News Reporter: Fact Checker: The problem with Trump’s bank-robber claim

Friday, 11 October 2024

Fact Checker: The problem with Trump’s bank-robber claim

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The truth behind the rhetoric.

By Glenn Kessler

Donald Trump has been busy spreading false claims about hurricane relief efforts, accusing the Biden administration of failing to provide adequate assistance. As part of his critique, he claims there is no money available for hurricane relief because it was spent already to handle the surge of migrants at the southern border.

"They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank," Trump charged, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, adding the falsehood that Vice President Kamala Harris wants undocumented immigrants to vote for her. As we have explained many times before, this would be against the law and there is no evidence to support this claim.

Even though Trump was once president, he still appears to have little clue about the appropriations process. Congress, as part of a short-term spending bill, recently provided nearly $20 billion to the FEMA disaster relief fund. FEMA has a program to assist migrants, but under Biden, no FEMA money for disasters was shifted for migrants.

As for bank robbers? When Trump was president, he did exactly what he claims Biden did — take money from FEMA's disaster fund to pay for migrant programs at the southern border.

To read the full fact check and learn the Pinocchio rating, please click the link below.

Read the full fact check

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Fact checking Harris's round of media appearances

After sticking mainly to set events and campaign rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris has been on an extensive media tour in recent days, from traditional shows such as CBS's "60 Minutes" to popular targeted programs such as the "Call Her Daddy" podcast and Howard Stern's radio show. Harris tends to hew to the facts — and many of the same lines — leaving little opportunity for fact-checking. We looked at claims that caught our attention from her appearances, including:

"The first bill we proposed to Congress was to fix our broken immigration system" (Misleading — It was not a border security bill but mostly focused on creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and expanding legal immigration.)
"We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half." (False — Fentanyl seizures doubled, which could mean the drug flow has increased.)

To read the full fact check, please click the link below.

Read the full fact check

We're always looking for fact-check suggestions.

You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here.

About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy or depressing subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face.

Scroll down to read other election-related fact checks.