CNN
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Audio system on the second night time of the Republican Nationwide Conference made many false and deceptive claims all through the night time which centered closely on immigration and crime.
Here’s a checklist of reality checks from CNN’s Info First crew.
After criticizing President Joe Biden as weak, Home Speaker Mike Johnson claimed in his Tuesday speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference that Democrats’ insurance policies have introduced communities “dramatic will increase” in “violence, crime and medicines.”
Equally, Home Republican Convention Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik referred to “Biden’s violent crime disaster,” and a video performed close to the start of the Tuesday night proceedings featured a narrator saying, “It’s not simply massive cities. Rising crime is an issue in all places.”
Info First: Johnson’s claims about dramatic will increase in violence and crime are false, as is the conference video’s declare that there’s a drawback “in all places” with “rising crime.” Official knowledge printed by the FBI exhibits violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, although there have been will increase in some communities; violent crime is now decrease than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s final calendar yr in workplace.
Stefanik’s declare of a “violent crime disaster” beneath Biden is subjective, however she definitely didn’t acknowledge that the present numbers beneath Biden are superior to closing Trump-era numbers.
Preliminary FBI knowledge for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% nationwide decline in total violent crime in comparison with 2022, bringing each homicide and violent crime ranges beneath the place they have been in 2020. And preliminary FBI knowledge for the primary quarter of 2024 confirmed a good steeper drop from the identical quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in homicide and roughly 15% decline in total violent crime.
There are limitations to the FBI-published knowledge, which comes from native legislation enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted knowledge, and the submitted knowledge usually has some initial errors – so these statistics could not exactly seize the dimensions of the latest declines in crime. However these statistics and different knowledge sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent nationally, although not in all places.
Crime knowledge skilled Jeff Asher, co-founder of the agency AH Datalytics, mentioned that if the ultimate 2023 figures present a decline in homicide of at the least 10% from 2022, this could be the quickest US decline “ever recorded.” And he famous that each the preliminary FBI-published knowledge from the primary quarter of 2024 and likewise “crime knowledge collected from a number of unbiased sources level to a good bigger decline in property and violent crime, together with a considerably bigger drop in homicide, up to now this yr in comparison with 2023, although there may be nonetheless time left within the yr for these traits to vary.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Home Majority Chief Steve Scalise claimed Tuesday in his Republican Nationwide Conference speech that the Biden administration has “eroded the American power dominance that President Trump delivered.” He additionally claimed that Democrats are waging an “assault on American power.”
Info First: Scalise’s claims are deceptive. The US beneath President Joe Biden is producing more crude oil than any country ever has. The world document was set by the US in 2023, in line with the federal Vitality Data Administration, averaging about 12.9 million barrels per day – exceeding the Trump-era document, a median of about 12.3 million barrels per day in 2019. US manufacturing of dry pure gasoline additionally hit a new high in 2023. So did US crude oil exports.
CNN’s Matt Egan reported in December that the US was exporting the identical quantity of crude oil, refined merchandise and pure gasoline liquids as Saudi Arabia or Russia have been producing, in line with S&P World Commodity Insights.
None of that is to say that Biden is the explanation that home oil manufacturing has elevated; market elements are the important thing driver of corporations’ funding and manufacturing selections, and the Vitality Data Administration has credited technological enhancements in fracking and horizontal drilling know-how which have made oil wells more productive. Egan reported in August: “The American Petroleum Institute, an oil commerce group that has been essential of the Biden administration’s regulatory efforts, famous that authorized federal permits and new federal acres leased have each fallen sharply beneath Biden.”
Nonetheless, regardless of Biden’s often-critical rhetoric about fossil gasoline corporations, some policy moves to get tougher on those companies and his major investments in initiatives to fight climate change, he definitely has not come near stopping fossil gasoline manufacturing as Trump has claimed.
Biden has additionally authorized some vital and controversial fossil gasoline initiatives, together with the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Scalise mentioned Tuesday that migrants are arriving within the US after having been intentionally free of jail.
“On the border, Biden and Harris opened it as much as the complete world. Prisons are being emptied,” mentioned Scalise, a Louisiana Republican.
Info first: There isn’t any proof for Scalise’s declare that “prisons of being emptied” in order that prisoners can journey to the US as migrants.
“I do a day by day information search to see what’s happening in prisons all over the world and have seen completely no proof that any nation is emptying its prisons and sending all of them to the US,” mentioned Helen Fair, who’s co-author of the World Jail Inhabitants Record, which tracks the worldwide jail inhabitants, and a analysis fellow on the Institute for Crime & Justice Coverage Analysis at Birkbeck, College of London.
Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly made such claims in his personal speeches and interviews. However Trump has by no means supplied any proof for the declare.
Trump’s marketing campaign has supplied CNN with solely a obscure 2022 article from right-wing web site Breitbart a couple of supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol brokers about Venezuela liberating violent prisoners who had then joined migrant caravans.
However this supposed declare about Venezuela’s actions has by no means been corroborated, and specialists have instructed CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no proof of any such factor having occurred.
The recorded world jail inhabitants elevated from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million folks to about 10.99 million folks, in line with the World Jail Inhabitants Record.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican Nationwide Committee and the previous president’s daughter-in-law, hailed the state of the nation through the Trump administration. Amongst different issues, she mentioned there have been “document low unemployment charges for African People, Hispanic People, Asian People and ladies.”
Info First: These claims want context. Lara Trump didn’t point out that the Trump-era document lows for African American unemployment, Hispanic People unemployment and ladies’s unemployment have been all overwhelmed or matched throughout President Joe Biden’s presidency, although the Trump-era document for Asian American unemployment nonetheless stands.
The present document low for the Black or African American unemployment charge, 4.8%, was set under Biden in April 2023.
That beat the Trump-era low that was a document on the time, 5.3% in August 2019 and September 2019. (A cautionary word: This official knowledge sequence goes again solely to 1972.)
The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate hit 3.9% beneath Biden in September 2022, tying the document low first set in 2019 beneath Trump.
The unemployment rate amongst ladies hit 3.4% beneath Trump in September 2019 and October 2019, the bottom because the Fifties, but it surely fell to three.3% beneath Biden in January 2023.
The document set beneath Trump for Asian American unemployment, 2% in June 2019, has not been matched beneath Biden. The bottom Biden-era charge was 2.3% in July 2023.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York claimed in her Republican Nationwide Conference speech Tuesday that Biden’s presidency has led to the “highest charge of inflation” in her lifetime.
Info First: This declare is outdated.
Whereas the year-over-year inflation charge in June 2022, about 9.1%, was the best since late 1981, inflation has declined sharply since that Biden-era peak, and the newest out there charge, for June 2024, was about 3%. That charge was exceeded as recently as 2011.
Stefanik was born in 1984.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Wisconsin Senate candidate exaggerates the numbers of fentanyl deaths
Eric Hovde, the Republican operating for Senate in Wisconsin, claimed in his RNC speech Tuesday that the Biden administration “emboldened drug cartels to flood our streets with fentanyl killing over 100,000 People yearly” by opening the nation’s southern border and permitting “criminals and terrorists to enter the nation.”
Info First: It’s a major exaggeration that fentanyl kills greater than 100,000 People yearly as a result of nation’s “open” borders. The variety of overdose deaths involving artificial opioids in 2023, together with fentanyl, was roughly 75,000, in line with estimated and provisional knowledge.
The US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned in May that roughly 107,500 folks within the US died from a drug overdose, however that’s the complete quantity of people that died from an overdose from any type of drug.
Artificial opioids, together with fentanyl, have been concerned within the majority of these fatalities, making up almost 70% of overdose deaths in 2023, however they didn’t account for all of them.
In actual fact, in contrast with 2022, there have been round 1,500 fewer overdose deaths involving fentanyl and different artificial opioids in 2023. The estimated variety of deaths involving cocaine and psychostimulants comparable to methamphetamines elevated in 2023.
Particularly, in 2023, there have been 74,702 deaths from artificial opioids, and most of these deaths have been from fentanyl. By comparability, in 2022 the estimated quantity was 76,226, according to the CDC.
It is usually value noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled by US residents through legal ports of entry, relatively than by migrants sneaking into the nation. Opposite to frequent claims by Republicans, the border shouldn’t be “open”; border officers have seized an rising quantity of illicit fentanyl, numbering within the lots of of thousands and thousands of drugs, beneath Biden.
From CNN’s Jen Christensen
Trump makes false claims about election fraud in RNC video
For the second consecutive night time, the Republican Nationwide Conference performed a video wherein Trump urged Republicans to make use of “each acceptable instrument out there to beat the Democrats,” together with voting by mail. Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting through the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it through 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.” And he mentioned, “Hold your eyes open, as a result of these folks wish to cheat they usually do cheat, and albeit, it’s the one factor they do nicely.”
Info 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 honest and sq. to Joe Biden by an Electoral Faculty 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 probably the most safe in American historical past.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Kari Lake mentioned Tuesday that Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, her possible opponent within the state’s US Senate race this fall, voted final week to let undocumented immigrants “illegally forged a poll on this upcoming election.”
“These guys are full, they’re stuffed with unhealthy concepts,” Lake mentioned in her speech. “Simply final week Ruben Gallego voted to let the thousands and thousands of people that poured into our nation illegally forged a poll on this upcoming election.”
Truth First: This declare is fake.
The Home didn’t vote on whether or not to permit noncitizens to vote. The chamber passed a bill on July 10 that will require documentary proof of US citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Gallego voted in opposition to the laws, which isn’t anticipated to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
It’s already unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and experts say it rarely occurs. When folks register to vote, they have to present a driver’s license or Social Safety quantity, and their identification is checked in opposition to present databases. Voters are required to swear beneath penalty of perjury that they’re a US citizen. Noncitizens who vote illegally can face imprisonment or deportation.
Gallego said in a statement that he opposed the invoice as a result of its “solely objective is to disenfranchise tens of hundreds of Arizonans, and I cannot vote to remove the rights of Arizonans to cease one thing that’s already unlawful.”
“After all, solely U.S. residents ought to vote,” mentioned Gallego. “However this invoice isn’t about that, it’s about making it tougher for Arizonans to vote, together with married ladies, servicemembers, Native Arizonans, seniors, and folks with disabilities.”
From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Perry Johnson, a Michigan enterprise proprietor who beforehand ran for governor and president, mentioned Tuesday that revenue rose persistently beneath Trump.
“Below Trump, household revenue went up yearly. That may be a reality,” Johnson instructed the gang.
Info first: Johnson is inaccurate. Median household revenue fell in 2020 through the Covid-19 pandemic in each inflation-adjusted and non-adjusted phrases.
Typical household revenue grew by a number of thousand {dollars} throughout every of Trump’s first three years in workplace, earlier than adjusting for inflation. But it surely fell by $1,660 in 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the US economic system.
After factoring in inflation, typical household revenue fell by almost $2,900 in 2020, after rising in every of the primary three years of Trump’s administration.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby