Many of the false claims were ones Trump has made before, some of them for years. They spanned a wide variety of topics, including the economy, immigration, crime, foreign policy and elections. Some of them were wild lies, others smaller exaggerations. Some were in his prepared text (like the absurd claim that he left the Biden administration a world at peace), while he ad-libbed others (such as his usual lies that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and that the US is experiencing the worst inflation it has ever had).
- The current inflation rate, 3% in June 2024, is nowhere near the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920.
- Trump’s claim that he “stopped the missile launches” from North Korea is misleading. While missile launches did pause from North Korea for a period of time during his administration, they started up again before he left office.
- Trump’s claim of having defeated ISIS in “a couple of months” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019.
- Many undocumented immigrants work, which means they pay much-needed payroll taxes, and this bolsters the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and extends their solvency. Immigrants who are working legally typically won’t collect benefits for many years. As for those who are undocumented, some are working under fake Social Security numbers, so they are paying payroll taxes but don’t qualify to collect benefits.
- The claim that China bought $50 billion worth of American product as a result of a trade deal is false.
- Trump claims government hired 88,000 IRS agents. This claim is false.
- Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim that President Joe Biden wants to hike people’s taxes by four times. This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024.
- Trump’s claim about world peace under his presidency is false. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.
- There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that jails around the world are being emptied out so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants, nor for his claim that foreign governments are also emptying out mental health facilities for this purpose. Last year, Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower claim at the time that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.
- Trump’s claim about a dramatic increase in the crime rate is false. Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.
- Trump’s claims of grocery prices being up 57% are false
- “Energy independent” is a political phrase, not a literal phrase, that can be defined in various ways – and, under Biden, the US has continued to satisfy the same definitions it satisfied under Trump. US production of oil and gas have set records under Biden.
- Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars.
- The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose about 8% during Trump’s four years in office.
- Trump’s frequent campaign claim that the US can lower gas prices by producing more domestic oil is misleading.
- The claim that Biden “won’t even talk about” the American hostages in Gaza is false. Biden has spoken about the Americans held in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ invasion of Israel several times since October.
Best in Moderation
Article URL : https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/18/politics/fact-checking-night-4-republican-national-convention-trump/index.html