CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday with probably the most dishonest speech of the four-day Republican Nationwide Conference, making greater than 20 false claims by CNN’s rely.
Lots of the false claims had been ones Trump has made earlier than, a few of them for years. They spanned all kinds of subjects, together with the economic system, immigration, crime, international coverage and elections. A few of them had been wild lies, others smaller exaggerations. Some had been in his ready textual content (just like the absurd declare that he left the Biden administration a world at peace), whereas he ad-libbed others (akin to his standard lies that Democrats cheated within the 2020 election and that the US is experiencing the worst inflation it has ever had).
Beneath is a truth examine of a few of Trump’s false or deceptive remarks, plus a truth examine of claims made by different Thursday conference audio system.
Former President Donald Trump claimed that there’s report inflation beneath President Joe Biden.
Information First: Trump’s declare is fake. The present inflation fee, 3% in June 2024, is nowhere close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920.
Trump may pretty say that the inflation rate hit a 40-year excessive in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, nevertheless it has since plummeted.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump mentioned Thursday that he “received together with” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and “we stopped the missile launches from North Korea.”
“However, no, I received together with him,” Trump mentioned, “and we stopped the missile launches from North Korea. Now North Korea is appearing up once more.”
Information First: Trump’s declare that he “stopped the missile launches” from North Korea is deceptive. Whereas missile launches did pause from North Korea for a time period throughout his administration, they began up once more earlier than he left workplace.
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 an indication of rising frustration from Kim on the state of talks with the US. North Korea later launched two extra missiles in July 2019, a month after Trump’s high-profile meeting with Kim within the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. North Korea carried out 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, one thing that was going to take 5 years. … We did it in a matter of a few months.”
Information First: Trump’s declare of getting defeated ISIS in “a few months” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared absolutely liberated greater than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019.
Even when Trump was beginning the clock on the time of his go to to Iraq in late December 2018, as he has urged in previous remarks, the liberation was proclaimed greater than two and a half months later. As well as, Trump gave himself far an excessive amount of credit score for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has earlier than, when he mentioned he defeated the fear group with no caveats or credit score to anybody else. Kurdish forces did a lot of the bottom preventing, and there was main progress in opposition to the caliphate beneath President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.
IHS Markit, an data firm that studied the altering dimension of the caliphate, reported two days earlier than 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, together with key areas very important for the group’s governance undertaking,” an analyst there mentioned in a press release on the time.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Donald Trump mentioned Thursday that the Florida federal decide who was overseeing the labeled paperwork case dismissed the legal prices in opposition to the previous president, discovering “that the prosecutor and the pretend paperwork case in opposition to me had been completely unconstitutional.”
Information first: Trump’s declare is deceptive. District Decide Aileen Cannon wrote in her ruling that the appointment of particular counsel Jack Smith, who was prosecuting the case, violated the Structure. However Cannon particularly didn’t touch upon the validity of the fees Trump was going through, or whether or not Trump’s alleged mishandling of labeled paperwork was correct.
In a 93-page ruling Monday, Cannon mentioned Smith’s appointment violated the Structure. Cannon mentioned that Smith’s place as particular counsel “successfully usurps” Congress’ “necessary legislative authority,” as a result of Congress ought to have the authority – not the pinnacle of the Justice Division – to nominate such an official.
Cannon additionally mentioned that Smith’s workplace was being funded improperly.
However Cannon additionally particularly famous that she was not deciding any “different authorized rights or claims” introduced by Trump or his co-defendants within the case.
The decide additionally mentioned that the Justice Division may doubtlessly revive the case by funding the particular counsel by means of completely different means. Prosecutors from outdoors the particular counsel’s workplace may additionally refile the fees.
From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz
Trump on the affect of immigration on Medicare and Social Safety
Throughout his Republican Nationwide Conference speech, former President Donald Trump once more mentioned that Democrats are harming Social Safety and Medicare by letting migrants into the US.
“Democrats are going to destroy Social Safety and Medicare as a result of all of those folks by the tens of millions are coming in – they’re going to be on Social Safety and Medicare and different issues, and also you’re not capable of afford it. They’re destroying your Social Safety and your Medicare,” Trump mentioned.
Information First: Trump is incorrect. In reality, the other is true, notably within the close to time period, a number of consultants say. Many undocumented immigrants work, which implies they pay much-needed payroll taxes, and this bolsters the Social Safety and Medicare belief funds and extends their solvency. Immigrants who’re working legally usually gained’t acquire advantages for a few years. As for individuals who are undocumented, some are working beneath pretend Social Safety numbers, so they’re paying payroll taxes however don’t qualify to gather advantages.
The Social Safety Administration seemed on the results of unauthorized immigration on the Social Safety belief funds. It discovered that in 2010, earnings by unauthorized staff contributed roughly $12 billion on web to the entitlement program’s money circulate. The company has not up to date the evaluation since, however this 12 months’s Social Safety trustees report famous that growing common annual complete web immigration by 100,000 persons improves the entitlement program’s solvency.
“We estimate that future years will expertise a continuation of this optimistic affect on the belief funds,” mentioned the report on unauthorized immigration.
In the meantime, unauthorized immigrants contributed greater than $35 billion on web to Medicare’s belief fund between 2000 and 2011, extending the lifetime of the belief fund by a 12 months, in response to a examine printed within the Journal of Normal Inside Drugs.
“Immigrants are typically youthful and employed, which will increase the variety of staff paying into the system,” mentioned Gary Engelhardt, a Syracuse College economics professor. “Additionally, they’ve extra youngsters, which helps enhance the long run workforce that can pay payroll taxes.”
“Immigrants are good for Social Safety,” he mentioned.
Nevertheless, undocumented immigrants who achieve authorized standing that features eligibility for future Social Safety and Medicare advantages may finally be a drain to the system, in response to Jason Richwine, a resident scholar on the Heart for Immigration Research, which advocates for decrease immigration.
“Unlawful immigration unambiguously advantages the Social Safety and Medicare belief funds, however amnesty (legalization) would reverse these positive aspects and add further prices,” Richwine wrote in a report final 12 months.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Former President Donald Trump claimed that he struck a commerce cope with China, requiring the nation to buy $50 billion value of American merchandise. “They purchase $50 billion value,” he mentioned on the Republican Nationwide Conference Thursday.
Information First: The declare that China purchased $50 billion value of American product on account of a commerce deal is fake.
Trump is referring to what’s generally known as the Phase One deal he struck with Beijing in December 2019.
Whereas the deal required China to purchase $50 billion worth of American agricultural products by the tip of 2021 – Beijing did not live up to its commitment.
US agricultural exports to China recovered from the commerce conflict however didn’t attain the degrees within the Part One commitments, in response to a study by the Peterson Institute for Worldwide Economics.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump described gasoline costs inaccurately throughout his keynote speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference. He mentioned that “gasoline costs are up 60%.”
Information First: The common worth of an everyday 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 common was $2.39, not 60% larger as Trump claimed.
Though the USA has a strategic gasoline reserve, which might be tapped by the White Home to ease upward stress on costs, as Biden did in Might, gasoline costs are nonetheless principally decided by market forces, akin to world petroleum manufacturing and client demand, not solely by the choices of a sitting US president.
From CNN’s Bryan Mena
Former President Donald Trump, whereas recounting a dialog he had with a waitress frightened in regards to the taxes on her ideas, claimed that the federal government not too long ago employed 88,000 IRS brokers to audit people.
Information First: This declare is fake.
The Inflation Discount Act – which Congress handed in 2022 with none Republican votes – offered an about $80 billion, 10-year funding to the IRS. The company plans to rent tens of 1000’s of IRS workers with that cash – however just some shall be IRS brokers who conduct audits and investigations. Many individuals shall be employed for non-agent roles, akin 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 88,000 determine comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS may rent 86,852 full-time workers – not solely enforcement brokers – over the course of a decade with an almost $80 billion funding.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Former President Donald Trump repeated his declare that President Joe Biden desires to hike folks’s taxes by 4 instances.
“That is the one administration that mentioned, ‘We’re gonna elevate your taxes by 4 instances what you’re paying now,’” Trump mentioned Thursday in his speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference.
Information First: That is false, simply because it was when Trump made the identical declare through the 2020 election marketing campaign and in early 2024.
Biden has not proposed quadrupling Individuals’ taxes, and there has by no means been any indication that he’s in search of to take action. The nonpartisan City-Brookings Tax Coverage Heart assume tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented funds proposals for fiscal 2024, discovered this: “His plan would elevate common after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, go away them successfully unchanged for middle-income households, and decrease after-tax incomes considerably for the highest-income taxpayers.”
The Tax Coverage Heart discovered that Biden’s proposal would, on common, have raised taxes by about $2,300 – however that’s a few 2.3% decline in after-tax revenue, not the huge discount Trump is suggesting Biden desires. And critically, Tax Coverage Heart senior fellow Howard Gleckman famous to CNN in Might that 95% of the tax hike would have been lined by the highest-income 5% of households.
The very greatest burden beneath the Biden plan would have been carried by the very richest households; the Tax Coverage Heart discovered that households within the prime 0.1% would have seen their after-tax incomes decline by greater than 20%. That’s “quite a bit,” Gleckman famous, nevertheless it’s nonetheless nowhere close to the quadrupling Trump claims Biden is searching for. And once more, even this enhance would have been just for a tiny subset of the inhabitants. Biden has promised to not elevate taxes by even a cent for anybody making beneath $400,000 per 12 months.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump touted the “Proper to Attempt” legislation he signed in 2018 in his conference speech Thursday, which gave terminally ailing sufferers simpler entry to experimental drugs that haven’t but obtained approval from the Meals and Drug Administration.
Earlier than the measure was handed, Trump claimed, terminally ailing sufferers in the USA must go to international international locations to hunt experimental therapies or go house to die in the event that they couldn’t afford it.
“Sounds easy, nevertheless it’s not, and I received them to agree that any individual that wants it’s going to – as a substitute of going to Asia or Europe or some place – or you probably have no cash, going house and dying,” he mentioned.
Information First: That is deceptive. It’s not true that terminally ailing sufferers would merely should go house and die with none entry to experimental drugs or must go to international international locations in search of such therapies till Trump signed the Proper to Attempt. Previous to the legislation, sufferers needed to ask the federal authorities for permission to entry experimental drugs – however the authorities nearly at all times mentioned sure.
Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s FDA commissioner, told Congress in 2017 that the FDA had authorized 99% of affected person requests beneath its personal “expanded entry” program.
‘“Emergency requests for particular person sufferers are often granted instantly over the telephone and non-emergency requests are usually processed inside a number of days,” Gottlieb testified.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Former President Donald claimed in his RNC speech on Wednesday night that “Russian warships and nuclear submarines are working 60 miles off our coasts in Cuba. … The press refuses to put in writing about it.”
Information First: Trump’s present-tense declare that Russian warships and nuclear submarines “are” working near the USA is deceptive. Whereas Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June together with different Russian Navy vessels, the entire vessels – together with the submarine – have since left.
A bunch of 4 Russian Navy vessels arrived in Cuba on June 12 as a part of what Pentagon and State Division officers confused is a routine exercise and famous that Cuba has hosted Russian ships yearly between 2013 and 2020. A Pentagon spokesperson, Maj. Charlie Dietz, mentioned in June that “given Russia’s lengthy historical past of Cuban port calls, these are thought of routine naval visits, particularly within the context of elevated US help to Ukraine and NATO workouts.”
The vessels left Havana on June 17.
It’s also not true that media organizations “don’t wish to speak about it.” CNN, along with most other major news outlets, reported on the Russian ships’ positioning.
From CNN’s Haley Britzky
Former President Donald Trump repeated his declare, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion value of navy tools to the Taliban when Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.
Trump mentioned, “And we additionally left $85 billion {dollars}’ value of navy tools.”
Information First: Trump’s $85 billion determine is fake. Whereas a major amount of navy tools that had been offered by the US to Afghan forces was certainly deserted to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Protection Division has estimated that this tools had been value about $7.1 billion – a bit of the roughly $18.6 billion value of kit offered to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And a few of the tools left behind was rendered inoperable earlier than US forces withdrew.
As different fact-checkers have beforehand explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up determine (it’s nearer to $83 billion) for the full sum of money Congress appropriated through the conflict to a fund supporting the Afghan safety forces. A minority of this funding was for tools.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday, as many others on the RNC did, that whereas he was president the world was at peace.
“Our opponents inherited a world at peace and turned it right into a planet of conflict,” he additionally claimed later in his speech.
Information First: Trump’s declare about world peace beneath his presidency is fake. There have been dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left workplace in early 2021.
US troops had been nonetheless deployed in fight missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray area; the Israeli-Palestinian battle was additionally ongoing, as had been the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their struggle in Africa’s Sahel area; there was main violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; preventing continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas area; and there have been numerous different unresolved wars and conflicts all over the world.
The Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute, which tracks armed battle in international locations all over the world, mentioned in a June e-mail that it estimates there have been energetic armed conflicts in 51 worldwide states in 2020 and once more energetic armed conflicts in 51 worldwide states in 2021.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump mentioned Thursday on the Republican Nationwide Conference that “in Venezuela, crime is down 72%” as a result of international governments are sending their international locations’ criminals to the US.
Information First: Trump tremendously overstated the Biden-era decline in crime in Venezuela, at the very least in response to the restricted statistics which might be publicly out there.
And whereas it’s sure that at the very least some criminals have joined law-abiding Venezuelans in a mass exodus from the nation amid the financial disaster of the final decade, there isn’t any proof Venezuela’s authorities has intentionally emptied prisons for migration functions or deliberately despatched ex-prisoners to the USA.
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 psychological establishments and insane asylums. … Terrorists are coming in at numbers we’ve by no means seen earlier than.”
Information First: There is no such thing as a proof for Trump’s declare that jails all over the world are being emptied out in order that prisoners can journey to the US as migrants, nor for his declare that international governments are additionally emptying out psychological well being services for this goal. Final 12 months, Trump’s marketing campaign was unable to offer any proof for his narrower declare on the time that South American international locations particularly had been emptying their psychological well being services to by some means dump sufferers upon the US.
Representatives for 2 anti-immigration organizations instructed CNN on the time that they had not heard of something that may corroborate Trump’s story, as did three consultants at organizations favorable towards immigration. CNN’s personal search didn’t produce any proof. The web site FactCheck.org additionally discovered nothing.
Trump has typically tried to help his declare by making one other declare that the worldwide jail inhabitants is down. However that’s incorrect, too. 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 response to the World Jail Inhabitants Record compiled by consultants in the UK.
In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump marketing campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one supply for Trump’s declare about prisons being emptied for migration functions – a 2022 article from right-wing web site Breitbart Information a few supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol brokers that Venezuela had carried out this. However that imprecise and unverified declare about Venezuela’s actions has by no means been corroborated.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump claimed on the Republican Nationwide Conference Thursday that “our crime fee goes up, whereas crime statistics everywhere in the world are happening.”
Information First: Trump’s declare a few dramatic enhance within the crime fee is fake. Official knowledge printed by the FBI reveals 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 12 months in workplace.
Preliminary FBI knowledge for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% nationwide decline in total reported violent crime in comparison with 2022, bringing each homicide and violent crime ranges beneath the place they had been in 2020. And preliminary FBI knowledge for the primary quarter of 2024 confirmed an excellent steeper drop from the identical quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in homicide and roughly 15% decline in total reported 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 might 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 every single place.
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 very 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 in addition “crime knowledge collected from a number of impartial sources level to an excellent bigger decline in property and violent crime, together with a considerably bigger drop in homicide, up to now this 12 months in comparison with 2023, although there may be nonetheless time left within the 12 months for these developments to alter.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Throughout his RNC speech, former President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration has carried out nothing to curb unlawful immigration to the US.
“The best invasion in historical past is going down proper right here in our nation—they’re coming in from each nook of the earth, not simply from South America, however from Africa, Asia, and the Center East,” Trump mentioned, “they’re coming at ranges we’ve by no means seen earlier than it’s an invasion certainly and this administration does nothing to cease them.”
Information First: Trump’s declare that the Biden administration is doing “nothing” is wrong. Unlawful crossings on the US border dropped in June and the Biden administration has imposed vital restrictions on asylum together with different measures to curb unlawful immigration.
Arrests alongside the US southern border dropped 29% in June, in response to new data launched by US Customs and Border Safety, following the Biden administration’s order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings.“Latest border safety measures have made a significant affect on our skill to impose penalties for these crossing unlawfully,” CBP Performing Commissioner Troy A. Miller beforehand mentioned in a press release.
Final 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 handle one of many president’s greatest political vulnerabilities. It was the administration’s most dramatic transfer on the US southern border, utilizing the identical authority former President Donald Trump tried to make use of in workplace.
From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand
Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that groceries are up 57% through the Biden administration.
Information First: Trump’s claims of grocery costs being up 57% are false and will use some context.
Inflation’s rapid ascent, which started in early 2021, was the results of a confluence of factors, together with results from the Covid-19 pandemic akin to snarled supply chains and geopolitical fallout (particularly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered meals and power worth shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted partially by fiscal stimulus from each the Trump and Biden administrations additionally led to larger costs, as did the post-pandemic imbalance within the labor market.
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year excessive, and has slowed since (the Shopper Worth Index was at 3% as of June 2024). Nevertheless, it stays elevated from historic ranges. Three-plus years of pervasive and extended inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, particularly lower-income households making an attempt to afford the requirements (meals, shelter and transportation).
Meals costs, particularly grocery costs, did outpace total inflation for a lot of 2022 and 2023, pushed larger by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nonetheless, grocery costs didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual meals and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Since Biden took workplace, the CPI “meals at house” index is up 21%, which is larger than its 9% typical rise in latest historical past over a 54-month interval, nevertheless it’s not 57%.
By the 12 months that resulted in June, total meals and grocery costs had been up simply 2.2% and 1.1%, respectively.
Sure meals classes noticed a lot higher inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. Nevertheless, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a extremely contagious, lethal avian flu. Meals costs are extremely unstable and might be influenced by quite a lot of components, particularly illness, extreme weather events, world provide and demand, geopolitical occasions, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Former President Donald Trump claimed that the US was “power impartial” throughout his presidency however that this modified beneath President Joe Biden.
Information First: That is deceptive. “Power impartial” is a political phrase, not a literal phrase, that may be outlined in varied methods – and, beneath Biden, the US has continued to fulfill the identical definitions it happy beneath Trump. US manufacturing of oil and gasoline have set data beneath Biden.
“Power impartial” doesn’t imply the US makes use of no international power or that it’s untethered from world power markets; this wasn’t the case beneath Trump and nonetheless isn’t beneath Biden. Specialists in power coverage are likely to scoff on the time period “power independence,” with three consultants telling CNN in 2022 that it’s a “horrible time period,” “ridiculous time period” and “silly time period,” respectively.
But when the time period is outlined because the US exporting extra crude oil and petroleum merchandise than it imported, that has happened in every year under Biden after taking place beneath Trump in 2020 for the first time in decades. (In reality, the US surplus in petroleum commerce has grown under Biden as US crude oil production and exports have hit new highs) And if the time period is outlined because the US producing extra power than it consumes, that has additionally continued to happen under Biden after happening under Trump in 2019for the primary time in many years.
You’ll be able to learn here in regards to the varied financial causes the US has imported international power beneath each Trump and Biden regardless of its so-called “power independence.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Former President Donald Trump as soon as once more claimed that he signed the most important tax cuts in historical past throughout his administration.
“We received credit score for the conflict, and defeating ISIS, and so many issues. The good economic system, the largest tax cuts ever, the largest regulation cuts ever, the creation of House Pressure, the rebuilding of our navy. We did a lot,” Trump mentioned in his speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference on Thursday.
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 modifications to the tax code, together with lowering each company and particular person revenue tax charges.
In a report launched in June, the federal authorities’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office seemed on the dimension of previous tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It discovered that two different tax lower 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 trying 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 economic system – over 5 years. Reagan’s 1981 tax lower and Obama’s 2012 tax lower extension had been 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively.
Trump’s 2017 tax lower, against this, 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 can 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
Former President Donald Trump mentioned Thursday that inflation didn’t exist throughout his presidency – drawing a distinction between his administration and that of President Joe Biden, whose early years in workplace had been stricken by decades-high inflation.
“We had no inflation,” Trump mentioned in his speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference.
Information First: Trump’s remark is fake. Inflation was low, however not nothing.
The Shopper Worth Index, a typical measure of inflation, rose about 8% throughout Trump’s 4 years in workplace. In January 2021, his last partial month in workplace, it elevated 1.4% from a 12 months earlier, in response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Trump repeats frequent declare about oil drilling and gasoline costs
As he has carried out repeatedly on the marketing campaign path, Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that beneath a brand new Trump administration, the USA would “drill, child, drill, … by doing that, we’ll result in a large-scale decline in costs.”
Information First: Trump’s frequent marketing campaign declare that the US can decrease gasoline costs by producing extra home oil is deceptive.
Below President Joe Biden, US oil manufacturing has reached a brand new report this 12 months, even surpassing output beneath Trump’s administration. The Power Info Administration expects crude oil manufacturing to hit successive data this 12 months and subsequent, powered by an oil growth within the Permian Basin. As CNN has reported, the US presently produces extra oil than another nation on the planet, at about half one million barrels per day greater than the prior annual report set in 2019.
Costs on the pump within the US are extremely depending on the worldwide oil market and the US can’t be really power impartial with regards to gasoline costs, power consultants have instructed CNN. Oil is a worldwide commodity; the worldwide worth of oil determines US gasoline costs and it’s merely not possible to separate that worth from shifting world dynamics like Russia’s conflict on Ukraine or OPEC’s latest selections to chop oil manufacturing.
“Whether or not we’re drill child, drilling has extra to do with what the worth of crude oil is, how wholesome is the economic system,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Power Group, and a former George W. Bush White Home official, instructed CNN not too long ago. “This stuff are outdoors of a president’s direct management.” There’s additionally the truth that the US consumes a distinct type of oil than it produces, McNally instructed CNN final 12 months. McNally in contrast the sunshine crude the US produces to champagne, and the heavy crude it imports to espresso. US oil refineries are particularly constructed to separate out the “heavy and gunky” crude we eat, McNally mentioned.
From CNN’s Ella Nilsen
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Thursday that President Joe Biden “gained’t even speak about the truth that Individuals are nonetheless being held” in Gaza.
“And now in fact a second conflict in Gaza. President Biden gained’t even speak about the truth that Individuals are nonetheless being held there by the Iranian regime,” Pompeo mentioned.
Information First: The declare that Biden “gained’t even speak about” the American hostages in Gaza is fake. Biden has spoken in regards to the Individuals held in Gaza within the wake of Hamas’ invasion of Israel a number of instances since October.
Just lately on May 31, talking a few proposed deal for Israel and Hamas, Biden mentioned American hostages can be launched within the first part of the deal: “[W]e need them house.”
On October 25, Biden mentioned his administration was working “across the clock along with our companions in the area to safe the discharge of hostages together with Americans … left behind.”
On November 26, he spoke extensively in regards to the launch of an Israeli American little woman who was held hostage and mentioned he was urgent for extra Individuals to be launched, including, “we won’t cease working till each hostage is returned to their family members.”
Most not too long ago, on the NATO Summit in DC last week, Biden talked about hostages broadly, saying the US “has been working to safe a ceasefire in Gaza, to convey the hostages house, to create a path for peace and stability within the Center East.”
From CNN’s Haley Britzky
Trump biographical video consists of false and deceptive claims
The Republican Nationwide Conference performed a biographical video about former President Donald Trump earlier than Trump started his personal speech. The video included false and deceptive claims.
The Trump tax cuts
The video featured a narrator making a declare that Trump himself frequently utters. The narrator mentioned, “The Trump tax cuts: largest in America’s historical past.”
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}. You’ll be able to learn an in depth truth examine here.
World battle beneath Trump
The video’s narrator additionally delivered a model of one other declare Trump has made repeatedly, saying Trump’s “energy and resolve” produced “a steady world at peace.”
This declare about world peace beneath Trump is fake, too. There have been dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left workplace in early 2021.
US troops had been nonetheless deployed in fight missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray area; the Israeli-Palestinian battle was additionally ongoing, as had been the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their struggle in Africa’s Sahel area; there was main violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; preventing continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas area; and there have been numerous different unresolved wars and conflicts all over the world.
The Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute, which tracks armed battle in international locations all over the world, mentioned in a June e-mail that it estimates there have been energetic armed conflicts in 51 worldwide states in 2020 and once more energetic armed conflicts in 51 worldwide states in 2021.
Individuals’ incomes
Whereas attacking President Joe Biden’s dealing with of the economic system, the video featured on-screen textual content that mentioned, “U.S. incomes fall for third straight 12 months,” attributing these phrases to a Wall Avenue Journal article in 2023. A picture of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was proven on display on the similar time.
This mixture of phrases and pictures is deceptive. The video didn’t acknowledge that the primary of the three straight years by which the Wall Avenue Journal article reported that inflation-adjusted median family revenue went down was 2020, when Trump was president. (The Covid-19 pandemic performed a serious function within the decline.)
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 (principally beneath Biden) and fell extra considerably to $74,580 in 2022 (all beneath Biden). Figures for 2023 and 2024-to-date should not out there.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Eric Trump’s false claims in regards to the economic system and US world standing in 2016
Eric Trump instructed the group on the RNC Thursday that the “economic system was struggling, jobs had been scarce” and the US had poor standing on the worldwide stage when his father was elected president in 2016.
Information First: Eric Trump’s claims are false. When Donald Trump took workplace in 2017, he inherited a robust economic system, together with a sturdy labor market, and a nation that was considered favorably on the worldwide stage.
In 2016, the US added a median of practically 194,000 jobs per thirty days, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Within the two years earlier than, these common positive aspects had been even larger: 226,000 in 2015 and practically 250,000 in 2014.
Job positive aspects remained above historic averages in 2017 by means of 2019, with 177,000 jobs added on common per thirty days.
Eric Trump’s claims that jobs had been scarce in 2016 weren’t correct. In reality, the US labor market skilled its longest enlargement on report beginning in 2010 and persevering with till March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic crippled world economies, together with that of the US.
Along with inheriting a labor market in fine condition, the economic system was rising when Trump took workplace. Actual gross home product – the widest measure of financial exercise – usually grows between 2% and three%, and it averaged 2.4% between 2014-2016 after which practically 2.7% through the first three years of Trump’s presidency, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
Additionally, the US was properly regarded internationally when Barack Obama left workplace, and people sentiments plunged in the beginning of Trump’s presidency, according to the spring 2017 Global Attitudes Survey carried out by the Pew Analysis Heart.
From CNN’s Alicia Wallace
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on the Republican Nationwide Conference Thursday that the US-Mexico border was “closed” throughout Donald Trump’s presidency.
Information First: Pompeo’s declare is fake.
Whereas Trump tightened the border throughout his tenure, unlawful crossings into the US from Mexico nonetheless numbered in the tens of thousands each month main as much as when he left workplace. At first 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 unfold of the virus. President Joe Biden later extended the restrictions.
The previous president’s greatest effort to “shut” the border was met with resistance by federal courts, and the Supreme Courtroom later gave Biden the green light to finish the controversial “Stay in Mexico” coverage.
From CNN’s Devan Cole
For the fourth straight evening, the Republican Nationwide Conference performed a video by which former President Donald 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, “Preserve your eyes open, as a result of these folks wish to cheat and so they do cheat, and albeit, it’s the one factor they do properly.”
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 isn’t any proof of voter fraud even near widespread sufficient to have modified the 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
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned on Thursday night that beneath former President Donald Trump’s administration, “not a single Chinese language spy balloon flew throughout” the US.
“We’d begun on an honorable exit from Afghanistan, and never a single Chinese language spy balloon flew throughout the USA of America,” Pompeo mentioned.
Information First: The declare that there have been no spy balloons beneath Trump is fake.
Three suspected Chinese language spy balloons transited over the continental US through the Trump administration, however they weren’t found till after President Joe Biden took workplace. Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Protection Command, said in 2023 {that a} “area consciousness hole” allowed the balloons to journey undetected.
From CNN’s Haley Britzky
Linda McMahon, who served within the Trump administration because the Small Enterprise Administrator, urged on the Republican Nationwide Conference Thursday that China paid the tariffs that the previous president placed on roughly $300 billion of Chinese language-made items. “As a substitute of taxing American corporations, Donald Trump put tariffs on China that raised billions of {dollars} and guarded American industries,” she mentioned.
Information First: This characterization of Trump’s tariffs is deceptive.
It’s true that Trump’s tariffs on China raised billions of {dollars} for the US authorities, however the duties had been paid by US corporations – not China.
Study after study, together with one from the federal authorities’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission (USITC), has found that Individuals have borne nearly the whole value of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese language merchandise.
As soon as an importing firm pays the tariff, it could possibly resolve to eat the fee or cross all or a few of it to the customer of its items – whether or not that’s a retailer or a client.
Many economists agree that tariffs act as a tax on American customers.
“A tariff is only a type of a tax,” Erica York, a senior economist and analysis director on the conservative-leaning Tax Basis, told CNN earlier this year.
Tariffs can profit some corporations by elevating the costs of competing foreign-made items, however the duties can damage different corporations by elevating part elements they should manufacture.
For instance, Trump’s tariffs had been imposed, partially, to spice up the US manufacturing sector – however that trade misplaced jobs.
Federal Reserve economists discovered a web lower in manufacturing employment because of the tariffs in 2019. That’s principally as a result of items grew to become dearer to US customers. Plus, retaliatory tariffs placed on American-made items made different US producers much less aggressive when promoting overseas.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
RNC video that includes Reagan’s voice misleadingly twists journal article
A video performed on the ultimate evening of the Republican Nationwide Conference tried to assault President Joe Biden by that includes quotes from then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s well-known rhetorical questions in regards to the President Jimmy Carter period at a presidential debate against Carter in 1980.
At one level, the video featured Reagan’s voice asking if, in comparison with 4 years in the past, “Is America as revered all through the world because it was?” On-screen textual content answered the query with the phrases “allies not belief the USA,” attributing them to a September 2021 article in Overseas Affairs journal.
Information First: This quote is deceptive. The article in Overseas Affairs didn’t really declare that allies not belief the USA. Fairly, the article famous that “critics of President Joe Biden” make the “declare” that allies not belief the US after Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – however the article then went on to argue that “these issues about credibility are overblown.”
The conference video additionally featured Reagan’s voice asking, “Is there kind of unemployment within the nation than there was 4 years in the past?” However if you happen to return exactly 4 years from the newest unemployment fee, the reply is: much less unemployment. The current unemployment rate is 4.1% for June 2024; 4 years prior, in June 2020, the unemployment fee was 11.0% amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
There’s a affordable foundation for this a part of the video, although, if you happen to interpret “4 years in the past” extra broadly to confer with any time in 2020. Earlier than the pandemic, within the first two months of 2020, the unemployment charges had been 3.6% and three.5%.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale