to the White House. Further, Secret Service advance teams always make contingency travel plans for bad weather. Source: "Biden To Visit WWI Cemetery Five Years After Trump Refused To Honor ‘Suckers’ And ‘Losers’" By S.V. Date - HuffPost - Jun 8, 2024 CNN anchor Brianna Keilar "He talked about crime on the streets.{. . .} However, sort of inconvenient statistics for the former president: violent crime dropping by more than 15 percent in the U.S. during the first three months of 2024. This is according to statistics released on Monday by the FBI." CNN anchor Boris Sanchez "He also talked about inflation, “the likes of which nobody has ever seen, never seen levels like this before.” Actually, the inflation rate, the CPI numbers that came out, I believe yesterday or the day before, they had inflation at roughly 3.3 percent. The highest inflation has ever been in the United States was just about 18 percent back in 1917." CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale "But former President Trump basically never acknowledges that it has since plummeted, as you said, down to 3.3 percent. That is nowhere near, a 40-year high is nowhere near 75-year high, certainly nowhere near the all-time high." "He talks about people flooding in across the border from prisons and mental institutions. I have repeatedly tried to get information from his campaign, anything that would corroborate this claim that foreign countries are emptying out prisons and mental institutions to send people here as migrants. They have not been able to corroborate that at all, nor had any of the experts on immigration that I’ve spoken to. So that claim seems to have been conjured by the former president out of thin air. But he he keeps saying it over and over." Source: Video clip from CNN via "‘Inconvenient Statistics’: CNN Drops Immediate Fact-Check After Trump Speaks In Front Of Adoring GOP Senators" by Jamie Frevele - Mediaite - 6/13/24 During Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, he promised to build a wall spanning at least 1,000 miles along the southern border and have Mexico pay for it. That did not happen. Overall, the Trump administration constructed 458 miles of border barriers — most of which reinforced or replaced existing structures. Officials put up new primary barriers where none previously existed along only 47 miles. “He’s {President Biden} letting millions of people from jails, from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions, drug dealers, pour in. Venezuela, if you look at their crime statistics, they’ve gone down 72 percent in crime because they’re releasing all their criminals into our country because of this horrible president that we have.” — {Donald Trump, }in remarks to reporters in May The Venezuelan Prison Observatory told Univision in 2022, when Mr. Trump first made the claim, that the prisons in the country had not been emptied and rather were at 170 percent capacity. According to the group’s latest annual report, Venezuela’s prison population stood at 33,558 in 2022, about level with its 2021 population of 33,710. “If the Biden invasion is not stopped, it will also demolish Medicare and Social Security. It cannot survive, but it cannot survive 20 million people coming into the country.” “It was recently announced that crooked Joe is now giving Obamacare and all free government health care to illegal aliens.” — {Donald Trump,} in a May rally in New Jersey Federal law bars unauthorized immigrants from receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits, but they pay into both programs. In a 2013 report, the Social Security Administration estimated that 3.1 million unauthorized immigrants were working and paying Social Security taxes. They contributed about $12 billion to the trust in 2010 and about $100 billion over a decade. A 2016 study estimated that unauthorized immigrants contributed about $35.1 billion to Medicare from 2000 to 2011. Unauthorized immigrants are also generally barred from purchasing health insurance through the government exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act and receiving subsidies. Nor do unauthorized migrants qualify for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the government health care programs for low-income people and children, though they can receive emergency Medicaid services. Source: "Assessing Trump’s and Biden’s Claims About Immigration and Border Security" By Linda Qiu - NY Times - 6/16/24 On Tuesday’s {6/18/24} NewsNight with Abby Phillip, the host handed over to {Daniel} Dale, who coincidentally listed a falsehood for every one of the 30-miles between the rally location on Lake Michigan and the city of Milwaukee itself. PHILLIP: CNN’s Daniel is here with 30 false statements that Trump made in Wisconsin, Daniel, take it away. DALE:
PHILLIP: It’s only Tuesday. Daniel Dale, thank you very much. Source: "‘And It’s Only Tuesday’: CNN’s Daniel Dale Calls Out Trump On 30 Wisconsin Rally Falsehoods" - CNN via David Gilmour, MediaIte, Jun 19th, 2024 Trump has started to use the term {drill baby drill} more frequently in public appearances, but his use dates back to at least 2022. Trump claims that if elected, he will cut energy prices in half, doing so through expanding domestic fracking and oil measures. However, companies set production levels based on market forces, not presidential orders. Efforts to influence production are not guaranteed to succeed: Trump tried and failed to prop up the U.S. coal industry for example. Source: "6 things Trump says at his rallies and what they really mean" By Clayton Kincade - NPR - JUNE 20, 2024 Mr. Trump made false claims about job growth under Mr. Biden. “One hundred percent of the jobs created have gone to illegals.” — Mr. Trump at the Detroit event False. Official estimates of employment do not support Mr. Trump’s statement. And estimates from various groups show that the population of unauthorized immigrants has grown in recent years, but not nearly enough to take all the jobs created during Mr. Biden’s presidency. Two groups that advocate lower levels of migration and stricter border security have estimated that there are 2.3 million to 2.5 million more unauthorized immigrants in 2023 than in 2020. One group, the Center for Immigration Studies, estimated a total population of 12.8 million while the other, Federation for American Immigration Reform, pinned the number at 16.8 million. The economy has added more than 15 million jobs since January 2021. “They want to quadruple your taxes.” — Mr. Trump in a June rally in Las Vegas “They’re going to let them expire. They’re going to give you the biggest tax increase you’ve ever had, ever, by four times.” — Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Detroit in June False. Many elements of the 2017 tax cut Mr. Trump signed into law will expire in 2025, and Mr. Biden has proposed some tax increases on high-income earners and corporations. But this does not amount to a quadrupling of taxes. Mr. Biden has also consistently said he does not support raising taxes on people making under $400,000 a year. In his latest budget, the president proposed extending tax cuts for those making under that threshold. It called for “additional reforms to ensure that wealthy people and big corporations pay their fair share,” such as restoring the top individual income rate to 39.5 percent, from 37 percent, for single filers making above $400,000 and families making more than $450,000. It also included several provisions that would reduce personal taxes for average and low-income earners including further expanding the child tax credit and making permanent the earned-income tax credit for childless workers. High-income earners did far better under the {Trump} tax cut, though, with the top 1 percent receiving nearly 17 percent of the total benefit with an average tax cut of $30,000. Source: "Fact-Checking Biden’s and Trump’s Claims About the Economy" By Linda Qiu - NY Times - 6/23/24 |
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