News Reporter: Fact Checker: Fact-checking President Trump's claims on Charlottesville, race relations and terrorism

Friday, 18 August 2017

Fact Checker: Fact-checking President Trump's claims on Charlottesville, race relations and terrorism

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

Fact-checking President Trump’s claims on Charlottesville, race relations and terrorism

This week, we focused on claims made by President Trump in the aftermath of Saturday’s white nationalist rally and counter-protest in Charlottesville, Va., where a woman was killed and many others were injured.

First, on Trump’s claim about permits. In blaming both sides for the violence, Trump twice asserted that both sides shared blame because unlike the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who obtained a permit to “innocently and very legally protest,” the counter-protesters lacked a permit and were “very, very violent.”

There were two rallies by white nationalists — one on the University of Virginia campus on Friday night, and one at Emancipation Park on Saturday afternoon. No permits were needed to march on the U-Va. campus on Friday night. They had a permit for Emancipation Park, but counter-protestors did not need a permit to gather in the park or on the sidewalks outside, a city official said.

Moreover, the counter-protesters did have permits for rallies on Saturday, at two other parks blocks away from Emancipation Park. Trump got it wrong, no matter how you slice it — earning Four Pinocchios.

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Trump’s false claim on investing in black communities

When asked by a reporter whether he is concerned about race relations in the United States in the wake of Charlottesville, Trump said race relations have "gotten better or the same." Trump claimed his administration is "spending a lot of money on the inner cities," and that "fixing the inner cities" is a priority.

Trump constantly — and incorrectly — uses “inner cities” (meaning low-income urban neighborhoods) to describe black America. But this is wrong. In recent decades, black residents made an exodus from urban cities and into the suburbs. Plus, this ignores the large black population in the rural South.

Moreover, Trump’s proposed fiscal 2018 budget is incongruous with his claim. He proposed steep reductions to a variety of programs that disproportionately affect minority communities and lower-income Americans, from education to housing. There is a $225 billion backlog to fix America's inner cities, yet Trump’s budget does not prioritize them or increase spending, like he claims.

Actions speak louder than words. We awarded Four Pinocchios.

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Trump on domestic terrorism vs. international terrorism

An Ohio man is accused of ramming a car into the crowd protesting the white nationalists’ rally, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and sending numerous protesters flying into the air. The man is believed to espouse extremist ideals, and the Attorney General said his attack met the definition of “domestic terrorism” (Americans attacking Americans based on U.S.-based extremist ideologies).

Domestic terrorism and homegrown extremism based on ideologies are major concerns. Yet Trump typically does not address this when speaking about the threat of terrorism in the United States. Instead, he focuses on the threat of terrorism by international groups or foreigners.

This week, Trump’s claim from earlier this year about foreigners’ threat of terrorism became relevant again because 1) of Charlottesville, and 2) a lawsuit was filed against the federal government for Trump’s use of terrorism data. He had claimed that “the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country."

Yet the Justice Department data he relies on for that claim do not support his argument. Among other problems, he looks only at international terrorism, which does not accurately account for the terrorism threat to the U.S. We awarded Four Pinocchios to his gross exaggeration of government data.

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