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Fact-checking night 4 of the Republican National Convention



CNN
 — 

Former President Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday with the most dishonest speech of the four-day Republican National Convention, making more than 20 false claims by CNN’s count.

Many of the false claims were ones Trump has made before, some of them for years. They spanned a wide variety of topics, including the economy, immigration, crime, foreign policy and elections. Some of them were wild lies, others smaller exaggerations. Some were in his prepared text (like the absurd claim that he left the Biden administration a world at peace), while he ad-libbed others (such as his usual lies that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and that the US is experiencing the worst inflation it has ever had).

Below is a fact check of some of Trump’s false or misleading remarks, plus a fact check of claims made by other Thursday convention speakers.

Former President Donald Trump claimed that there is record inflation under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. The current inflation rate, 3% in June 2024, is nowhere near the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920.

Trump could fairly say that the inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but it has since plummeted.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he “got along with” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and “we stopped the missile launches from North Korea.”

“But, no, I got along with him,” Trump said, “and we stopped the missile launches from North Korea. Now North Korea is acting up again.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that he “stopped the missile launches” from North Korea is misleading. While missile launches did pause from North Korea for a period of time during his administration, they started up again before he left office. 

A May 2019 launch of what was assessed to be a short-range ballistic missile was North Korea’s first since 2017, which was seen as a sign of growing frustration from Kim on the state of talks with the US. North Korea later launched two more missiles in July 2019, a month after Trump’s high-profile meeting with Kim in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. North Korea conducted four missile tests in 2020.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Former President Donald Trump claimed in his RNC speech that “we defeated 100% of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was going to take five years. … We did it in a matter of a couple of months.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim of having defeated ISIS in “a couple of months” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019.

Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq in late December 2018, as he has suggested in past remarks, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has before, when he said he defeated the terror group with no caveats or credit to anyone else. Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Donald Trump said Thursday that the Florida federal judge who was overseeing the classified documents case dismissed the criminal charges against the former president, finding “that the prosecutor and the fake documents case against me were totally unconstitutional.”

Facts firstTrump’s claim is misleading. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in her ruling that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who was prosecuting the case, violated the Constitution. But Cannon specifically did not comment on the validity of the charges Trump was facing, or whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper.

In a 93-page ruling Monday, Cannon said Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. Cannon said that Smith’s position as special counsel “effectively usurps” Congress’ “important legislative authority,” because Congress should have the authority – not the head of the Justice Department – to appoint such an official.

Cannon also said that Smith’s office was being funded improperly.

But Cannon also specifically noted that she was not deciding any “other legal rights or claims” brought by Trump or his co-defendants in the case.

The judge also said that the Justice Department could potentially revive the case by funding the special counsel through different means. Prosecutors from outside the special counsel’s office could also refile the charges.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Trump on the impact of immigration on Medicare and Social Security

During his Republican National Convention speech, former President Donald Trump again said that Democrats are harming Social Security and Medicare by letting migrants into the US.

“Democrats are going to destroy Social Security and Medicare because all of these people by the millions are coming in – they’re going to be on Social Security and Medicare and other things, and you’re not able to afford it. They are destroying your Social Security and your Medicare,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true, particularly in the near term, multiple experts say. Many undocumented immigrants work, which means they pay much-needed payroll taxes, and this bolsters the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and extends their solvency. Immigrants who are working legally typically won’t collect benefits for many years. As for those who are undocumented, some are working under fake Social Security numbers, so they are paying payroll taxes but don’t qualify to collect benefits.

The Social Security Administration looked at the effects of unauthorized immigration on the Social Security trust funds. It found that in 2010, earnings by unauthorized workers contributed roughly $12 billion on net to the entitlement program’s cash flow. The agency has not updated the analysis since, but this year’s Social Security trustees report noted that increasing average annual total net immigration by 100,000 persons improves the entitlement program’s solvency.

“We estimate that future years will experience a continuation of this positive impact on the trust funds,” said the report on unauthorized immigration.

Meanwhile, unauthorized immigrants contributed more than $35 billion on net to Medicare’s trust fund between 2000 and 2011, extending the life of the trust fund by a year, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“Immigrants tend to be younger and employed, which increases the number of workers paying into the system,” said Gary Engelhardt, a Syracuse University economics professor. “Also, they have more children, which helps boost the future workforce that will pay payroll taxes.”

“Immigrants are good for Social Security,” he said.

However, undocumented immigrants who gain legal status that includes eligibility for future Social Security and Medicare benefits could ultimately be a drain to the system, according to Jason Richwine, a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration.

“Illegal immigration unambiguously benefits the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but amnesty (legalization) would reverse those gains and add extra costs,” Richwine wrote in a report last year.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Former President Donald Trump claimed that he struck a trade deal with China, requiring the country to purchase $50 billion worth of American products. “They buy $50 billion worth,” he said at the Republican National Convention Thursday.

Facts First: The claim that China bought $50 billion worth of American product as a result of a trade deal is false.

Trump is referring to what is known as the Phase One deal he struck with Beijing in December 2019.

While the deal required China to buy $50 billion worth of American agricultural products by the end of 2021 – Beijing did not live up to its commitment.

US agricultural exports to China recovered from the trade war but did not reach the levels in the Phase One commitments, according to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump described gas prices inaccurately during his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. He said that “gas prices are up 60%.”

Facts First: The average price of a regular gallon of gasoline nationwide is $3.51 as of Thursday, according to AAA. That’s up about 47% from the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated, when the average was $2.39, not 60% higher as Trump claimed.

Although the United States has a strategic gasoline reserve, which can be tapped by the White House to ease upward pressure on prices, as Biden did in May, gas prices are still mostly determined by market forces, such as global petroleum production and consumer demand, not solely by the decisions of a sitting US president.

From CNN’s Bryan Mena

Former President Donald Trump, while recounting a conversation he had with a waitress worried about the taxes on her tips, claimed that the government recently hired 88,000 IRS agents to audit individuals.

Facts First: This claim is false. 

The Inflation Reduction Act – which Congress passed in 2022 without any Republican votes – provided an about $80 billion, 10-year investment to the IRS. The agency plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS employees with that money – but only some will be IRS agents who conduct audits and investigations. Many people will be hired for non-agent roles, such as customer service representatives. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

The 88,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees – not solely enforcement agents – over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim that President Joe Biden wants to hike people’s taxes by four times.

“This is the only administration that said, ‘We’re gonna raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now,’” Trump said Thursday in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Facts First: This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024. 

Biden has not proposed quadrupling Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center think tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented budget proposals for fiscal 2024, found this: “His plan would raise average after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households, and lower after-tax incomes significantly for the highest-income taxpayers.”

The Tax Policy Center found that Biden’s proposal would, on average, have raised taxes by about $2,300 – but that’s about a 2.3% decline in after-tax income, not the massive reduction Trump is suggesting Biden wants. And critically, Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman noted to CNN in May that 95% of the tax hike would have been covered by the highest-income 5% of households.

The very biggest burden under the Biden plan would have been carried by the very richest households; the Tax Policy Center found that households in the top 0.1% would have seen their after-tax incomes decline by more than 20%. That’s “a lot,” Gleckman noted, but it’s still nowhere near the quadrupling Trump claims Biden is looking for. And again, even this increase would have been only for a tiny subset of the population. Biden has promised not to raise taxes by even a cent for anyone making under $400,000 per year.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump touted the “Right to Try” law he signed in 2018 in his convention speech Thursday, which gave terminally ill patients easier access to experimental medications that haven’t yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Before the measure was passed, Trump claimed, terminally ill patients in the United States would have to go to foreign countries to seek experimental treatments or go home to die if they couldn’t afford it.

“Sounds simple, but it’s not, and I got them to agree that somebody that needs it will –  instead of going to Asia or Europe or some place – or if you have no money, going home and dying,” he said.

Facts First: This is misleading. It is not true that terminally ill patients would simply have to go home and die without any access to experimental medications or would have to go to foreign countries seeking such treatments until Trump signed the Right to Try. Prior to the law, patients had to ask the federal government for permission to access experimental medications – but the government almost always said yes.

Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s FDA commissioner, told Congress in 2017 that the FDA had approved 99% of patient requests under its own “expanded access” program.

‘“Emergency requests for individual patients are usually granted immediately over the phone and non-emergency requests are generally processed within a few days,” Gottlieb testified.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Former President Donald claimed in his RNC speech on Wednesday evening that “Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off our coasts in Cuba. … The press refuses to write about it.”

Facts First: Trump’s present-tense claim that Russian warships and nuclear submarines “are” operating close to the United States is misleading. While Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June along with other Russian Navy vessels, all of the vessels – including the submarine – have since left.

A group of four Russian Navy vessels arrived in Cuba on June 12 as part of what Pentagon and State Department officials stressed is a routine activity and noted that Cuba has hosted Russian ships every year between 2013 and 2020. A Pentagon spokesperson, Maj. Charlie Dietz, said in June that “given Russia’s long history of Cuban port calls, these are considered routine naval visits, especially in the context of increased US support to Ukraine and NATO exercises.”

The vessels left Havana on June 17.

It is also not true that media organizations “don’t want to talk about it.” CNNalong with most other major news outlets, reported on the Russian ships’ positioning.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.

Trump said, “And we also left $85 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.”

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday, as many others at the RNC did, that while he was president the world was at peace.

“Our opponents inherited a world at peace and turned it into a planet of war,” he also claimed later in his speech.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about world peace under his presidency is false. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.   

US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2021.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday at the Republican National Convention that “in Venezuela, crime is down 72%” because foreign governments are sending their countries’ criminals to the US.

Facts First: Trump greatly overstated the Biden-era decline in crime in Venezuela, at least according to the limited statistics that are publicly available. 

And while it is certain that at least some criminals have joined law-abiding Venezuelans in a mass exodus from the country amid the economic crisis of the last decade, there is no proof Venezuela’s government has deliberately emptied prisons for migration purposes or intentionally sent ex-prisoners to the United States.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. … Terrorists are coming in at numbers we’ve never seen before.”

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that jails around the world are being emptied out so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants, nor for his claim that foreign governments are also emptying out mental health facilities for this purpose. Last year, Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower claim at the time that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.

Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN at the time they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.

Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.

In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – a 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart News about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents that Venezuela had done this. But that vague and unverified claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former President Donald Trump claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that “our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about a dramatic increase in the crime rate is false. Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.

Preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% national decline in overall reported violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in 2020. And preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and roughly 15% decline in overall reported violent crime.

There are limitations to the FBI-published data, which comes from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data, and the submitted data usually has some initial errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime. But these statistics and other data sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent nationally, though not everywhere.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said that if the final 2023 figures show a decline in murder of at least 10% from 2022, this would be the fastest US decline “ever recorded.” And he noted that both the preliminary FBI-published data from the first quarter of 2024 and also “crime data collected from several independent sources point to an even larger decline in property and violent crime, including a substantially larger drop in murder, so far this year compared to 2023, though there is still time left in the year for those trends to change.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

During his RNC speech, former President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration has done nothing to curb illegal immigration to the US.

“The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country—they are coming in from every corner of the earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East,” Trump said, “they’re coming at levels we’ve never seen before it is an invasion indeed and this administration does nothing to stop them.”

Facts First:  Trump’s claim that the Biden administration is doing “nothing” is incorrect. Illegal crossings at the US border dropped in June and the Biden administration has imposed significant restrictions on asylum along with other measures to curb illegal immigration. 
 
Arrests along the US southern border dropped 29% in June, according to new data released by US Customs and Border Protection, following the Biden administration’s order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings.“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy A. Miller previously said in a statement.

Last month, the Biden administration invoked an authority to shut off access to asylum for migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally, a significant attempt to address one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities. It was the administration’s most dramatic move on the US southern border, using the same authority former President Donald Trump tried to use in office.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand

Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that groceries are up 57% during the Biden administration.

Facts First: Trump’s claims of grocery prices being up 57% are false and could use some context.

Inflation’s rapid ascent, which began in early 2021, was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic such as snarled supply chains and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year high, and has slowed since (the Consumer Price Index was at 3% as of June 2024). However, it remains elevated from historical levels. Three-plus years of pervasive and prolonged inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, especially lower-income households trying to afford the necessities (food, shelter and transportation).

Food prices, specifically grocery prices, did outpace overall inflation for much of 2022 and 2023, driven higher by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Still, grocery prices didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual food and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Since Biden took office, the CPI “food at home” index is up 21%, which is higher than its 9% typical rise in recent history over a 54-month period, but it’s not 57%.

Through the 12 months that ended in June, overall food and grocery prices were up just 2.2% and 1.1%, respectively.

Certain food categories saw much greater inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. However, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a highly contagious, deadly avian flu. Food prices are highly volatile and can be influenced by a variety of factors, especially disease, extreme weather events, global supply and demand, geopolitical events, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Former President Donald Trump claimed that the US was “energy independent” during his presidency but that this changed under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: This is misleading. “Energy independent” is a political phrase, not a literal phrase, that can be defined in various ways – and, under Biden, the US has continued to satisfy the same definitions it satisfied under Trump. US production of oil and gas have set records under Biden.

“Energy independent” doesn’t mean the US uses no foreign energy or that it is untethered from global energy markets; this wasn’t the case under Trump and still isn’t under Biden. Experts in energy policy tend to scoff at the term “energy independence,” with three experts telling CNN in 2022 that it is a “horrible term,” “ridiculous term” and “stupid term,” respectively.

But if the term is defined as the US exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, that has happened in every year under Biden after happening under Trump in 2020 for the first time in decades. (In fact, the US surplus in petroleum trade has grown under Biden as US crude oil production and exports have hit new highs) And if the term is defined as the US producing more energy than it consumes, that has also continued to happen under Biden after happening under Trump in 2019for the first time in decades.

You can read here about the various economic reasons the US has imported foreign energy under both Trump and Biden despite its so-called “energy independence.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale 

Former President Donald Trump once again claimed that he signed the largest tax cuts in history during his administration.

“We got credit for the war, and defeating ISIS, and so many things. The great economy, the biggest tax cuts ever, the biggest regulation cuts ever, the creation of Space Force, the rebuilding of our military. We did so much,” Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.

Facts First: This is false. Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

In a report released in June, the federal government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills have been bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product – in other words, how much federal revenue the bill cuts as a portion of the economy – over five years. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Obama’s 2012 tax cut extension were 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit, found in 2017 that the framework for the Trump tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby 

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that inflation did not exist during his presidency – drawing a contrast between his administration and that of President Joe Biden, whose early years in office were plagued by decades-high inflation.

“We had no inflation,” Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Facts First: Trump’s comment is false. Inflation was low, but not nothing.

The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose about 8% during Trump’s four years in office. In January 2021, his final partial month in office, it increased 1.4% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump repeats frequent claim about oil drilling and gas prices

As he has done repeatedly on the campaign trail, Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that under a new Trump administration, the United States would “drill, baby, drill, … by doing that, we will lead to a large-scale decline in prices.”

Facts First: Trump’s frequent campaign claim that the US can lower gas prices by producing more domestic oil is misleading.

Under President Joe Biden, US oil production has reached a new record this year, even surpassing output under Trump’s administration. The Energy Information Administration expects crude oil production to hit successive records this year and next, powered by an oil boom in the Permian Basin. As CNN has reported, the US currently produces more oil than any other country on the planet, at about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019.

Prices at the pump in the US are highly dependent on the global oil market and the US cannot be truly energy independent when it comes to gas prices, energy experts have told CNN. Oil is a global commodity; the global price of oil determines US gas prices and it’s simply impossible to separate that price from shifting global dynamics like Russia’s war on Ukraine or OPEC’s recent decisions to cut oil production.

“Whether we’re drill baby, drilling has more to do with what the price of crude oil is, how healthy is the economy,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, and a former George W. Bush White House official, told CNN recently. “These things are outside of a president’s direct control.” There’s also the fact that the US consumes a different kind of oil than it produces, McNally told CNN last year. McNally compared the light crude the US produces to champagne, and the heavy crude it imports to coffee. US oil refineries are specifically built to separate out the “heavy and gunky” crude we consume, McNally said.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen 

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Thursday that President Joe Biden “won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held” in Gaza.

“And now of course a second war in Gaza. President Biden won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held there by the Iranian regime,” Pompeo said.

Facts First: The claim that Biden “won’t even talk about” the American hostages in Gaza is false. Biden has spoken about the Americans held in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ invasion of Israel several times since October.

Recently on May 31, speaking about a proposed deal for Israel and Hamas, Biden said American hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal: “[W]e want them home.”

On October 25, Biden said his administration was working “around the clock together with our partners in the region to secure the release of hostages including American citizens … left behind.”

On November 26, he spoke extensively about the release of an Israeli American little girl who was held hostage and said he was pressing for more Americans to be released, adding, “we will not stop working until every hostage is returned to their loved ones.”

Most recently, at the NATO Summit in DC last week, Biden talked about hostages broadly, saying the US “has been working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, to bring the hostages home, to create a path for peace and stability in the Middle East.”

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Trump biographical video includes false and misleading claims

The Republican National Convention played a biographical video about former President Donald Trump before Trump began his own speech. The video included false and misleading claims.

The Trump tax cuts

The video featured a narrator making a claim that Trump himself frequently utters. The narrator said, “The Trump tax cuts: largest in America’s history.”

This is false. Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars. You can read a detailed fact check here.

Global conflict under Trump

The video’s narrator also delivered a version of another claim Trump has made repeatedly, saying Trump’s “strength and resolve” produced “a stable world at peace.”

This claim about world peace under Trump is false, too. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.

US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2021.

Americans’ incomes

While attacking President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, the video featured on-screen text that said, “U.S. incomes fall for third straight year,” attributing those words to a Wall Street Journal article in 2023. An image of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was shown on screen at the same time.

This combination of words and images is misleading. The video didn’t acknowledge that the first of the three straight years in which the Wall Street Journal article reported that inflation-adjusted median household income went down was 2020, when Trump was president(The Covid-19 pandemic played a major role in the decline.)

Real median household income fell from $78,250 in 2019 to $76,660 in 2020 (all under Trump), then edged down to $76,330 in 2021 (mostly under Biden) and fell more substantially to $74,580 in 2022 (all under Biden). Figures for 2023 and 2024-to-date are not available.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Eric Trump’s false claims about the economy and US global standing in 2016

Eric Trump told the crowd at the RNC Thursday that the “economy was struggling, jobs were scarce” and the US had poor standing on the global stage when his father was elected president in 2016.

Facts First: Eric Trump’s claims are false. When Donald Trump took office in 2017, he inherited a strong economy, including a robust labor market, and a nation that was viewed favorably on the global stage.

In 2016, the US added an average of nearly 194,000 jobs per month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In the two years before, those average gains were even higher: 226,000 in 2015 and nearly 250,000 in 2014.

Job gains remained above historical averages in 2017 through 2019, with 177,000 jobs added on average per month.

Eric Trump’s claims that jobs were scarce in 2016 were not accurate. In fact, the US labor market experienced its longest expansion on record starting in 2010 and continuing until March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic crippled global economies, including that of the US.

In addition to inheriting a labor market in good shape, the economy was growing when Trump took office. Real gross domestic product – the widest measure of economic activity – typically grows between 2% and 3%, and it averaged 2.4% between 2014-2016 and then nearly 2.7% during the first three years of Trump’s presidency, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Also, the US was well regarded internationally when Barack Obama left office, and those sentiments plunged at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, according to the spring 2017 Global Attitudes Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that the US-Mexico border was “closed” during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Facts First: Pompeo’s claim is false.

While Trump tightened the border during his tenure, illegal crossings into the US from Mexico still numbered in the tens of thousands each month leading up to when he left office. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration limited non-essential travel on the US-Mexico border and prohibited migrants from crossing it in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus. President Joe Biden later extended the restrictions.

The former president’s biggest effort to “close” the border was met with resistance by federal courts, and the Supreme Court later gave Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy.

From CNN’s Devan Cole

For the fourth straight night, the Republican National Convention played a video in which former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to use “every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats,” including voting by mail. Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting during the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it during the current campaign

But Trump’s comments in the convention video also included some of his regular false claims about elections. After claiming he would “once and for all secure our elections” as president, Trump again insinuated the 2020 election was not secure, saying, “We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.” And he said, “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are nonsense – slightly vaguer versions of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was highly secure; Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232; there is no evidence of voter fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state; and there is no basis for claiming that election cheating is the only thing at which Trump’s opponents excel.

The Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post-election November 2020 statement: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

 From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday evening that under former President Donald Trump’s administration, “not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across” the US.

“We’d begun on an honorable exit from Afghanistan, and not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across the United States of America,” Pompeo said.

Facts First: The claim that there were no spy balloons under Trump is false.

Three suspected Chinese spy balloons transited over the continental US during the Trump administration, but they were not discovered until after President Joe Biden took office. Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in 2023 that a “domain awareness gap” allowed the balloons to travel undetected.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Linda McMahon, who served in the Trump administration as the Small Business Administrator, suggested at the Republican National Convention Thursday that China paid the tariffs that the former president put on roughly $300 billion of Chinese-made goods. “Instead of taxing American companies, Donald Trump put tariffs on China that raised billions of dollars and protected American industries,” she said.

Facts First: This characterization of Trump’s tariffs is misleading.

It’s true that Trump’s tariffs on China raised billions of dollars for the US government, but the duties were paid by US companies – not China.

Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission (USITC), has found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.

Once an importing company pays the tariff, it can decide to eat the cost or pass all or some of it to the buyer of its goods – whether that’s a retailer or a consumer.

Many economists agree that tariffs act as a tax on American consumers.

“A tariff is just a form of a tax,” Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN earlier this year.

Tariffs can benefit some companies by raising the prices of competing foreign-made goods, but the duties can hurt other companies by raising component parts they need to manufacture.

For example, Trump’s tariffs were imposed, in part, to boost the US manufacturing sector – but that industry lost jobs.

Federal Reserve economists found a net decrease in manufacturing employment due to the tariffs in 2019. That’s mostly because goods became more expensive to US consumers. Plus, retaliatory tariffs put on American-made goods made other US manufacturers less competitive when selling abroad.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

RNC video featuring Reagan’s voice misleadingly twists magazine article

A video played on the final night of the Republican National Convention tried to attack President Joe Biden by featuring quotes from then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s famous rhetorical questions about the President Jimmy Carter era at a presidential debate against Carter in 1980.

At one point, the video featured Reagan’s voice asking if, compared to four years ago, “Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?” On-screen text answered the question with the words “allies no longer trust the United States,” attributing them to a September 2021 article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Facts First: This quote is misleading. The article in Foreign Affairs didn’t actually declare that allies no longer trust the United States. Rather, the article noted that “critics of President Joe Biden” make the “claim” that allies no longer trust the US after Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – but the article then went on to argue that “these concerns about credibility are overblown.”

The convention video also featured Reagan’s voice asking, “Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?” But if you go back precisely four years from the most recent unemployment rate, the answer is: less unemployment. The current unemployment rate is 4.1% for June 2024; four years prior, in June 2020, the unemployment rate was 11.0% amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is a reasonable basis for this part of the video, though, if you interpret “four years ago” more broadly to refer to any time in 2020. Before the pandemic, in the first two months of 2020, the unemployment rates were 3.6% and 3.5%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale 



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Trump’s RNC speech solidifies commitment to avoiding a repeat of the past

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Analysis of Trump’s RNC Speech and Plans for Contesting Election Results

In a recent speech at the Republican National Convention, former President Donald Trump once again showcased his penchant for exaggeration and falsehoods. Despite his claims of unity, Trump’s speech was filled with delusional statements and lies about his supposed accomplishments while in office. His insistence on perpetuating lies and misinformation poses a serious threat to the democratic process in the United States.

One particularly alarming statement made by Trump during his speech was his vow to never let the election result of 2020 happen again. This declaration, coupled with his repeated claims of voter fraud without evidence, highlights his willingness to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. By spreading baseless conspiracy theories and sowing doubt in the election system, Trump is actively eroding trust in democracy and setting a dangerous precedent for future elections.

Trump’s narcissistic tendencies and constant stream of lies not only serve to bolster his own ego but also pose a significant threat to the foundation of democracy. His refusal to accept defeat, his relentless attacks on the legitimacy of the electoral process, and his willingness to manipulate laws and institutions for personal gain all contribute to a toxic environment where truth and accountability are sacrificed for political expediency. It is imperative that the American public remains vigilant against such tactics and works to uphold the principles of democracy in the face of such blatant disregard for the truth. [Source: [Salon](https://www.salon.com/2024/07/19/were-never-gonna-let-that-happen-again-rnc-speech-confirms-plans-for-a-big-lie-20/)]

Republicans Can’t Stop Lying About Voter Fraud

It’s difficult for Americans who grew up on sunny images of Ronald Reagan to grasp the depth of the contemporary Republican Party’s antipathy toward democracy. The most convincing evidence, of course, is the elevation of Donald Trump. Parties committed to republican government do not nominate criminals, demagogues or coup-plotters — Trump is emphatically all three — to leadership.

But arguably the most pervasive evidence of the GOP assault on democracy remains the party’s multi-front war on the franchise. The House of Representatives passed a bill last week that makes noncitizen voting illegal and requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. Since noncitizen voting is already illegal, and the Senate is well aware of that fact, the legislation will not go far. It’s what’s known as a messaging bill. The message: Do not trust democracy.



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Trump’s Deceptive Claims in His Republican National Convention Address – Firstpost

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Fact-checking Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention

The Republican National Convention came to a close with former President Donald Trump delivering a lengthy acceptance speech filled with false claims. From inflation rates to tax cuts, Trump made several misleading statements that were fact-checked and found to be inaccurate. Despite the evidence, Trump continued to perpetuate lies about the economy, taxes, immigration, and even the 2020 election results.

His constant dissemination of false information poses a threat to democracy as it undermines the trust in the electoral process and the government. By spreading lies and misinformation, Trump is eroding the foundation of a democratic society where truth and transparency are essential for a functioning government. Source: [Firstpost](https://www.firstpost.com/world/trump-accepts-gop-nomination-for-president-on-final-day-of-rnc-13794585.html)

Disappointing to read Trump’s lies knowingly regurgitated.

Just when readers of Armstrong Williams’ column can almost be convinced that he knows what he’s talking about, he throws in a clunker like “How Trump can secure swing voters and win the 2024 election” (July 14).

Not only does Williams toss around fictitious “facts” (“The GOP has long treasured the environment.” Really? Since when?), but he also repeats lies promulgated by Trump, such as how “tens of thousands of terrorists and drug traffickers who are illegally crossing our borders to kill and rape citizens and create mayhem” (Some certainly, but nowhere near “tens of thousands”).

He also advocates that Trump promise things that no one can legitimately claim possible (“a moonshot to stop global warming through cold fusion that will not diminish the economic riches of his core supporters”). He also recommends that the greatest liar of modern politics lie even more by promising “limitless jobs, upward social mobility, domestic harmony and fraternity and an end to politics of personal destruction.”

Ha! Expecting this from the country’s worst initiator of the “politics of personal destruction.”

Who does Williams think he’s kidding? I realize that criticizing Trump and his supporters the day after a lunatic attempted to kill him isn’t too smart, but letting these absurd claims slide by without an editor picking them apart isn’t smart either.

— Harris Factor, Columbia

Add your voice: Respond to this piece or other Sun content by submitting your own letter.



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Disheartening to see Trump’s deliberate lies repeated.

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Armstrong Williams’ Column Misfires: Critiquing “How Trump can secure swing voters and win the 2024 election”

In a recent column by Armstrong Williams, the author makes bold claims about how Donald Trump can secure swing voters and win the 2024 election. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Williams is simply regurgitating lies and misinformation spread by Trump himself. From exaggerated numbers about terrorists and drug traffickers crossing the border to unrealistic promises of stopping global warming through cold fusion, Williams’ suggestions are not only unrealistic but also dangerous.

One of the most concerning aspects of Williams’ column is his recommendation for Trump to promise “limitless jobs, upward social mobility, domestic harmony and fraternity, and an end to politics of personal destruction.” These promises not only lack any basis in reality but also highlight the narcissistic tendencies of Trump and his supporters. By perpetuating these lies and false promises, Trump is not only deceiving the American public but also undermining the very foundations of democracy.

It is crucial for the media and the public to hold individuals like Trump and his enablers accountable for their lies and misinformation. The spread of falsehoods and the manipulation of facts for personal gain pose a significant threat to democracy and the integrity of our political system. It is imperative that we continue to challenge and debunk these lies in order to protect the truth and uphold the principles of a free and fair society. (Source: Baltimore Sun)

Opinion | The escalating problem with Biden’s campaign isn’t age. It’s honesty.

MILWAUKEE — The Republicans gathered here are walking on air, as you would expect given the extraordinary events of the past month, which include their nominee, former president Donald Trump, surviving a close call with an assassin’s bullet.

Meanwhile, their opponents, the Democrats, continue to break the first law of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. President Biden’s stumbling performance in the June 27 debate with Trump spectacularly reinforced the top voter concern about him — his age, 81, and fitness for another term.

Yet members of Team Biden have responded by calling in a backhoe. From the president on down, they insist he’s in it to win it. The numerous Democrats who say otherwise are being politely told to stick with the program, except when they’re being rudely told to “cut that crap out,” as Biden reportedly barked at Rep. Jason Crow (Colo.) during a recent Zoom meeting.

The damage to Democratic prospects is not just a matter of the president’s repeated memory lapses and confusion; his weakened speaking voice; and his flashes of inappropriate anger such as the one Crow experienced.

Much worse is the harm to the Democrats’ brand as the party of facts, truth and science.

Republicans were supposed to be the party of Big Lies, the biggest being that Biden stole the 2020 election. Yet accepting Biden’s insistence on running requires Democrats to believe, or pretend to believe, a falsehood: that he’s sharp, fit and ready to govern another four years.

This is not to suggest moral equivalency between gaslighting about Biden’s age-related deficiencies and Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which led to violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

Still, as whoppers go, “there is no reason to worry about Biden” is a good-size one, as confirmed by both basic medical knowledge regarding octogenarians and the evidence of ordinary people’s senses.

Above all, Biden’s continued candidacy implicitly discredits the main Democratic campaign theme: Democracy itself is on the line in 2024. Dire warnings about what will happen if Trump regains the White House can’t be both (a) valid and (b) consistent with knowingly running a flawed opponent against him.

There was plenty of time for Democrats to start organizing alternatives after their surprisingly good showing in the 2022 midterms. They neglected to do so, probably because of inertia, combined with an expectation that the GOP would not be able to bounce back from 2022, either under Trump or some other standard-bearer such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. They assumed, wrongly, that criminal and civil cases would weaken Trump.

Now, a few family and staff enablers are reportedly reinforcing the president’s instincts, which are those of a career politician loath to surrender the ultimate prize.

Biden has taken to speaking of himself this way: “Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me! Tell me who the hell that is!” he reportedly said on that Zoom call with Crow and other moderate Democratic House members.

They are trying to preempt the Dump Biden efforts, most recently by announcing his nomination could soon become a fait accompli, through a virtual vote of convention delegates before they assemble in person in Chicago on Aug. 19.

The loyalists might truly believe they are doing the right thing. It would be messy to replace Biden at this late date; a successor would not necessarily be more successful against Trump.

As optimists contend, Biden’s standing in national polls did not crater after June 27. He could win, despite everything, just as Democratic House and Senate candidates blew up the conventional wisdom about a “red wave” by winning in 2022.

But happy talk about Biden’s polls — some coming from Biden himself — overlooks the facts that major swings are rare in a deeply polarized electorate and that several post-debate polls showed downward ticks in his support.

Team Biden called for last month’s debate hoping that it would deliver his campaign a positive jolt; thus, bragging that it didn’t hurt, that much, is basically just spin. He continues to trail, as he has for most of the past year, in battleground states that will decide the electoral college outcome.

That data point comes both from published polls and from internal poll results newly leaked as part of a pressure campaign being waged by Democrats who want Biden out. Alas, indirect, back-channel tactics are no substitute for a united, forthright intervention. More party heavyweights would have to do what Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) did on Wednesday: cease hinting and openly call for Biden to quit the race.

Again, if the Dump Biden movement fails and Biden wins anyway, the Democrats who called for a different candidate can cheerfully feast on crow at a post-inauguration banquet. If Biden does stay, though, and Trump defeats him, history could be unkind indeed to the insiders who have not only reinforced Biden’s stubbornness since June 27 but also spent so much effort suppressing honest discussion before that. Along with this president’s legacy, they should be thinking of their own.



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Trump abandons unity in favor of ‘incredibly dishonest acceptance speech’

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Analysis of Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech at the RNC: Unity, Lies, and Endurance

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump once again resorted to his usual tactics of spreading lies and misinformation. Despite starting off with a promise of unity, Trump quickly veered off course, making false claims about the 2020 election and attacking his political opponents.

The speech, which lasted a record-breaking 1 hour and 32 minutes, was filled with at least 22 false claims, according to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale. Trump’s narcissistic need to perpetuate lies and sow division poses a serious threat to the democratic process, as his supporters continue to believe and spread his falsehoods without question (source citation: https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/media/2024/07/13/trump-shooting-news/74396220007/).

5 Key Points from President Trump’s RNC Address

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Analysis of Trump’s Speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention

The Republican National Convention celebrated former President Donald Trump as a hero who survived an assassination attempt and is ready to work for everyday Americans after a sweeping victory in November. However, the portrayal of unity sought to erase the chaos and division that marked his presidency, with Democrats highlighting his use of inflammatory rhetoric and lies. Despite Trump’s promises to serve all of America and heal division, his speech quickly turned towards demonizing Democrats and claiming he alone can save democracy, showcasing his narcissistic tendencies.

Trump’s attempt to humanize his image by recounting the assassination attempt and portraying himself as a compassionate leader was met with skepticism, as he continued to use divisive language and false accusations against his political opponents. His lack of specific details on his plans for a second term, along with his focus on attacking Democrats rather than offering solutions, raised concerns about his commitment to governing for all Americans. Trump’s narcissistic lying, which includes false claims about the 2020 election and attacks on democratic institutions, poses a threat to democracy by eroding trust in the electoral process and sowing division among the American people (source: PBS).

Donald Trump fact-check: 2024 RNC speech in Milwaukee full of falsehoods about immigrants, economy

MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump closed the Republican National Convention by accepting the presidential nomination and offering a speech that began somber and turned combative.

First, he recounted surviving an assassination attempt five days earlier in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“You’ll never hear it from me again a second time because it’s too painful to tell,” Trump told a hushed audience. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”

When Trump said, “I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” the audience chanted, “Yes you are. Yes you are.” Onstage, Trump  kissed the firefighter’s uniform of Corey Comperatore, Trump’s would-be assassin killed.

After about 20 minutes, Trump’s speech shifted. He countered Democrats’ claims that he endangers democracy, praised the federal judge who dismissed the classified documents case against him and called the legal charges “partisan witch hunts.” 

Though he criticized the policies of his opponent, President Joe Biden, Trump said he’d avoid naming him. 

Trump occasionally offered conciliatory notes, but more often repeated questionable assertions we’ve repeatedly fact-checked. Here are some.

Immigration 

Immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.” 

False.

When Trump said earlier this year that Biden is letting in “millions” of immigrants from jails and mental institutions we rated it Pants on Fire. Immigration officials arrested about 103,700 noncitizens with criminal convictions (whether in the U.S. or abroad) from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry.

Not everyone was let in. The term “noncitizens” includes people who may have legal immigration status in the U.S., but are not U.S. citizens.

The data reflects the people that the federal government knows about but it’s inexhaustive. Immigration experts said despite those data limitations, there is no evidence to support Trump’s statement. Many people in Latin American countries face barriers to mental health treatment, so if patients are coming to the U.S., they are probably coming from their homes, not psychiatric hospitals.

“Caracas, Venezuela, really dangerous place, but not anymore. Because in Venezuela, crime is down 72%”

False.

Although Venezuelan government data is unreliable, some data from independent organizations shows that violent deaths have recently decreased, but not by 72%. From 2022 to 2023, violent deaths dropped by 25%, according to the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. 

Criminologists attribute this decline to Venezuela’s poor economy and the government’s extrajudicial killings. They said there is no evidence that Venezuela’s government is emptying its prisons and sending criminals to the United States. 

“Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings under my leadership, the numbers were absolutely amazing.”

As he recounted the story of his attempted assassination, Trump mentioned a chart of illegal border crossings from fiscal year 2012 to 2024. We fact-checked the false and misleading annotations on the chart.

For example, a red arrow on the chart claims to show when “Trump leaves office. Lowest illegal immigration in recorded history.” But the arrow points to a decline in immigration encounters at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when migration overall significantly dropped as nations imposed lockdowns. Trump left office nine months later, when illegal immigration encounters were on the rise.

Later in the RNC speech, Trump said “under my presidency, we had the most secure border.”

That’s Mostly False. Illegal immigration during Trump’s administration was higher than it was during both of former President Barack Obama’s terms.

Illegal immigration between ports of entry at the U.S. southern border dropped in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, compared with previous years. But illegal immigration began to rise after that. It dropped again when the COVID-19 pandemic started and immigration decreased drastically worldwide.

In the months before Trump left office, as some pandemic travel restrictions eased, illegal immigration was rising again. A spike in migrants, especially unaccompanied minors, started in spring 2020 during the Trump administration and generally continued to climb each month.

It’s difficult to compare pre-COVID-19 data with data since, because of changes in data reporting. But, accounting for challenges in data comparisons, a PolitiFact review found an increase of 300% in illegal immigration from Trump’s first full month in office, February 2017, to his last full month, December 2020.

The jobs that are created under Biden, “107% of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”

Mostly False.

This Republican talking point paints the Biden years as being better for foreign-born workers than native-born Americans. But it is wrong.

Since Biden took office in early 2021, the number of foreign-born Americans who are employed has risen by about 5.6 million. But over the same period, the number of native-born Americans employed has increased by almost 7.4 million.

The unemployment rate for native-born workers under Biden is comparable to what it was during the final two prepandemic years of Trump’s presidency.

Assassination attempt 

Trump: “There’s an interesting statistic, the ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body.”

Mostly True. 

Trump said that in reference to the injury he sustained to the top of his right ear during the assassination attempt at his July 13 rally. 

Although the ears do bleed heavily, PolitiFact could not identify statistical evidence that they are the “bloodiest part” of the body.

The ear gets most of its blood from a branch of the external carotid artery. An injury to an artery is prone to heavier bleeding, according to a study published in the European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery

But other parts of the upper body might bleed more from an external injury, doctors said.

“The scalp is perhaps the most ‘bloody’ part of the body if injured or cut,” Céline Gounder, a physician, senior fellow at KFF and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, told PolitiFact in an email. “But, in general, the head/neck is the ‘bloodiest’ part of the body. The ear is part of that.” 

“​​An injury similar to what Trump sustained to the ear would bleed less if inflicted on a part of the body below the neck,” Gounder added.

Economy 

During my presidency, we had “the best economy in the history of our country, in the history of the world … We had no inflation, soaring incomes.” 

False.

One of the strongest ways to assess the economy is the unemployment rate, which fell during Trump’s presidency to levels untouched in five decades. But his successor, Joe Biden, matched or exceeded those levels.

Another measure, the annual increases in gross domestic product, were broadly similar under Trump to what they were during the final six years under his predecessor, Barack Obama. And GDP growth under Trump was well below that of previous presidents.

Wage growth increased under Trump, but to say they soared is an exaggeration. Adjusted for inflation, wages began rising during the Obama years and kept increasing under Trump. But these were modest compared with the 2% a year increase seen in the 1960s. 

Another metric — the growth rate in personal consumption per person, adjusted for inflation — wasn’t higher under Trump than previous presidents. For many families, this statistic serves an economic activity bottom line, determining how much they can spend on food, clothing, housing, health care and travel. 

In Trump’s three years in office through January 2020, real consumption per person grew by 2% a year. Of the 30 nonoverlapping three-year periods from 1929 to the end of his presidency, Trump’s periods ranked in the bottom third.

As for inflation being zero, that’s also wrong. It was low, ranging from 1.8% to 2.4% increases year over year in 2017, 2018 and 2019. This is roughly the range the Federal Reserve likes to see. During the coronavirus pandemic-dominated year of 2020, inflation fell to 1.2%, because demand plummeted as entertainment and travel collapsed.

Crime

“Our crime rate is going up.” 

Mostly False

He’s wrong on violent crimes, but has a point for some property crimes.

Federal data shows the overall number of violent crimes, including homicide, has declined during Joe Biden’s presidency. Property crimes have risen, mostly because of motor vehicle thefts.

The FBI data shows the overall violent crime rate — which includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault per 100,000 population — fell by 1.6% from  2021 to 2022, the most recent year with full-year FBI data. 

Private-sector analyses show continued crime declines. For instance, the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, samples reports from law enforcement agencies in several dozen cities to gauge crime data more quickly than the FBI. The council’s data shows the declining violent crime trends continued into 2023.

Property crime has increased under Biden, although three of the four main categories the FBI tracks — larceny, burglary and arson — were at or below their prepandemic level by 2022. The main exception has been motor vehicle theft, which rose 4% from 2020 to 2021 and 10.4% from 2021 to 2022.

Taxes, Social Security and Medicare 

The Biden administration is “the only administration that said we’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now.” 

False.

Biden is proposing a tax increase of roughly 7% over the next decade, not 300%, as Trump claims.

About 83% of the proposed Biden tax increase would be borne by the top 1% of taxpayers, a level that starts at just under $1 million a year in income.

Taxpayers earning up to $60,400 would see their yearly taxes decline on average, and taxpayers between $60,400 and $107,300 would see an annual increase of $20 on average.

The IRS hired “88,000 agents” to go after Americans. 

Mostly False. 

The figure, which has been cited as 87,000 in past statements, is related to hires the IRS approved in 2022 that included IT and taxpayer services, not just enforcement staff. Many of those hires would go toward holding staff numbers steady in the face of a history of budget cuts at the IRS and a wave of projected retirements. 

The U.S. Treasury Department previously said that people and small businesses who make under $400,000 per year would see no change, while audits of corporations and high net-worth individuals would rise. House Republicans passed a bill in 2023 to rescind the funding for the hires. Passage by the  Democratic Senate majority is unlikely. President Joe Biden has vowed to veto the bill were it to make it to his desk. 

“Democrats are going to destroy Social Security and Medicare, because all of these people, by the millions, they’re coming in. They’re going to be on Social Security and Medicare and other things, and you’re not able to afford it. They are destroying your Social Security and your Medicare.”

False

Most immigrants in the U.S. illegally are ineligible for Social Security. Some people who entered the U.S. illegally and were granted humanitarian parole — a temporary permission to stay in the country — for more than one year, may be eligible for Social Security for up to seven years, the Congressional Research Service said. 

Immigrants in the U.S. illegally also are generally ineligible to enroll in federally funded health care coverage such as Medicare and Medicaid. (Some states provide Medicaid coverage under state-funded programs regardless of immigration status. Immigrants are eligible for emergency Medicaid regardless of status.)

It’s also wrong to say that immigration will destroy Social Security. The program’s fiscal challenges stem from a shortage of workers compared with beneficiaries. Immigrants who are legally qualified can receive Social Security retirement benefits only after they’ve worked and paid Social Security taxes for 10 years. So, for at least 10 years, these immigrants will be paying into the system before they draw any benefits.

Immigration is far from a fiscal fix-all for Social Security’s challenges. But having more immigrants in the United States would increase the worker-to-beneficiary ratio, potentially for decades, thus extending the program’s solvency, economic experts say.

Electric vehicles 

Trump: “They spent $9 billion on eight chargers.”

False.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion to electric vehicle charging. Trump exaggerated the program and charger costs.

The Federal Highway Administration told PolitiFact that as of this April, the infrastructure funding has created seven open charging stations with 29 spots for electric vehicles to charge. They were installed across five states — Hawaii, Maine, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania — the administration said in a statement.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a May CBS interview that the Biden administration’s goal is to install 500,000 EV chargers by 2030. 

“And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that’s the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come,” Buttigieg said.

The cost for equipment and installation of high-speed EV chargers can range from $58,000 to $150,000 per charger, depending on wattage and other factors.

The federally funded EV charging program  started slowly. The Energy Department said initial state plans were approved in September 2022. Since April, federally funded charging stations have opened in Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont.

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on Day 1.”

False.

There is no electric vehicle mandate to begin with.

The Biden administration has set a goal — not a mandate — to have electric vehicles comprise half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.

Later in his speech, Trump said: “I am all for electric …But if somebody wants to buy a gas-powered car… or a hybrid, they are going to be able to do it. And we’re going to make that change on day one. ” The Biden administration has introduced new regulations on gas-powered cars but those policies do not ban gas-powered cars. They can continue to be sold, even after 2030.

Energy

“Under the Trump administration, just three and a half years ago, we were energy independent.” 

Half True.

There are various definitions of “energy independence,” but during Trump’s presidency, the U.S. became a net energy exporter and began producing more energy than it consumed. Both milestones hadn’t been achieved in decades.

However, that achievement built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewable energies. The U.S. also did not achieve net exporter status for crude oil, which produces the type of energy that voters hold politicians most accountable for: gasoline.

Even during a period of greater energy independence, the U.S. energy supply is still sensitive to global developments, experts told PolitiFact in 2023. Because many U.S. refineries are unable to process the type of crude oil produced in the U.S., they need to import a different type of oil from overseas to serve the domestic market. 

Election fraud claims 

“They used COVID to cheat.”

Pants on Fire!

During the pandemic, multiple states altered rules to ease mail-in voting for people concerned about contracting COVID-19 at indoor polling places. Changes included mailing ballots to all registered voters, removing excuse requirements to vote by mail and increasing the number of ballot drop boxes. State officials used legal methods to enact these changes, and the new rules applied to all voters, regardless of party affiliation. 

The 2020 election was certified by every state and confirmed by more than 60 court cases nationwide. 

Government 

During his presidency, we had “the biggest regulation cuts ever.” 

We tracked Trump’s progress on his campaign promise to “enact a temporary ban on new regulations” and rated that a Compromise.

Near the end of Trump’s presidency, an expert told us that overall the amount of federal regulations was roughly unchanged since Trump took office.

Foreign policy 

Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel “would have never happened if I were president.”

This is unsubstantiated and ignores the complexities of global conflict. There’s no way to assess whether Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in February 2022 if Trump were still president, or if Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel in October 2023.

Experts told PolitiFact that there’s a limit to how much influence U.S. presidents have over whether a foreign conflict erupts into war. “American presidents have scant control over foreign decisions about war and peace unless they show their willingness to commit American power,” said Richard Betts, a Columbia University professor emeritus of war and peace studies and of international and public affairs.

During the Trump administration, there were no new major overseas wars or invasions. But during his presidency, there were still conflicts within Israel and between Russia and Ukraine. For example, Russia was intervening militarily in the Ukraine’s Donbas region throughout Trump’s administration.

Trump also supported weakening NATO, reducing expectations among allies that the U.S. would intervene militarily if they were attacked.

Although there’s no way to know how the war in Israel would have played out, experts said the prospect of the Abraham Accords — the peace effort between Israel and Arab nations led by the Trump administration — likely helped drive Hamas’ attack.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the prospect of the Abraham Accords being embraced by countries such as Saudi Arabia was one of the main causes of the Oct. 7 attack,” Ambassador Martin Kimani, the executive director of NYU’s Center on International Cooperation said.

When the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, we “left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment.” 

False. 

This is an exaggeration. When the Taliban toppled Afghanistan’s civilian government in 2021, it inherited military hardware given to the government by the U.S. But it did not amount to $85 billion.

A 2022 independent inspector general report informed Congress that about $7 billion of U.S.-funded equipment remained in Afghanistan and in the Taliban’s hands. According to the report, “the U.S. military removed or destroyed nearly all major equipment used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan throughout the drawdown period in 2021.”

We rated a similar claim False in 2021.

When he was president, “Iran was broke.”

Half True

Iran’s foreign currency reserves fell from $128 billion in 2015 to $15 billion in 2019, a dramatic drop in absolute dollars. The decline is widely believed to be a consequence of the tightened U.S. sanctions under Trump, and while Iran’s foreign currency reserves have grown since then, it’s nowhere near pre-2019 levels.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis pegged Iran’s foreign currency reserves in 2024 around $36 billion.

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Ranjan Jindal, Mia Penner, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero, Maria Ramirez Uribe and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story. 

Our convention fact-checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew. 

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