Speaking in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, just outside Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Trump delivered a wild monologue involving unscripted musings on sharks, boxers, dishwashers and the maintenance of forests.
It was also about a blizzard of false claims.
We’re still going through the transcript, but here are the ones we can tell you about so far:
Trump told Democrats, “The only way they’re going to win is through a rigged election. I really believe that. I saw the public outside.”
The availability of Biden to the media
Trump said he had seen a news release that said Biden had not taken questions from journalists since July 17.
Obama and ‘spying’
Trump reiterated his confidential claim that former President Barack Obama was spying on his campaign.
Facts first: Investigators engaged in legal oversight of Trump campaign advisers in 2016. But there is no evidence that Obama had any role in this oversight.
The Justice Department inspector general rejected Trump’s previous allegations that the FBI planted spies in his campaign, although the watchdog found major flaws in his lawsuit for supervision by former campaign adviser Carter Page.
– Marshall Cohen of CNN contributed to this fact check
New Zealand and the pandemic
Trump said New Zealand, which has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus, “had a massive outbreak yesterday.”
Facts first: New Zealand did not have a “massive breakout”: it reported six new cases on Wednesday, and five more on Thursday. While those small numbers represent an uptick in cases for New Zealand, which went 102 days without any local transmission of the virus recorded, it is a small uptick that does not compare to the ongoing US crisis.
The U.S. reported 47,408 new cases on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and it had reported more than 32,000 Thursday as of 5:15 PM.
Trump’s position on the war in Iraq
Trump said he had opposed the war in Iraq before it began, but was ignored: “I would say, ‘Do not go to Iraq.’ But I was a citizen, no one did it.
Facts first: Trump has never publicly urged the US not to go to Iraq. After all, he expressed tentative support for an invasion in a radio interview in September 2002. The war began in March 2003; Trump expressed some critical sentiments shortly thereafter, but did not come forward as an explicit opponent of the war until 2004.
The state of the pandemic
Trump showed recent job growth, saying at the time that the growth was happening during what he said was “hopefully” the “closing moments of the pandemic.”
Facts first: Hopefully otherwise it’s just not true that the coronavirus pandemic is in its “closing moments”. The US continues to report tens of thousands of new cases per day.
Veterans Choice
Trump reiterated a lie he has uttered more than 150 times, saying, “We have passed Veterans Choice.”
Facts first: The Veterans Choice Bill – a bilingual initiative led by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the late John McCain of Arizona allowing certain veterans to be cared for by the government for health care outside the VA system – was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2014. In 2018, Trump signed the VA Mission Act, which the program expanded and changed.
Polling
Trump referred to polls as “suppression polls” designed to deflate his supporters, and criticized critics for polling registered voters instead of likely voters. Some people who register to vote have died, he noted.
Facts first: There is simply no evidence that big pollsters have manipulated their numbers to suppress the enthusiasm of Trump voters, as Trump has repeatedly claimed.
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