CNN
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CNN’s workforce is fact-checking the primary evening of the Republican Nationwide Conference.
We’ll proceed to replace this listing all through the evening.
The Republican Nationwide Conference performed a video through which former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to make use of “each applicable device obtainable to beat the Democrats,” together with voting by mail. 20788998 58:01 Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting throughout the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it throughout the present marketing campaign
However Trump’s feedback within the conference video additionally included a few of his common false claims about elections. After claiming he would “as soon as and for all safe our elections” as president, Trump once more insinuated the 2020 election was not safe, saying, “We by no means need what occurred in 2020 to occur once more.” 20788998 57:44 And he stated, “Preserve your eyes open, as a result of these individuals wish to cheat they usually do cheat, and admittedly, it’s the one factor they do effectively.”
Information First: Trump’s claims are nonsense – barely vaguer variations of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was extremely safe; Trump misplaced truthful and sq. to Joe Biden by an Electoral School margin of 306 to 232; there is no such thing as a proof of voter fraud even near widespread sufficient to have modified the end result in any state; and there’s no foundation for claiming that election dishonest is the one factor at which Trump’s opponents excel.
The Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, a part of the Division of Homeland Safety, said in a post-election November 2020 assertion: “The November third election was essentially the most safe in American historical past.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed in her speech Monday that the Biden administration has hired 85,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents to “harass hardworking People.”
Information First: This declare is fake.
The Inflation Discount Act – which Congress handed in 2022 with none Republican votes – supplied an about $80 billion, 10-year funding to the IRS. The company plans to rent tens of hundreds of IRS staff with that cash – however just some will likely be IRS brokers who conduct audits and investigations. Many individuals will likely be employed for non-agent roles, corresponding to customer support representatives. And a major variety of the hires are anticipated to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and different attrition, not take newly created positions.
The 85,000 determine comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS may rent 86,852 full-time staff – not solely enforcement brokers – over the course of a decade with an almost $80 billion funding.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama prompt in her speech on Monday that in President Joe Biden’s time period, People are having to tackle two jobs to take care of the price of residing.
“With President Trump, the powerful alternative was which job supply to just accept, now it’s which second job to take simply to pay the payments,” she stated.
Information First: The variety of staff who maintain a number of jobs as a share of complete employment has by no means gone above the very best stage beneath Trump, according to Labor Department data.
Whereas it’s true that the annual inflation price reached its highest stage in additional than 4 many years beneath Biden (in June 2022, although it has since declined), People aren’t essentially taking up two jobs greater than typical to take care of it. In actual fact, the variety of People holding a number of jobs as a share of all employed staff was beneath ranges seen earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic all through 2021 and 2022. It has elevated over the previous a number of months, reaching 5.2% in June. The share of staff with a number of jobs hasn’t gone above 5.3% for the reason that Nice Recession.
From CNN’s Bryan Mena
North Carolina gubernatorial candidate’s financial claims
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, now operating for governor, made a sequence of financial claims in his speech. One in regards to the Biden period was deceptive, whereas one other in regards to the Trump period touted pre-pandemic statistics with out acknowledging that when Trump left workplace the financial system was in a lot worse form.
Robinson stated that beneath Biden’s administration, “grocery costs have skyrocketed, and fuel has almost doubled.”
Information First: It’s true that grocery costs have jumped by over 20% since Biden was sworn in, however fuel costs aren’t double what they have been when he took workplace.
The nationwide common value for a gallon of normal gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, in line with AAA. When Biden was inaugurated, the nationwide common was $2.39.
Robinson additionally claimed that whereas Trump was president, unemployment was “at a historic low.” That was definitely true previous to the pandemic. As an illustration, in February 2020, the nation’s unemployment price was at 3.5%, the bottom for the reason that late Sixties.
By comparability, the typical month-to-month unemployment price over the previous decade was 4.8%.
However when Trump left workplace, it was at 6.4%, removed from historic lows.
From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia claimed of Democrats: “They declare that our financial system is flourishing, but a whole bunch of hundreds of American-born staff misplaced their jobs these previous few years.”
Information First: That is deceptive at finest. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that the variety of American-born staff with jobs has grown considerably throughout President Joe Biden’s administration. About 130.9 million American-born staff have been employed in June, a rise of almost 4.7 million since June 2021, shortly after Biden took workplace. (This knowledge is just not seasonally adjusted, so we have now to take a look at the identical month in annually for an correct comparability. In January 2021, the month Biden was sworn in, about 123 million American-born staff have been employed.)
There may be all the time churn within the labor market, so it’s definitely doable that a whole bunch of hundreds of particular person American-born staff misplaced their jobs throughout this era – however opposite to Greene’s insinuation, there have been far better beneficial properties than losses beneath Biden for American-born staff as a bunch.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby
Greene stated whereas attacking Democrats in her conference speech that “the institution in Washington” held Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter this 12 months.
“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” the Georgia Republican stated.
Information first: This declare wants context. Transgender Day of Visibility has been held yearly on March 31 because it was began in 2009 as a day of consciousness to have a good time the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the primary full moon following the primary day of spring and might change 12 months to 12 months. The vacation occurred to fall on March 31 in 2024.
Responding to Republicans criticizing President Joe Biden, White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in an April 1 briefing stated she was “shocked by the misinformation” surrounding Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility falling on the identical day.
“Yearly, for the previous a number of years, on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility is marked. And as we all know — for people who perceive the calendar and the way it works, Easter falls on completely different Sundays yearly. And this 12 months, it occurred to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day. And so, that’s the easy truth,” she stated.
From CNN’s Jack Forrest
A video performed on the Republican Nationwide Conference featured a narrator making the declare that Trump “gave us the most important tax cuts in historical past.”
Information First: That is false. Analyses have discovered that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the most important in historical past, both in share of gross home product or inflation-adjusted {dollars}.
The act made quite a few everlasting and non permanent adjustments to the tax code, together with decreasing each company and particular person revenue tax charges.
In a report launched in June, the federal authorities’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office appeared on the measurement of previous tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It discovered that two different tax reduce payments have been greater – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 bundle and laws signed by former President Barack Obama that prolonged earlier tax cuts enacted throughout former President George W. Bush’s administration.
The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by wanting on the income results of the payments as a share of gross home product – in different phrases, how a lot federal income the invoice cuts as a portion of the financial system – over 5 years. Reagan’s 1981 tax reduce and Obama’s 2012 tax reduce extension have been 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively.
Trump’s 2017 tax reduce, in contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.
The Committee for a Accountable Federal Price range, a nonprofit, present in 2017 that the framework for the Trump tax cuts could be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted {dollars} and the eighth largest since 1918 as a share of gross home product.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Republican Nationwide Committee Chairman Michael Whatley stated in his speech on Monday: “4 years in the past, Europe and the Center East have been at peace.”
Information First: Whatley’s declare is fake. Regardless of the deserves of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to barter, through which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan adopted), there was nonetheless a lot of unresolved armed battle across the Center East 4 years in the past in mid-2020 and when Trump left workplace in early 2021.
The listing notably included the civil war in Yemen; the civil war in Syria; and the conflicts between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, between Israel and Hezbollah on its border with Lebanon, between Israel and Syria, and what former State Division official Aaron David Millerreferred to as “the war between the wars between Israel and Iran on air, land and sea.” Additionally, the US, its allies and civilians continued to be attacked in an unstable Iraq.
“It’s a extremely inaccurate assertion,” Miller, who labored on Mideast peace negotiations whereas in authorities and is now a senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace, stated final fall, when Trump himself made an identical declare about having achieved peace within the Center East.
Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow on the Arab Middle Washington DC suppose tank, additionally referred to as that declare “false” when Trump made it. She stated in a November e-mail: “The Abraham Accords didn’t obtain peace within the Center East. In actual fact, violence escalated in Israel-Palestine within the aftermath of the Accords (utilizing any metric you possibly can consider – loss of life tolls, settlement violence, and so on).”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
The Republican Nationwide Conference featured a video attacking Biden over the value of fuel. However the video misleadingly deployed out-of-date figures as in the event that they have been present.
A narrator claimed: “When President Trump left workplace, fuel value solely $2.20. Below Biden and Harris, fuel skyrocketed to the very best value in historical past, over 5 bucks a gallon.” Later within the video, a younger man stated, “Inside my first 12 months of driving, I’m having to take care of a mean of $5.03 throughout the nation,” and a girl stated, “It’s not possible to pay $5.03. We have to care about our individuals higher than that.”
Information First: These claims about Biden-era fuel costs are two years outdated. The nationwide common for a gallon of normal gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, in line with the AAA. The nationwide common did, beneath Biden, hit a record high of greater than $5 per gallon – about $5.02, according to AAA data – however that occurred in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a global spike in oil prices. The RNC movies supplied no indication that the nationwide common has since fallen considerably.
Additionally, the nationwide common on the day Trump left workplace in January 2021 was about $2.39 per gallon, not $2.20, although it was decrease than $2.20 in some states.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
A video performed throughout the Republican Nationwide Conference, which attacked Biden’s dealing with of the financial system, featured a narrator saying, “The Wall Road Journal has reported at this time that People’ incomes have gone down three straight years.”
Information First: This wants context. The RNC video not noted an inconvenient truth from the Wall Road Journal report that was revealed in 2023: one of many three straight years through which inflation-adjusted median family revenue went down was 2020, when Trump was president. The Covid-19 pandemic performed a serious position within the decline, however the advert failed to elucidate that not the entire three years have been beneath Biden.
Actual median family revenue fell from $78,250 in 2019 to $76,660 in 2020 (all beneath Trump), then edged all the way down to $76,330 in 2021 (largely beneath Biden) and fell extra considerably to $74,580 in 2022 (all beneath Biden). Figures for 2023 and 2024-to-date will not be obtainable.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Attacking Biden’s dealing with of the financial system, the Republican Nationwide Conference featured a video through which a narrator stated, “America has reached the very best inflation in 40 years.”
Information First: This declare is 2 years outdated. The year-over-year inflation price in June 2022, about 9.1%, was certainly the very best since late 1981, between 40 and 41 years prior. However inflation has declined sharply since that Biden-era peak, and the newest obtainable price, for June 2024, was about 3.0% – a price that, the Biden presidency apart, was exceeded as recently as 2011.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale