Donald Trump

The Hillary for America press campaign has unveiled a virtual laundry list of falsehoods from Donald Trump Monday night.  The campaign is citing the following corrections from independent fact checkers from a host of media outlets including AP, CBS News, Factcheck.org, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Voluntary Fact Check,  Bloomberg News and Politifact. — Grace

Independent Fact Checkers Debunk Trump’s False Statements During Monday’s Debate

After the first presidential debate it’s clear there is only one candidate who is ready to be commander-in-chief: Hillary Clinton. On Monday night, Trump lied repeatedly, showing once again he lacks the knowledge, values and temperament to be president. There was so much inaccurate information during the debate that we decided to compile all the fact checks in one place.  There are quite a few.

1. AP: “Trump, denying Clinton’s accusation that he supported the Iraq war: ‘Wrong. Wrong.’ Later: ‘I was against the war in Iraq.’ […] THE FACTS: There is no evidence Trump expressed public opposition to the war before the U.S. invaded”
2. AP: “TRUMP, when Clinton accused him of calling climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese: ‘I did not say that.’[…] THE FACTS: Yes he did, in the form of a 2012 tweet: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
3. AP: “TRUMP: ‘I’ve been under audit for almost 15 years.’ […] THE FACTS: Trump hasnever provided evidence to the public that he is actually under audit. A letter released by his tax attorneys never used the word, merely describing his tax returns under continuous examination. Trump has declined to provide the IRS’ formal notice of audit to The Associated Press and other news outlets..”
4. AP: “TRUMP to Clinton: ‘You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.’ […] THE FACTS: Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 and is 68 years old. She reached adulthood in 1965. The Islamic State group grew out of an al-Qaida spinoff, al-Qaida in Iraq in 2013, the year Clinton left the State Department.”
5. AP:“TRUMP: ‘My father gave me a small loan in 1975.’ […] THE FACTS: Trump got a whole lot more than a small loan. Aside from $1 million in financing from his father, Trump received loan guarantees, bailouts and a drawdown from his future inheritance.”
6. AP:“TRUMP: ‘You don’t learn a lot from tax returns.’ […] THE FACTS: Americans stand to learn plentyif he releases his tax returns like other presidential candidates have done.”
7. AP: “TRUMP: ‘Our jobs are fleeing the country. They’re going to Mexico. They’re going to many other countries. … Ford is leaving, thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio.” […] THE FACTS: There are no official data on job flows between countries.” However, the U.S. economy has added nearly 14.9 million jobs since 2010, when the economy bottomed out after the recession.
8. AP: “TRUMP: President Barack Obama ‘has doubled (the national debt) in almost eight years.’ […] THE FACTS: Trump’s expressed concern about the national debt obscures that his own policies would increase it by much more than Clinton’s,according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”
9. AP: “TRUMP: ‘Had we taken the oil (in Iraq) — and we should have taken the oil — ISIS would not have been able to form.’ […] THE FACTS: Donald Trump’s assertion that the U.S. should have seized Iraq’s natural resources would have required that it also seize control of the country and at no point was the U.S. in a position to do so.”
10. AP:“TRUMP: ‘The Fed, by keeping interest rates at this level, the Fed is doing political things. … The Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton.’ […] THE FACTS: This is a recurrent claim by Trump with no evidence to back it up.”
11. AP: “TRUMP on hacking of the Democratic National Committee: ‘I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC… I mean it could be Russia. But it could also be China. It could be lots of other people.’ […] Trump’s refusal to point the finger at Moscow is at odds with the prevailing position of the U.S. intelligence community.”
12. AP: “TRUMP said a 1970s racial discrimination case against his real estate business was settled ‘with no admission of guilt’ and that the case was “brought against many real estate developers.” […] THE FACTS: The first claim is technically correct; the second is ”
13. AP:“TRUMP: ‘Stop-and-frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City. Tremendous beyond belief.’ […] THE FACTS: Trump is correct that the murder rate has plummeted in New York in the last two decades. But the same could be said for many other large American cities during the same period, and there’s certainly no way to credit stop-and-frisk for the decline.”
14. Bloomberg: On Trump denying Clinton’s accusation that he supported the Iraq war: Fact check: “When asked whether he supported going to war in Iraq in a 2002 appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show, Trump said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
15. Bloomberg: “Trump: ‘So Ford is leaving. You see that, their small-car division leaving. Thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio, they are all leaving.'” Fact check:”[T]he company is cutting ‘zero’ jobs in the U.S.”
16. Bloomberg:When Clinton accused Trump of calling climate change a hoax created by the Chinese, Trump claimed: “I did not. I do not say that.” Fact check: “Trump has a history of questioning climate change.”
17. CBS News: “TRUMP:  ISIS has ‘oil all over the place, including the oil, a lot of the oil, in Libya.’ [..] FACT CHECK: Claudia Gazzini, a Tripoli-based senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the Washington Post that it was simply not true that the Islamic State has control of any Libyan oil.”
18. CBS News:“Donald Trump claims ‘stop and frisk’ policies in New York City worked well and brought the crime rate ‘way down.’ […] FACT CHECK: Trump said murder is up in New York City, but murder is actually down 4.3 percent this year-to-date.”
19. CBS News: “Donald Trump claims that Hillary Clinton started the ‘birther’ movement. […] FACT CHECK: This has been Trump’s line since the ‘birther’ issue resurfaced this fall, but Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly denied being involved.”
20. CBS News: “Donald Trump claims that his lawyers have told him not to release his tax returns. […] FACT CHECK: In the letter from Trump’s lawyers released by his campaign, they do NOT say the taxes should not be released.”
21. CBS News: “Donald Trump says Ford is ‘thousands of jobs’ are leaving Michigan and Ohio. […] FACT CHECK: “Their small car division is leaving” – This part is true, but Ford says it will affect “zero” U.S. jobs.”
22. CNN: “Trump claimed that New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy was not ruled unconstitutional — but it was.”
23. CNN: “Trump claimed that a false conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama’s birthplace began with Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.”  Rating: “FALSE”
24. CNN: “Trump: “Murders are up” in NYC” Rating: “FALSE”
25. CNN: “Trump: Stop-and-frisk wasn’t ruled unconstitutional” Rating: “FALSE”
26. CNN: “Trump: ‘She was involved’ in spreading birtherism’ REALITY CHECK: FALSE”
27. CNN: “Trump: ‘I did not support the war in Iraq.’ REALITY CHECK: FALSE”
28. CNN: “Trump: ‘I am going to cut taxes big league and you are going to raise taxes big league. End of story.’ REALITY CHECK: MOSTLY FALSE”
29. CNN: “Trump: ‘You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life’ REALITY CHECK: FALSE”
30. CNN: “Trump: ‘Ford is leaving. Their small car division — thousands of jobs, leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio.’ REALITY CHECK: FALSE”
31. CNN: “Trump denies calling pregnancy ‘an inconvenience’ to employers REALITY CHECK: FALSE”
32. org: “Trump was right in saying that Ford is moving its small-car division overseas, but wrong in claiming that as a result, thousands of jobs are leaving Michigan and Ohio. Ford’s CEO insists not a single job will be lost in the U.S.”
33. org: “Trump left the false impression that the Obama administration failed to disclose the full amount paid to Iran in January to settle a long outstanding claim.”
34. org: “Clinton said Trump thinks ‘climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.’ Trump denied it. In 2012, he tweeted that the Chinese had created global warming but later said he was joking.”
35. org:  “Trump claimed without evidence that the Clinton campaign in 2008 was pushing ‘very hard’ the false story that President Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii.”
36. org: “Trump claimed ‘the record shows’ he was opposed to the Iraq War before it started… but there is no record of that.”
37. org: “Clinton said Trump’s businesses had filed for bankruptcy six times; he said it was four. Clinton is right.”
38. org: “Trump on Father’s Loan — Trump claimed his father gave him a ‘very small loan in 1975’ of $1 million, from which he built his real estate company. But Clinton claimed it was $14 million. Clinton was right and Trump was wrong.”
39. org: “Trump on Trade Deficit — Trump said the U.S. has ‘a trade deficit with all of the countries that we do business with, of almost $800 billion a year.’ Trump has made this claim over and over again, but it’s not true.”
40. org: “Trump claimed that ‘you don’t learn that much from tax returns.’ But experts disagree. As we’ve written, tax returns could provide information on overseas income, foreign bank accounts, effective tax rates and charitable giving habits. Conflicts of interest could also be exposed, as well as how Trump’s individual tax policy squares with his proposals.”
41. org: “Trump said that President Bill Clinton ‘approved NAFTA, which is the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.’ Actually, the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush.”
42. org: “Trump on ISIS and Oil in Libya — Trump said that ISIS has ‘oil all over the place, including … a lot of the oil in Libya, which was another one of [Clinton’s] disasters.’ That’s wrong.”
43. org: “Trump on Chicago Murders — Trump claimed that ‘almost 4,000 have been killed [in Chicago] since Barack Obama became president.’  That’s missing context. Like the nation overall, Chicago has seen a drop over the last several decades in the number of homicides, as we wrote in July.”
44. New York Times: “Donald J. Trump attacked the Federal Reserve on Monday night, telling the millions of people watching the first presidential debate that the nation’s central bank is acting as an arm of the Democratic Party at the expense of the economy. It is an extraordinary accusation, backed by no evidence, that plows across a bipartisan line.”
45. New York Times: “Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said that Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, was ‘doing political things’ by holding interest rates at low levels.” […] This accusation, which Mr. Trump has leveled several times in recent weeks, is roundly rejected by Fed officials — including those who agree it is time to raise interest rates. It is also rejected by a wide range of independent observers.”
46. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump saying Mrs. Clinton had been ‘fighting ISIS your entire adult life.’ In reality, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, began as an Al Qaeda affiliate that sprang up in Iraq as the Sunni insurgency amid the power vacuum created by the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003.”
47. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump saying the Islamic State would never have come into power if the United States had stayed in Iraq. The assertion is impossible to disprove, but it’s unlikely that 10,000 troops remaining in Iraq would have made much of a difference — especially in Syria and Libya, where the United States never had troops.”
48. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s assertion that many NATO countries do not contribute their full share to NATO. […] [H]e was wrongabout NATO failing to fight terrorism. NATO was in Afghanistan starting in 2003 — part of the battle against Al Qaeda.”
49. New York Times: “ Mr. Trump said he opposed the war in Iraq before it began. But during the buildup to the war, he expressed his support in an interview with Howard Stern, according to audio unearthed by BuzzFeed.”
50. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s claim that the United States is “not updating” its nuclear arsenal and the Iran nuclear deal. Mr. Trump is wrong.”
51. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s claim that Ford is leaving the United States and taking ‘thousands of jobs’ with it. […] [T]he move will not result in job losses in the United States.”
52. New York Times: “Mr. Trump said that the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, ‘is the worst trade deal’ in American history, and possibly in world history. […] [T]he Congressional Research Service concluded in 2015 that the ‘net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest.’”
53. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s claim that ‘we have a trade deficit of almost $800 billion a year,’ blaming trade deals for this. He has the number wrong.”
54. New York Times: “Mr. Trump said the Federal Reserve is ‘doing political things’ by holding interest rates at a low level. He charged that the Fed would raise rates as soon as Mr. Obama left office. This is a baseless accusation.”
55. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s loan from his father. […] Mr. Trump owed his father and his father’s company about $14 million.”
56. New York Times: “On Mr. Trump’s claims that murders are up in New York City. Mrs. Clinton said they are down. Mrs. Clinton is correct.”
57. Politifact: “Trump told Clinton, ‘You heard what I said about (the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal), and all of a sudden you were against it.” Ruling: “FALSE”
58. Politifact: “Trump said, ‘NATO is opening up a major terror division. … I’m sure I’m not going to get credit for it, but that was largely because of what I was saying and my criticism of NATO.” Ruling: “FALSE”
59. Politifact: “Trump says Clinton’s energy agenda ‘will cost the U.S. economy over $5 trillion.'” Ruling: “FALSE”
60. Politifact: Trump “[s]ays top Clinton advisers ‘were pressing’ birther movement stories ‘very hard.'” Ruling: “FALSE”
61. Politifact: Trump: “‘I did not — I did not — I do not say that. I do not say that’ climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.’” Ruling: “MOSTLY FALSE”
62. Politifact: Trump: “‘You will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the Federal Elections’ to see the financial disclosure form than by looking at tax returns.” Ruling: “FALSE”
63. Vox: “Trump touted [stop and frisk’s] effectiveness in reducing murders and other crime in the nation’s most populated city…. [But] stop and frisk didn’t have much, if any, of an effect on crime, despite Trump’s claims.”
64. Washington Post Fact Checker: “When Hillary Clinton raised a 1973 racial discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department against Trump’s company, Trump dismissed it as a run-of-the-mill action.” Ruling: “Four Pinocchios”
65. Washington Post Fact Checker:Trump: “On November 1 … new [Obamacare premium] numbers are coming out which will show 40, 50, 60 percent increases. They want to delay it until after the election.” Ruling: “Four Pinocchios”
66. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘Under my plan I will be reducing taxes tremendously.’ […] Trump’s tax plan would raise federal income taxes on more than half of America’s single parents and one-fifth of families with children.”
67. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump cites an Internal Revenue Service audit as his justification for not releasing his federal income tax returns, but the audit does not prohibit from releasing the returns.
68. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘As far as tax return, you don’t learn that much’ from tax returns. […]Trump is being misleading.Tax experts say that tax returns provide insight about a person’s finances in several key areas.”
69. Washington Post Fact Checker:Trump: “‘In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings. … Stop and frisk worked very well … it brought the crime way down [in New York City].’ […] While Trump says stop-and-frisk policies should be enacted in Chicago as it was implemented in New York City, those policies have not been correlated with crime.”
70. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘I did not support the war in Iraq.’ […] This is just totally false.We have found no evidence of his early opposition to the invasion.”
71. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘In addition, I was just endorsed by ICE.’ […] Trump is actually referring to the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, which is the union representing ICE officers.”
72. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq…’ […] As Clinton noted in her response, the terms of departure from Iraq were set by the George W. Bush administration.”
73. Washington Post Fact Checker: Trump: “‘I said it to you once, had we taken the oil — and we should have taken the oil — ISIS would not have been able to form either, because the oil was their primary source of income.’ […] Trump has been called out before on this point, but he keeps saying this false claim.“