News Reporter: Fact Checker: President Trump's false claims about Obamacare, wiretapping and ... his own false claims

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

President Trump’s false claims about Obamacare, wiretapping and … his own false claims

President Trump criticized fact-checkers at a speech this week: “If it’s off by one-hundredth of a percent, I end up getting Pinocchios.”

But we beg to differ. Under our standards, being off by 100th of a percentage point would likely result in a Geppetto Checkmark. The reason Trump has so many Four-Pinocchio ratings is that many of his claims lack evidence or a factual basis.

Take this week, for example. In the past seven days, we logged 70 false or misleading claims from Trump in our 100 Days of Trump Claims tracker.

Here’s a look at unsupported claims Trump made this week about wiretapping, Obamacare and … even his own falsehoods.

On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee grilled FBI Director James Comey about Trump’s claims that former president Barack Obama had ordered wiretaps in the Trump Tower. Comey firmly rejected Trump’s allegations.

Then something odd happened: The president live-tweeted his responses during the testimony, and committee members asked Comey about Trump’s tweets in real time. But the tweets were misleading, inaccurate or simply false — and Comey’s responses refuted each tweet. We rounded up all the claims, of Trump’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad Twitter day.

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Onto Obamacare. While making his case for the GOP replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Trump repeatedly used his favorite — and inaccurate — talking points. We looked at a series of them, and three are below. See the full roundup here.

"They also want people to know that Obamacare is dead; it's a dead health-care plan. It's not even a health-care plan, frankly."

This is false. Credible estimates suggest the health-care law boosted the number of people with health insurance by 20 million. The Congressional Budget Office said the individual market would be stable in most markets at least for the next 10 years under the Affordable Care Act.

We have no idea what he's referring to, but it may be the "death spiral," which critics say is inevitable for the health-care law. Of course, Republicans are responsible for some of the increased premiums and lack of sign-ups in state exchanges.

For example, Republican lawmakers restricted a key payment mechanism called "risk corridors," which was intended to help stabilize premiums and protect insurance companies from losses in the initial three years of the law. And within his first week in office, Trump pulled back federally sponsored advertising encouraging people to sign up for health exchanges during the open enrollment period.

"I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company."

This is false. Tennessee is divided into eight geographic areas that insurers use to set their rates. All eight rating areas have at least one insurance carrier, and three of them have two carriers. FactCheck.org found "it is possible that some parts of the state will be without marketplace coverage next year." But that's not the same as Trump claiming half the state has no insurance company.

"Many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare."

There are anecdotes of some doctors, especially older ones, who are frustrated about adopting electronic health records under Obamacare. But physicians leave the industry for many reasons, mainly aging and burning out. As the baby boomer patient population gets older and has more complex conditions, there is greater demand on physicians and their services.

Recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows physicians are actually retiring two years later. The group said there is “no evidence of a declining interest in medicine since the ACA took effect. Applications to medical school are at an all-time high."

Time Magazine interviewed Trump about his falsehoods this week. But during the interview, he repeated a bunch of falsehoods. Here are four claims. View the full roundup here.

"Huma and Anthony, you know, what I tweeted about that whole deal, and then it turned out he had it, all of Hillary's email on his thing." — No. Weiner did not have all of Clinton's emails on his laptop. The FBI ultimately concluded none of the emails added new information to the investigation into Clinton's private server.
"NATO, obsolete, because it doesn't cover terrorism.” — False. NATO has been involved in counterterrorism since 1980, and especially since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
"They register incorrectly, and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” — No. There are instances of people illegally voting, but they are rare.
Q: “The claim that Muslims celebrated 9/11 in New Jersey…”
Trump: “Well if you look at the reporter, he wrote the story in The Washington Post.” — This is a thoroughly debunked Four-Pinocchio claim. There’s no evidence that thousands of Muslims cheered, and the Post story he cites does not support his claim at all.

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Scroll down for this week’s Pinocchio roundup.

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee