Trump's speech: 92 minutes, 34 fact checks Note: We've had a long week and are taking a break. The newsletter will return Aug. 2. Former president Donald Trump's 92-minute speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on the final night of his party's national convention rambled, often incoherently, through a hit parade of his favorite falsehoods, many of them ad-libbed instead of drawn from his prepared remarks. Our fact check assessed 34 claims, including: - "The biggest tax cuts ever." (False. Trump's 2017 tax cut was the 8th largest in the past 100 years.)
- "The biggest regulation cuts ever." (No, experts credit the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration.)
- "They [Democrats] used covid to cheat [in the election] and [we're] never going to let it happen again." (No fraud was ever proven.)
- "Now Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, which would have never happened." (Trump pulled out of a deal that was designed to prevent that from happening.)
- "We had the greatest economy in the history of the world." (False, by any measure.)
- "Under this administration, groceries are up 57 percent, gasoline is up 60 and 70 percent. Mortgage rates have quadrupled." (All of these numbers are exaggerated.)
- "We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far." (False. The U.S. ranks 10th in proven reserves.)
- "I got rid of NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made, and replaced it with USMCA, which is, they say, the best trade deal ever made." (USMCA was a modest updating of the North America Free Trade Agreement.)
- "We defeated 100 percent of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was said to take five years. 'Sir, it will take five years, sir.' We did it in a matter of a couple of months." (It took two years -- and "100 percent" is not right either.)
To read the full fact check, please click here Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Fact-checking the first three nights of the convention We also provided detailed fact checks of the first three nights of the convention, looking at a total of 34 claims. Among them: - "They [the Biden administration] promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday." —Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. (Biden had nothing to do with it; Trans Day of Visibility is always on March 31.)
- "Sixty-six percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck." —Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. (A similar survey during Trump's presidency found that 74 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck.)
- "It [illegal immigration] happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children." —Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. (There is no evidence for this hyperbolic claim. Under a law adopted in 1996, noncitizens who vote can face a fine or a prison term as long as a year, or both — not to mention deportation.)
- "President Trump handed Biden a booming economy and a strong nation. All Joe had to do was leave it alone and take a nap." —Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. (False, Biden took office when the economy was in free fall because of the pandemic.)
- "When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq. … Somehow a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right [on the war]." —Vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance (False, Trump was a lukewarm supporter of the Iraq invasion)
To read the fact check of the first night, click here. To read the fact check of the second night, click here. To read the fact check of the third night, click here. 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 subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read other fact checks of major Trump speeches By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly ● Read more » | | | |
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