Fact-checking the ABC News presidential debate
CNN
By CNN Staff
(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump delivered more than 30 false claims during Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, CNN’s preliminary count found – as he did during his June debate against President Joe Biden.
Trump again delivered a staggering quantity and variety of false claims, some of which were egregious lies about topics including abortion, immigration and the economy.
Harris was far more accurate than Trump; CNN’s preliminary count found just one false claim from the vice president, though she also added some claims that were misleading or lacking in key context.
Here is a fact check of some of the remarks made by each candidate.
Harris on Trump’s tariff plan
Former Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s policies would result in a “Trump sales tax” that would raise prices for middle class families by about $4,000 a year.
Facts First: The claim is reasonable enough, but it’s worth explaining that Harris is referring to Trump’s proposal to implement new tariffs if he returns to the White House.
Trump has called for adding a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports from all countries, as well as another tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports.
Together, a 20% across-the-board tariff with a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods would amount to about a $3,900 annual tax increase for a middle-income family, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund a liberal think tank.
If the 20% tariff was just 10%, as Trump sometimes suggests, the total impact for middle-class families could be $2,500 a year, according to CAP.
Separate studies estimate that the impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs would also raise prices for families, but by a lower amount. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated the new duties would cost the average middle-class household about $1,700 annually. And the Tax Policy Center said the impact could be $1,350 a year for middle-income households.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Trump on inflation during his presidency
Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that there was virtually no inflation during his administration.
“I had no inflation, virtually no inflation,” Trump said.
Facts First: This is false. Cumulative inflation over the course of Trump’s presidency was about 7.8%.
Inflation was low at the end of Trump’s term, having plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The year-over-year inflation rate was about 1.4% in January 2021, the month Trump left office.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby
Trump claims migrants are arriving to US from prisons and mental institutions
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a claim that migrants are arriving to the US after fleeing prisons and mental institutions.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump claimed.
Trump makes this claim often, and he’s often alleged that jails and mental institutions are being emptied out deliberately to somehow dump people upon the US.
Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim.
Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN last year 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.
And a second article that Cheung cited at the time, about Mexico’s president having freed 2,685 prisoners, was not about migration at all; that article simply explained that the president had freed them “as part of an effort to free those who have not committed serious crimes or were being held unjustly.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer
Trump on the number of undocumented immigrants under Biden
Former President Donald Trump claimed during Tuesday night’s debate that “21 million people” are crossing the border monthly into the United States under President Joe Biden.
Facts First: This number is false. The total number of “encounters” at the northern and southern borders from February 2021 through July 2024, at both legal ports of entry and in between those ports, was roughly 10 million, far less than Trump’s “21 million” figure.
An “encounter” does not mean a person was let into the country; some people encountered are promptly sent away. Even if you added the estimated number of “gotaways” (people who evaded the Border Patrol to enter illegally), which House Republicans have said is more than 1.7 million during the Biden-Harris administration, “the totals would still be vastly smaller than 15, 16 or 18 million,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email in June, when Trump made similar claims.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Harris on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling
Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Trump would “essentially be immune from any misconduct” undertaken by him while in the White House.
“Let’s talk about extreme and understand the context in which this election in 2024 is taking place. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” she said.
Facts First: This needs context. In their decision in July in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought in his federal election subversion case. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office.
“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority.
From CNN’s Devan Cole
Trump repeats false claim about migrants eating people’s pets
Former President Donald Trump repeated a false claim at Tuesday’s debate that has been promoted by numerous prominent Republicans in the past week, including Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. Trump claimed that Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, are stealing people’s pet dogs and cats and eating them.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Facts First: This is false. The City of Springfield and the local police have said they have seen no evidence for the claim – which appeared to originate from a Facebook post in which someone purporting to be a local resident passed along what they said was a story about their neighbor’s daughter’s friend.
In a statement to CNN on Monday, a spokesperson for the City of Springfield said “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
The Springfield News-Sun reported that “the Springfield Police Division said Monday morning they have received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.”
Vance acknowledged on social media on Tuesday that it is “possible” that the “rumors” he has heard from local residents “will turn out to be false,” though he also encouraged people to “keep the cat memes flowing.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Michael Williams
Trump on who pays for tariffs
Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday the United States took in billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs.
Facts First: Trump’s claim about how tariffs work is false. A US tariff is paid by importing businesses in the United States – not other countries – when a foreign-made good arrives at the American border.
Here’s how tariffs work: When the United States puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff usually comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer.
Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, have found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.
It’s true that the US Treasury has collected more than $242 billion from the tariffs Trump imposed on imported solar panels, steel and aluminum, and Chinese-made goods – but those duties were paid by US importers, not the country of China.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Harris on her stance on fracking
During Tuesday night’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I made it that very clear in 2020 – I will not ban fracking,” though she had said, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Facts First: This is misleading. Harris did not make her position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence; Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate.
Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president. Harris said in the 2020 vice presidential debate: “Joe Biden will not end fracking”; “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Tuesday, neither of these 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Ella Nilsen
Trump falsely claims US experienced highest inflation ever under Biden
Former President Donald Trump said the US experienced “the highest inflation” ever under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Facts First: Trump’s claim that inflation was at its highest under the Biden-Harris administration is false. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit 9.1% in June 2022. That wasn’t the highest ever recorded. Rather, it was the highest inflation rate in nearly forty years. For instance, in 1980, inflation hit nearly 15%, according to CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the earliest inflation data the BLS maintains indicates that inflation was even higher in 1917, when it was trending at nearly 18%.
From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald
Trump on Harris’ previous run for president
Former President Donald Trump claimed that when Vice President Kamala Harris previously ran for the presidency, during the 2020 election cycle, she was the very first candidate to drop out of a crowded Democratic primary.
“When she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed,” Trump claimed, referring to Harris’ 2020 bid, while arguing that Harris didn’t receive any votes this primary cycle because President Joe Biden was still at top of the ticket during the primaries.
Facts First: This is false. Harris was far from the first candidate to drop out of that Democratic primary when she exited the race in early December 2019
Harris was preceded by the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate, plus some others.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump on Harris’ border role
Former President Donald Trump claimed at Tuesday’s debate that Vice President Kamala Harris has been the Biden administration’s “border czar.”
“Remember that she was a border czar,” Trump said. “She doesn’t want to be called the border czar because she’s embarrassed by the border.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.
A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”
Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day). Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”
Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby
Trump claims legal scholars wanted states, not the federal government, to decide how to regulate abortion
Former President Donald Trump repeated a version of one of his frequent claims Tuesday night that legal scholars wanted Roe v. Wade overturned so individual states could instead decide how to regulate abortion.
“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened,” Trump said. “It’s the vote of the people, now it’s not tied up in the federal government.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Many legal scholars wanted the right to have an abortion preserved in federal law, as several told CNN when Trump made a similar claim in April.
Some legal scholars who support abortion rights had wanted Roe written in a different way, including even the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but that isn’t the same as saying that “every legal scholar” believed Roe should be overturned and sent to the states.
“Any claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,” Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, a legal scholar who supported the preservation of Roe, said in April.
“Donald Trump’s claim is flatly incorrect,” another legal scholar who did not want Roe overturned, Maya Manian, an American University law professor and faculty director of the university’s Health Law and Policy Program, said in April.
Trump’s claim is “obviously not” true, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on the history of the US abortion debate. Ziegler, who also did not want Roe overturned, said in an April interview: “Most legal scholars probably track most Americans, who didn’t want to overturn Roe … It wasn’t as if legal scholars were somehow outliers.”
You can read more here.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen
Trump blames Rep. Nancy Pelosi for poor security at the Capitol on Jan. 6
Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, was responsible for inadequate security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn’t do her job,” he said.
Facts First: This claim is false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. Pelosi’s office has explicitly said she was not presented with an offer of 10,000 National Guardsmen as Trump has claimed, telling CNN last year that claims to the contrary are “lies.” And even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority was delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).
You can read a complete fact check on it here.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump claims Harris met with Putin days before Russian invasion
Former President Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris met with Russian President Vladimir Putin days before Russia invaded Ukraine and failed to deter him from the invasion.
“They sent her to negotiate peace before this war started,” Trump said, referring to Harris. “Three days later, he went in, and he started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Harris was not sent to negotiate peace, and she has never met with Putin. In reality, she met with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Munich Security Conference in the days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was not at the conference.
“Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris,” a Kremlin spokesperson said in July, according to a state-owned Russian news agency.
The Biden administration was still trying to deter an invasion of Ukraine at the time of Harris’ 2022 trip to the conference in Germany, but top administration officials, including President Joe Biden himself, made clear that they believed Putin was already moving toward invading. As Harris was on her way to Germany, Biden told reporters that he thought a Russian attack “will happen in the next several days.”
CNN reported on the day the Munich conference began that a senior administration official said Harris had three key objectives: “Focus on the ‘fast-changing’ situation on the ground, maintain full alignment with partners and send a clear message to Russia that the US prefers diplomacy but is ready in case of Russian aggression.”
The Munich conference was held from February 18 to February 20, 2022; Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer
Trump repeats familiar claim about military equipment left in Afghanistan during withdrawal
In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump repeated a familiar claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when President Joe Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.
“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind,” Trump said.
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 fraction of this funding was for equipment.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Harris claims Trump left with worst unemployment since Great Depression
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday claimed that former President Donald Trump left office “with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”
Facts First: Harris’ claim is false.
In January 2021, when Trump left office, the official unemployment rate was 6.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.8% in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down global economies, including that of the US. That was the highest rate since 1939, according to BLS historical records.
Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. But by the time Trump left office, the unemployment rate had gone down.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Trump’s claim about jobs created under Biden administration
Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that 818,000 of the jobs created under the Biden-Harris administration from April 2023 to March 2024 were a “fraud.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false and needs additional context.
Trump was referring to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recently released preliminary estimate for its annual benchmark revision that suggested there were 818,000 fewer jobs for the year ended in March 2024 than were initially reported.
Economic data is often revised, especially as more comprehensive information becomes available, to provide a clearer, more accurate picture of the dynamics at play.
Every year – including the four years when Trump was president – the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a thorough review of the survey-based employment estimates from the monthly jobs report and reconciles those estimates with fuller employment counts measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.
This annual process, called a benchmarking, provides a near-complete employment count, because the BLS can correct for sampling and modeling errors from the surveys and re-anchor those estimates to unemployment insurance tax records. The revision process is two-fold: A preliminary estimate is released in mid-August, and the final revision is issued in February, alongside the January jobs report.
While the recently announced preliminary revision (which amounts to 0.5% of total employment) was the largest downward revision since 2009 (which was -902,000, or -0.7%), there have been other large revisions made in recent years – notably a downward revision of 514,000 jobs (-0.3%) for the year ended in March 2019, during the Trump administration.
The preliminary revision was larger than typical, but economists and even a Trump-appointed BLS commissioner have publicly stated that there is nothing nefarious at play. Revisions of this size typically happen at turning points in the economy, when the BLS’ methodology is less reliable, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Additionally, the pandemic had a seismic effect on the economy as well as the gold standard methods used to measure it, so this large revision is likely a reflection of that. Specifically, the BLS’ model for capturing business “births and deaths” is likely overstating new firm formation while underestimating deaths, Oxford Economics’ Chief US Economist Ryan Sweet told CNN.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Trump claims Biden took money from China, Ukraine
Former President Donald Trump claimed that President Joe Biden has taken money from China and Ukraine, including $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow.
Facts First: There is no public evidence that Joe Biden received money from any foreign entities while in office or as a private citizen. While investigations by House Republicans have found that Biden family members who have been involved in business, including his son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden (“and their related companies”), have received over $18 million from foreign entities, they have found no proof to date that the president himself received any foreign money.
Roughly a year after launching their impeachment inquiry into Biden and more than three years into Biden’s presidency, the closest House Republicans have gotten to connecting the president to money earned by his family members is in finding that the president received personal checks from his brother while he was a private citizen after his vice presidency. Republicans have questioned the legitimacy of these transactions and used them to suggest that Joe Biden did benefit from his brother’s relationships with foreign entities. But banking records provide substantial evidence that Joe Biden had made loans to his brother and then was paid back without interest, as House Democrats have said.
Biden said at a presidential debate against Trump in 2020: “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”
The Washington Post dove into the allegations in 2022 that Hunter Biden received money from the wife of the Moscow mayor. But there’s no evidence that Joe Biden had any involvement regardless.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jeremy Herb
Trump falsely claims Biden orchestrated criminal cases against him
Former President Donald Trump repeated a claim he has made on numerous occasions during his campaign – that the Biden administration orchestrated a criminal election subversion case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, a criminal fraud case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Manhattan, and a civil fraud case that was brought against him by the attorney general of New York state.
Facts First: This is false. There is no evidence that Biden or his administration were behind any of these cases. None of these officials reports to the president or even to the federal government.
Attorney General Merrick Garland testified to Congress in early June about the Manhattan case in which Trump was found guilty: “The Manhattan district attorney has jurisdiction over cases involving New York state law, completely independent of the Justice Department, which has jurisdiction over cases involving federal law. We do not control the Manhattan district attorney. The Manhattan district attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law.”
As he did in his conversation with Musk, Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg. But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s employment decision. Colangelo and Bragg were colleagues in the New York attorney general’s office before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Harris overstates the effect of the $50,000 start-up deduction she proposed
Vice President Kamala Harris implied Tuesday that all prospective start-up business owners will be able to take advantage of the $50,000 tax deduction she’s proposing for new small businesses, saying that it will help them “pursue their ambitions.”
“I have a plan to give startup businesses $50,000 tax deduction to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work,” Harris said.
Facts First: Harris’ point about new business owners being able to benefit from the deduction she’s proposed lacks context.
“Businesses that fail before they begin to turn a profit won’t be able to utilize the deduction, because to take a deduction you have to have taxable income to deduct against,” Erica York, a senior economist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN.
In other words, the tax deduction may not ultimately help businesses owners get off the ground and running initially. However, it may help lower their tax burden over time, but only if they turn a profit.
From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald
Trump claims Biden job growth was all ‘bounce-back jobs’
Former President Donald Trump said of the Biden-Harris administration, “the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs” that “bounced back and it went to their benefit,” but “I was the one that created them.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims that the job growth during the Biden-Harris administration presidency has been all “bounce-back” gains where people went back to their old jobs is not fully correct.
More than 21 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. Following substantial relief and recovery measures, the US started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million jobs from May 2020 through December 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The recovery continued after Biden took office, with the US reaching and surpassing its pre-pandemic (February 2020) employment totals in June 2022.
The job gains didn’t stop there. Since June 2022 and through August 2024, the US has added nearly 6.4 million more jobs in what’s become the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record. In total under the Biden-Harris administration, around 16 million jobs have been added.
But it’s not entirely fair nor accurate to say the jobs gained were all “bounce-back” or were people simply returning to their former positions.
The pandemic drastically reshaped the employment landscape. For one, a significant portion of the labor force did not return due to early retirements, deaths, long Covid or caregiving responsibilities.
Additionally, because of shifts in consumer spending patterns as well as health-and-safety implications, public-facing industries could not fully reopen or restaff immediately. Some of those workers found jobs in other industries or used the opportunity to start their own businesses.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Trump falsely says he rebuilt the US military
Former President Donald Trump repeated Tuesday past claims that he “rebuilt our entire military.”
“We’re going to end up in a third world war, and it will be a war like no other. Because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan,” he said.
Facts First: Trump’s claim to have rebuilt the entire military is false. “This claim is not even close to being true. The military has tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and the vast majority of it predates the Trump administration,” Todd Harrison, an expert on the defense budget and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told CNN in November.
Harrison said in a November email: “Moreover, the process of acquiring new equipment for the military is slow and takes many years. It’s not remotely possible to replace even half of the military’s inventory of equipment in one presidential term. I just ran the numbers for military aircraft, and about 88% of the aircraft in the U.S. military inventory today (including Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft) were built before Trump took office. In terms of fighters in particular, we still have F-16s and F- 15s in the Air Force that are over 40 years old.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump on US and European aid to Ukraine
Former President Donald Trump complained that the US had given $250 billion to $275 billion in aid to Ukraine while European countries had given just $100 billion to $150 billion even though they are located closer to Ukraine.
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. In total, European countries have contributed significantly more aid to Ukraine than the US has during and just before the Russian invasion began in early 2022, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany.
The Kiel Institute, which closely tracks aid to Ukraine, found that, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion in February 2022) through June 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $207 billion to Ukraine, in military, financial and humanitarian assistance, compared to about $109 billion (€98.4 billion) committed by the US. Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had actually been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $122 billion (€110.21 billion) for Europe compared to about $83 billion (€75.1 billion) for the US.
In addition, Europe had committed more total military aid to Ukraine, at about $88 billion (79.57 billion euro) to about $72 billion (64.87 billion euro) for the US. The US narrowly led on military aid that had actually been allocated, at about $56.91 billion for the US (51.58 billion euro) to about $56.84 billion for Europe (51.52 billion euro), but that was nowhere near the lopsided margin Trump suggested.
It’s important to note that it’s possible to come up with different totals using different methodology. And the Kiel Institute found that Ukraine itself was getting only about half of the money in a 2024 US bill that had widely been described as a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine; the institute said the rest of the funds were mostly going to the Defense Department.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump on crime statistics
Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that “crime in this country is through the roof.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that crime rates are up is false. And while it is true that the FBI’s most recent data did not include some large cities, crime counts still show a downward trend as both violent crime and property crime dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024.
There are limitations to the FBI-published data from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data and the submitted data usually has some errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime.
The preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% decline in murder and a roughly 6% decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in Trump’s last calendar year in office in 2020. The 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 violent crime.
Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said in an email to CNN last week: There is ample evidence that crime is falling in 2024 and murder specifically fell at the fastest – or one of the fastest – paces ever recorded in 2023 and again in 2024.”
Asher continued: “The evidence comes from a variety of sources including the FBI’s quarterly data, the CDC, the Gun Violence Archive, and our newly launched Real-Time Crime Index. We show a 5 percent decline in violent crime – including a 16 percent decline in murder – and a 9 percent decline in property crime through June 2024 in over 300 cities with available data so far this year. Data from these various sources suggest the US murder rate was down significantly in 2023 relative to 2020/2021 highs but still slightly above 2019’s level.”
After Trump claimed in June that “crime is so much up,” Anna Harvey, a political science professor and director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University, noted to CNN that the claim is contradicted both by the data from the FBI and from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents 70 large US police forces. She said: “It would be more accurate to say that crime is so much down.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump falsely claims Central Park Five pleaded guilty
Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Central Park Five pleaded guilty to crimes, and that the five teenagers “badly hurt a person, killed a person” in the 1989 attack.
Facts First: These claims are false. The Central Park Five did not plead guilty, they were convicted by a jury at trial (that conviction has since been vacated). Also, the five teenagers were accused of raping a jogger – not of murder.
Five teenagers who were accused of raping a jogger in 1989 were pressured into giving false confessions. They were exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence linked another person to the crime. The teenagers sued the city, and the case was settled in 2014.
A sixth teenager charged in the attack did plead guilty to robbery charges. His conviction was also overturned because there was no physical evidence connecting him to either the rape or the robbery, and because people who blamed the sixth teen later recanted.
From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz
Trump on ending the Nord Stream pipeline
Former President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that he “ended” the Nord Stream pipeline.
“I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Biden put it back on day one,” Trump said. “But he ended the XL pipeline – the XL pipeline in our country, he ended that. But he let the Russians build a pipeline going all over Europe and heading into Germany; the biggest pipeline in the world.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not “end” Nord Stream.
While he did sign a bill that included sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.
The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine in early 2022. The pipeline was damaged later that year in what has been described as a likely act of sabotage.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump falsely claims some states allow abortion after birth
Former President Donald Trump claimed that some states allow people to execute babies, in addition to allowing abortion in the ninth month, and he singled out the governors including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz for his stance on the issue.
On Walz, Trump said, “He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is OK. And that’s not OK with me.”
“They have abortion in the ninth month. They even have – and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia not the current governor he’s doing an excellent job. But the governor before, he said, ‘The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby,’ in other words, ‘We’ll execute the baby,’” Trump said.
Facts First: Trump’s claim about infanticide is false. No state allows for the execution of a baby after it is born.
That’s called infanticide, which is illegal in every state.
“Every state explicitly criminalizes infanticide,” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said in June.
“There is no basis for this claim,” Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers Law School, also said at the time.
There are some cases in which parents choose palliative care, a kind of care that can provide relief for the symptoms and stress of a deadly illness or condition that gives the baby just minutes, hours or days to live. That is not the same as executing a baby.
Trump also misspoke. It was not the governor of West Virginia, it was the former Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam who made a controversial remark in 2019 that many Republicans said sounded like he supported infanticide. Northam, who is a pediatric neurologist, said his words were being misinterpreted. In any case, infanticide was not legal when Northam was governor of Virginia nor was it ever legal in West Virginia either.
As for abortions in the ninth month, Minnesota is one of a handful of states that allow abortion at any stage of a pregnancy, but it doesn’t mean that doctors perform them. Nationally, just 0.9% of abortions in 2021 – the latest year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has data – happened at 21 weeks or later. Many abortions at this point in the pregnancy are necessary due to serious health risks or lethal fetal anomalies. More than 93 percent of abortions were conducted before the 14th week of pregnancy, according to the CDC. In Minnesota, according to state data for 2022, of the 12,175 abortions in the state, only two happened between the 25 and 30th week of pregnancy. None happened after the 30th week of pregnancy that year.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen
Trump on NATO funding
Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” for years, until he “got them to pay up” by threatening not to follow through on the alliance’s collective defense clause.
“For years, we were paying almost all of NATO,” he said. “We were being ripped off by European nations, both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, ‘if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.’ Otherwise we would have never gotten it.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” needs context. Official NATO figures show that in 2016, the last year before Trump took office, US defense spending made up about 71% of total defense spending by NATO members – a large majority, but not “almost all.” And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions to NATO that cover NATO’s organizational expenses and are set based on each country’s national income; the US was responsible for about 22% of those contributions in 2016.
The US share of total NATO military spending fell to about 65% in 2023. And the US is now responsible for about 16% of direct contributions to NATO, the same as Germany. Erwan Lagadec, an expert on NATO as a research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of its Transatlantic Program, said the US share was reduced from 22% “to placate Trump” and is a “sweetheart deal” given that the US makes up more than half of the alliance’s total GDP.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump claims Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance
In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump once again claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance.
“But she won’t improve private insurance for people, private medical insurance,” Trump said. “That’s another thing she doesn’t want to give. People are paying privately for insurance that have worked hard and made money and they wanna have private – she wants everybody to be on government insurance where you wait six months for an operation that you need immediately.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is outdated. While Harris did say in her first presidential campaign in 2019 that she wanted to eliminate private health insurance, the plan she rolled out later that year included a role for private insurers, and as vice president, she has supported bolstering the Affordable Care Act. Coverage on the Obamacare exchanges are offered by private insurers.
At a CNN town hall in January 2019, Harris, who was then a California senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that she would eliminate private health insurance as a necessary part of implementing Medicare for All, a government-run health insurance proposal promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Harris was a co-sponsor of Sanders’ bill, which called for essentially getting rid of the private insurance market.
A furor erupted, and her national press secretary and an adviser quickly walked back her comment, saying she was open to multiple paths to Medicare for All. And private insurers were included in the plan she rolled out in July 2019.
“We will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans as a part of this system that adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits,” Harris wrote in a Medium post about her plan. “Medicare will set the rules of the road for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurance companies will play by those rules, not the other way around.”
Since she was named President Joe Biden’s vice president, she has supported his efforts to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which has led to a record number of people signing up for 2024 coverage from private insurers on the individual market.
Harris’ campaign has confirmed that the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Harris on manufacturing jobs
Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Tuesday that the economy has added over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs during the Biden-Harris administration.
Facts First: Harris was rounding up and was referring to labor market data available through July 2024, which showed the US economy added 765,000 manufacturing jobs from the first full month of the Biden-Harris administration, February 2021. Though it’s worth noting that the growth almost entirely occurred in 2021 and 2022 (with 746,000 manufacturing jobs added starting in February 2021) before a relatively flat 2023 and through the first seven months of 2024.
In August, the US economy lost an estimated 24,000 manufacturing jobs, bringing that tally down to 739,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary employment data released Friday.
The gain during the Biden-Harris era is, however, over 800,000 using non-seasonally-adjusted figures that are also published by the federal government – in fact, the non-seasonally adjusted gain is 874,000 through August – so there is at least a defensible basis for Harris’ claim. However, seasonally adjusted data smooths out volatility and is traditionally used to observe trends.
An estimated 172,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during former President Donald Trump’s administration, however, most of those losses occurred following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. From February 2017, the first full month that Trump was in office, through February 2020, the US economy added 414,000 manufacturing jobs, BLS data shows.
Presidential terms don’t start and end in a vacuum, and economic cycles can carry over regardless of party. Additionally, the ups and downs of the labor market and the broader economy are influenced by factors beyond a single president, although specific economic policies can influence economic and job growth.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace
Trump claims he saved Obamacare
Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday night’s debate that he saved Obamacare, his predecessor’s landmark health reform law that Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace.
“I had a choice to make: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it,” Trump said.
Facts First: Trump’s claim is misleading. The only reason Obamacare wasn’t repealed was because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges.
Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obamacare – stating that the administration’s official policy was “to seek the prompt repeal” of the Affordable Care Act.
Although Congress failed to repeal it, Trump did manage to undermine the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.
Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.
Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.
Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Harris on US military members on active duty in combat zones
Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday, “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”
Facts First: This claim is misleading. While US service members are not engaged in major wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, US service members have come under fire in the Middle East repeatedly over the last year and increasingly been in harm’s way since Hamas’ attacks on Israel last October.
There are currently roughly 2,500 US troops in Iraq, who have come under repeated fire since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7. Also since October, more US troops have deployed to the Middle East, including on Navy ships to the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea. CNN cited two US officials in reporting Tuesday that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was last operating near the Gulf of Oman, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group is expected to leave the region this week after last operating in the same area.
Additionally, in the last several months, US service members have taken fire in the Middle East and been injured or killed. Last month, eight US service members were treated for traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation after a drone struck Rumalyn Landing Zone in Syria. In January, three US soldiers were killed, and dozens more were injured, in an attack on a small outpost in Jordan called Tower 22. The same month, two US Navy SEALs died after going missing one night at sea while trying to seize lethal aid being transported from Iran to Yemen.
From CNN’s Haley Britzky
Harris on manufacturing jobs
Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”
Facts First: This needs context.
It’s true that the US lost 178,000 manufacturing jobs during Trump’s presidency – but the loss overwhelmingly occurred because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency in January 2017 through February 2020, before the pandemic crash, there was a gain of 414,000 manufacturing jobs.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Harris on trade deficits
Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Let’s be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we’ve ever seen in the history of America.”
Facts First: This needs context.
It’s true that there were high trade deficits during the Trump administration. The seasonally adjusted 2020 goods trade deficit, about $901.5 billion, was the highest on record at the time.
However, Harris did not acknowledge that trade deficits have been even higher during the Biden-Harris administration. The seasonally adjusted goods trade deficit exceeded $1 trillion in each of 2021, 2022 and 2023.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
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