Speaking in the White House Rose Garden in what was called a “press conference” in which he would comment on China, Trump delivered a 52-minute monologue filled with prewritten attacks on Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
As usual, Trump’s comments were full of outrageous lies and other false claims. We haven’t had a chance to review the full transcript yet, but here is a list of the 19 false or misleading claims we’ve counted so far:
Trump said of an Obama-era housing rule designed to address racial segregation: “This will abolish the suburbs.”
Done first: This makes no sense. (To be specific, it is racially encoded nonsense.) Diversifying or integrating suburbs does not eliminate the suburbs.
Biden and buildings
Trump denounced a proposal, put forward by a “unity” task force made up of people appointed by Biden and former chief rival Senator Bernie Sanders, to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions for all new buildings by 2030. Trump claimed that this “basically means there are no windows”.
Done first: That is also nonsense. Buildings with lots of windows can have zero net emissions, which means they produce as much renewable energy as the energy they consume. And the working group’s proposal would not require net zero buildings; rather, this would simply be a “national objective”.
Biden and immigration
Trump claimed that the Sanders-Biden task force had proposed “to abolish immigration detention.”
Done first: The task force proposed abolishing for-profit immigration detention centers in particular, not abolishing immigration detention entirely. He proposed reducing the use of immigration detention, but not getting rid of it.
The task force report said: “We believe that detention should be the last resort, not the default. Democrats will prioritize investments in more effective and cost-effective community alternatives to detention. We will finish the for-profit detention centers and We will ensure that the facility where migrants are detained is subject to the highest standards of care and ensures the safety and dignity of families. The detention of children should be limited to the shortest possible time, with their access to education and proper care. ”
Obama, Biden and H1N1
Trump claimed that Biden and President Barack Obama scored poorly in the polls for their handling of the H1N1 pandemic.
Done first: Surveys of the H1N1 virus management by the Obama administration did not ask respondents about Biden in particular, and Obama’s approval rating for handling the pandemic was significantly higher than Trump’s approval rating of handling the coronavirus pandemic.
Obama got 57% approval of the pandemic in a CNN poll in the fall of 2009; Trump now averages 39% approval in the pandemic, according to an average from the political website FiveThirtyEight.
Hunter Biden’s career
Trump claimed that Biden’s son Hunter Biden had no job before being appointed to the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, in 2014.
Done first: Hunter Biden was employee As a lawyer at the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and CEO of an investment firm he co-founded. He was also chairman of the board of the U.S. World Food Program.
Fraud and voting by mail
Trump said there is “tremendous fraud” with voting by mail.
Done first: All the evidence shows that electoral fraud is extremely rare in the US, although it does occur on occasion; Experts say fraud is slightly more common with postal voting than in-person voting, but it still represents a tiny fraction of the votes cast.
Fraud on the mail ballot is extremely rare in part because states have systems and processes in place to prevent counterfeiting, theft, and other harmful behavior. You can read longer fact checks here and here.
Trump and DACA
Trump said he will handle the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program “much better than the Democrats.”
Done first: This is absurd. Trump has repeatedly tried to end the DACA program, an Obama initiative, despite Democratic objections. And Trump has rejected several Democratic proposals to save the program despite being offered concessions on his own priorities, such as financing a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.
The border wall
Trump claimed that his wall on the Mexican border is “almost finished.”
Done first: “Almost” is vague, but this is an exaggeration; even according to Trump’s own account, around half the wall is finished. Triumph tweeted On Sunday, 240 miles had been built, but the wall will have a total of 450 miles by the end of the year; he has previously said wants a total length of up to 500 miles.
An official government update provided to CNN says 229 miles had been built as of July 2. Previous official updates have made it clear that a small fraction of the miles built, for example three miles out of the 216 miles built as of June 19, – have been erected where there were no barriers before; the rest have been replacement or reinforcement barriers.
Trump’s travel restrictions to Europe
Trump claimed that he banned people from traveling from Europe during the coronavirus pandemic.
Done first: This is an exaggeration. Your trip restrictions It contained multiple exemptions – for US citizens, for permanent residents, for many of the family members of both groups, and for multiple European countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia.
Nancy Pelosi and Trump’s travel restrictions in China
Trump claimed that after imposing a “ban” on travel to China, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was “dancing on the streets of Chinatown” in San Francisco.
Done first: Trump’s restrictions on China were also not a “ban”: he exempted citizens, permanent members and family members in that regard. politicsalso, and Pelosi did not dance. She alone I walked around Chinatown in February to encourage other people to visit, amid concerns about virus-related anti-Asian discrimination.
Trump could criticize her for not taking the virus seriously enough at the time, although he himself claimed at the time that the virus was under control, but continues to exaggerate about what she said and did.
The European Union
Trump claimed that Europe “has never treated us well,” then repeated his usual claim that the European Union was formed “to take advantage of the United States.”
Facts First: European integration experts say the EU was not formed to “take advantage” of the United States. You can read more here.
China’s economy
Trump claimed that China’s economy had been “flat” for “years and years and years and decades” before joining the World Trade Organization in late 2001. He also claimed that China had had its worst economic year in “67 years “before The coronavirus crisis.
Done first: China had experienced significant growth in the years prior to joining the WTO in late 2001; Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote in 2008: “China has been the fastest growing economy in the world in almost three decades, expanding at 10 percent a year in real terms.” And China had had the worst year in 29 years, not 67, before the current crisis.
According to World Bank figures, China grew 7.7% in 1999, 8.5% in 2000 and 8.3% in 2001. After joining the WTO, it grew 9.1% in 2002, a 10.0% in 2003 and 10.1% in 2004.
China’s officially reported growth rate in 2019, 6.1%, was the lowest since 1990, 29 years earlier. While China’s official figures are unreliable, there is no basis for the “67-year-old” claim; Trump routinely overstated how long it had been since China’s growth was as slow as it was in 2019, constantly inflating the figure over time.
China and tariffs
Trump claimed, as usual, that China is paying a lot of tariffs because of him.
Done first: It is the American importers who make the tariff payments to the United States government. AND study after study It has shown that American companies and consumers, not individuals and companies in China, are responsible for the majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Coronavirus mortality
Trump said the United States has “almost” the world’s lowest death rate for coronavirus.
Done first: While we don’t know the true death rate in the US and in other countries, since we don’t know exactly how many people have been infected with the virus, there is no basis on the existing data to claim that the US is a world leader or “almost”. According to Johns Hopkins University data, the US rate was 4% from Tuesday – worse than all but six of the 20 countries whose rates Johns Hopkins is tracking.
Coronavirus cases and tests
Trump again suggested that the United States has so many cases of coronavirus just because it does a lot of testing. He said the United States would have fewer cases if it did fewer tests: “If we did half the tests, we would have half the cases.”
Done first: Cases do not cease to exist if they are not recorded. Tests help reduce the spread of the virus and, therefore, the number of cases. And the evidence is not the reason the United States has seen a recent increase in its number of registered cases; rather, the virus is spreading. You can read a longer data check on Trump’s test claims here.
Deportations to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
Trump touted the deals he made with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, claiming that under him, unlike Obama, these countries are willing to accept criminals that the United States wants to deport.
Done first: Trump was mixing two separate problems. Although the Trump administration has new agreements with all three from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, those agreements are related to the management of people who come to the United States in search of asylum, not with the criminals that the United States seeks to deport. . In 2016, just before Trump’s presidency, none of the three countries was in the list from countries that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) considered “recalcitrant” (non-cooperative) in accepting the return of their citizens from the United States.
You can read a longer fact here.
Fans
Speaking of the coronavirus crisis, Trump stated that initially “we had very few fans.”
Done first: “Too Few Fans” is less egregious than Trump’s repeated claim that he was left with no fans, but it’s still misleading at best. According to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration inherited around 19,000 fans from the Obama administration, including 16,660 of those who were ready to deploy as of March this year; As of June 23, the Trump administration had distributed less than 11,000 fans.
CNN’s Holmes Lybrand, Tara Subramaniam and Marshall Cohen contributed to this article.
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