Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump, who trails with women in recent national polls, participated in a Fox News town hall event on Tuesday in front of a female audience.
He told a bunch of lies.
The Republican presidential nominee made at least 19 false claims in the one-hour event that aired Wednesday morning – most of them debunked earlier in the campaign but some of them new, notably including an absurd claim that he is “the father of IVF.”
Trump’s falsehoods included repeat lies on the subjects of abortion, immigration, inflation and national security. Here is a fact check.
Opinions on Roe v. Wade: Trump repeated his false claim that “everybody,” even “the Democrats” and “the liberals,” wanted the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision overturned and the power to set abortion policy left to individual states; he added, “Nobody wanted it to be in the federal government.”
It’s not even close to true that “everybody” wanted Roe overturned or that “the Democrats” did. A large majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority of Democrats wanted the Supreme Court to preserve Roe in 2022, according to numerous polls. Democratic support for Roe exceeded 80% in many polls and 90% in some polls.
Trump and in vitro fertilization (IVF): Trump declared that he is entirely in favor of IVF. But Trump also falsely claimed, “I’m the father of IVF.” This is just nonsense. The first child conceived through IVF was born in 1978; Trump, clearly, had nothing to do with it, and he said in this same town hall answer that he only recently had IVF explained to him by a Republican senator.
Harris’ border role: Trump, criticizing his election opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, repeated his false claim that President Joe Biden “made her border czar.” Biden never made Harris “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
Harris’ border visits: Trump, speaking about Harris and the border, repeated his false claim that “she never even went there.” Harris did go to the border as vice president, in Texas in mid-2021 and then again in Arizona last month; many Republicans had criticized Harris prior to the 2021 visit for not having gone, and some later argued that she didn’t go frequently enough, but the claim that she “never” went has not been true for more than three years.
An immigration chart and migration levels: Trump repeated his false claim that his favorite immigration chart – which he had fortunately turned his head to look at when a gunman tried to kill him at a campaign rally in July – shows that “the day I left office” had the lowest level of border crossings.
The chart doesn’t show that. In fact, the arrow on the chart that Trump keeps saying points to a record-low level of southern border crossings on the day or week he left office actually points to April 2020, when Trump still had more than eight months left in his term and global migration had slowed to a trickle because of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers at the southern border increased each month through the end of Trump’s term.
The number of migrants: Trump, speaking about migration, repeated his false claim that “21 million people came in over the last three years, with them.” Through August, the country had recorded about 10.3 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden-Harris administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called “gotaways” who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
The border wall: Trump repeated his false claim that he built “571 miles of wall” on the southern border. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump – including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Immigration judges: Trump, criticizing the fact that asylum seekers who arrive at the border have access to a US legal process before they are deported, falsely claimed that “No other country has judges at the border.” In reality, the US is far from the only country to let asylum seekers make their case before judges or legal tribunals.
“This statement is patently false,” James Hathaway, then a law professor and Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan, told this reporter during Trump’s presidency in response to a previous version of Trump’s claim. “It is completely routine in other countries that, like the U.S., have signed the UN refugee treaties for asylum-seekers to have access to the domestic legal system to make a protection claim (and to be allowed in while the claim is pending).”
The legal status of immigrants in Springfield, Ohio: Trump falsely claimed, “They just dropped 30,000 illegal aliens in Springfield, Ohio.”
This is false in more than one way. While we don’t know the immigration status of each and every Haitian immigrant in Springfield, the community is, on the whole, in the country lawfully. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”
Second, nobody “dropped” the immigrants in Springfield; the city’s Haitian residents were not sent there by a government resettlement program. Rather, they independently decided to move to the city because of employment opportunities, affordable housing and the presence of a Haitian community, among other factors.
And while there is no official tally of the number of immigrants in Springfield, Trump’s “30,000” figure exceeds local estimates. The website for the city of Springfield says there are an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants in the county that includes Springfield, where the total population is about 138,000. Chris Cook, the county’s health commissioner, said in July that his team estimated the best number was 10,000 to 12,000 Haitian residents in the county.
Immigrants in Springfield: Trump claimed that immigrants in Springfield are on “probation,” and he added, “Probation is for prisoners.” This is false in two ways.
First, Trump got his terms wrong. Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program – not “probation” – that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And though the word “parole” is most commonly used in the context of criminal prisoners who are let out early on certain conditions, in the context of immigration policy, “parole” does not mean that someone was let out of prison or had ever been in prison.
Rather, as the federal government explains on its website, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows the secretary of homeland security to use their discretion to parole any noncitizen applying for admission into the United States temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” The government has used the parole authority in the past to grant entry to certain people fleeing crises in Cuba, Vietnam, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Current inflation: Trump tried to dismiss the decline in inflation over the last two years, and he falsely said, “You know when they say, ‘Well, we’re stopping inflation cause it went down now to 4.5%.’ Well, 4.5% is very high, very high, meaning it’s going up. Because it was at 3.” The most recent available inflation rate at the time Trump spoke here was 2.4% in September, not 4.5%, and this was the slowest rate since February 2021, not a jump from a lower rate.
Cumulative inflation under Biden-Harris: Trump, speaking about total inflation under the Biden-Harris administration, said, “They say 21%, I think it’s 50%.” Trump’s “50%” figure is baseless; cumulative inflation during the Biden-Harris administration has indeed been about 21%.
Inflation records under Biden-Harris: Trump repeated his false claim that the US has all-time record inflation under the Biden-Harris administration, saying, “We had the worst – they say it’s in 48 years – I say ever. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country.”
The US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920.
Trump’s tax cuts: Trump repeated his false claim that “I gave you the largest tax cuts in the history of our country.” Expert analyses have found that his 2017 tax cut law was not the largest in US history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Oil from Venezuela: Trump, criticizing Venezuelan oil, repeated his false claim that “the only refinery that can do it is in Houston, Texas.” Various other refineries in the US refine Venezuelan oil.
Trump and US troops in Syria: Trump falsely claimed, “I got out of Syria.” Trump reduced the US military presence in Syria but kept a contingent of troops there throughout his presidency, even after he claimed US troops were “out” (other than to protect oil sites, he added). Two US troops died in vehicle rollovers in Syria in 2020, his last calendar year in office.
Trump and the defeat of ISIS: Trump, touting the defeat of the ISIS terror group, repeated his false claim that “it was supposed to take literally five years and I did it in a month.” Aside from the fact that Trump doesn’t merit sole credit, the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into his presidency.
The US military presence in South Korea: Trump falsely claimed the US has “42,000 soldiers” in South Korea. Pentagon statistics show that Trump’s figure is a significant exaggeration; as of June 30, 2024, there were 27,076 US military personnel in South Korea, including civilians working for the Department of Defense.
South Korea’s payments for the US military presence: Trump, speaking again of the US military presence in South Korea, falsely claimed that “they” (South Korea) “don’t pay,” adding that Biden “said they don’t pay anymore.”
In fact, South Korea agreed under Biden and Harris to pay more for the US military presence than it had been paying during the Trump era. Completing the negotiations that began under Trump, South Korea agreed in March 2021 to a 2021 payment increase of 13.9% — meaning its payment that year would be about $1 billion — and then additional increases in 2022 through 2025 tied to increases in South Korea’s defense budget.
The two countries reached a tentative agreement early this month for another deal covering the period from 2026 to 2030, which would begin with an 8.3% increase over the 2025 payment.
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