News Reporter: Fact Checker: Trump earns his first Geppetto Checkmark of truth as president! (plus 9 more Pinocchios, alas)

Friday, 10 February 2017

Fact Checker: Trump earns his first Geppetto Checkmark of truth as president! (plus 9 more Pinocchios, alas)

The truth behind the rhetoric

Trump earns his first Geppetto Checkmark of truth as president!

Regular readers know we sparingly use the Geppetto Checkmark for true claims. But every once in a while, we come across a claim that sounds too remarkable to be true — and then turns out to be, indeed, correct. (Trump received three Geppetto Checkmarks during the campaign.)

We ran into one of those factoids this week. In remarks to the nation’s police chiefs, Trump claimed “the number of officers shot and killed in the line of duty last year increased by 56 percent from the year before.”

This claim jumped out at us for two reasons: Trump has a tendency to exaggerate criminal justice statistics and he previously cited an incorrect statistic about police fatalities.

Turns out, he was right. The number of officer deaths ebbs and flows by year, but 2016 was notable. The number of police shot and killed was an increase of 56 percent from 2015, largely spurred by deadly ambush attacks by gunfire. In 2016, 21 officers died from ambush attacks — more than double the average from the previous decade.

Still, we’ll note it’s statistically safer to be a police officer today than it was in the 1970s. We commend Trump’s staff for describing this figure accurately in the president’s prepared remarks, and correcting a previously erroneous talking point on police fatalities. We awarded the rare Geppetto Checkmark.

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Alas, Trump earned nine more Pinocchios this week (and posted 11 problematic tweets).

Many readers requested an explanation of one of the administration’s go-to claims about Trump’s immigration executive order, which is on hold pending a review by the courts.

Trump and White House officials claim that the seven Muslim-majority countries named in the executive order “are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror.” Readers wanted to know: Is that the case?

Not really. Obama signed into law restrictions on a program that allows citizens of 38 countries to travel to the U.S. without first getting a visa. The original intent of the law was to scrutinize people who had traveled to Syria and Iraq, and detect possible radicalization. Then, Iran and Sudan were added during congressional negotiations; the Obama administration included Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

But the Obama administration specifically rejected citizenship-based restrictions, and carved out exemptions for dual citizens. That’s the polar opposite of Trump’s executive order, which restricts entry based on citizenship. So, while the names of the seven countries are the same, the approach is totally different. We awarded Two Pinocchios.

We’re always looking for suggestions. If you hear something fact-checkable, fill out this form, e-mail us or tweet us: @myhlee, @GlennKesslerWP or using #FactCheckThis. Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.

Scroll down for this week’s Pinocchio roundup.

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee