News Reporter: Fact Checker: No, President Trump, the U.S. missile defense system does not have 97 percent success rate.

Friday, 13 October 2017

Fact Checker: No, President Trump, the U.S. missile defense system does not have 97 percent success rate.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

No, President Trump, U.S. missile defense does not have 97 percent success rate.

In discussing the threat posed by North Korea and its rush to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), President Trump offered a reassuring image: a missile defense so robust that a single interceptor had a 97 percent success rate and just two interceptors would assuredly knock the missile out of the sky. Is this anything close to reality?

Nope. Trump appears to be referring to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) in Alaska and California, which is administered by the Missile Defense Agency. Some $40 billion has been spent on developing the project, which is supposed to prevent ballistic missiles from attacking the homeland. MDA officials have been optimistic about the program's effectiveness, tossing around statistics that sound a bit like Trump's 97 percent figure.

But this is not accurate. The military suggested it has achieved a 97 percent rate when you use four interceptors — not one interceptor. So Trump’s description of a single interceptor having this capability is of base.

Moreover, this appears based on faulty assumptions and overenthusiastic math. The odds of success under the most ideal conditions are no better than 50-50, and likely worse. The president speaks with confidence, but descends into hyperbole. No single interceptor for ICBMs has a 97 percent rate. We award Four Pinocchios.

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(Michelle’s two cats don’t quite get along.)

President Trump has made 1,318 false or misleading claims over 263 days — averaging 5 a day.

We have now completed two-thirds of our year-long project analyzing, categorizing and tracking every false or misleading claim by Trump, as well as his flip-flops. As of our latest update on Wednesday, Oct. 10, or his 264th day in office, the president has made 1,318 claims over 263 days. He has averaged five claims a day, even picking up pace since the six-month mark. (See the interactive graphic here.)

With almost exactly 100 days left to go in our year-long project, Trump is inching ever closer to breaking 2,000 claims. Here are some of his repeated false/misleading claims from the past month:

On taxes: Trump repeatedly claimed that the United States pays the highest corporate taxes or that it is the highest-taxed nation. The latter is false; the former is misleading, as the effective U.S. corporate tax rate (what companies end up paying after deductions and benefits) end up being lower than the statutory tax rate.
On hurricanes: Trump repeatedly got basic facts wrong about Hurricane Irma in Florida and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, claiming they made landfall as Category 5 storms — the most destructive kind — but they touched down as Category 4 and eventually reached Category 5 strength. (This is an important distinction for weather disasters.) He exaggerated the progress of the federal government's relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the number of lives saved by the Coast Guard in after Hurricane Harvey in Texas.
On NFL: He claimed multiple times that NFL ratings are "down massively" and "going way down" because of the players' protests during the national anthem before the game begins. But this lacks context. The TV audience size for NFL games is down this year, but it's unclear exactly why. "Average attendance at regular season NFL games last year was the highest since 2007," according to the Associated Press. And professional football games remain among the most-watched televised events, the AP reported.

(giphy.com)

We’re always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@myhlee, @GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @nikki_lew or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker or myhlee). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.

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–Michelle Ye Hee Lee