Let s See Donald Make America Great Again Now
AP FACT CHECK: Is Trump's America swell once again or hellscape?
At their national convention, Republicans portrayed the U.South. equally a land fabricated neat again by President Donald Trump
WASHINGTON -- The Republican National Convention begged this question: Why are President Donald Trump'due south most fervent supporters describing the state of his marriage as a hellscape?
It was perhaps the central paradox for voters wondering what to believe in the rhetoric, considering it defied logic to believe it all. Are Americans living in a dystopia or in an America made not bad over again by Trump?
4 years agone, candidate Trump promised that if he won, "The criminal offense and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety volition exist restored."
Now? "I've never seen our streets go this bad so quickly," Pat Lynch, representing tens of thousands of New York police officers, told the GOP proceedings. "We are staring down the barrel of a public safety disaster." He said this in remarks singing Trump'southward praises.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump'south personal lawyer and a former New York mayor, spoke of years of "carnage" and violence rising now, and implored, "Mr. President, make our nation safe again."
All of the convention's apocalyptic rhetoric was in service of bashing Trump challenger Joe Biden, Democratic mayors and national Democrats both in and out of part as beingness soft on violence and chaos. Yet the landscape of lawlessness they described is Trump's America now.
Hyperbole suffused the proceedings, both when Trump and his supporters hailed his tape and when they denounced the other side. Outright falsehoods were heard every dark on the social justice protests, the coronavirus, the economy and Biden's agenda.
A choice from the week:
PROTESTS
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE, expressing support for people in compatible: "People like Dave Patrick Underwood, an officer in Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California." — Midweek.
THE FACTS: Pence is blurring what happened, leaving the impression that Underwood was a victim of rioters. Underwood was not killed past demonstrators in Oakland who were protesting for racial justice.
Federal regime say Underwood was fatally shot by Steven Carrillo, an Air Forcefulness staff sergeant they say has ties to a far-right, anti-government motility, while Underwood was guarding a federal courthouse during protests in May. Officials believe Carrillo used the protests as a embrace for the slaying and his subsequent escape.
Carrillo, 32, hatched a plot to target officers with at least one other accomplice online, federal authorities allege. Over an eight-day span before his capture, they say, Carrillo fatally shot Underwood and wounded his partner, so killed a California sheriff's deputy and injured 4 others.
Of the two law enforcement officers killed, Pence only mentioned the 1 who was in the vicinity of the protest. The other is Santa Cruz County Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, who authorities say was killed past Carrillo while pursuing him in June.
—-
RACIAL INEQUALITY
KENTUCKY Chaser Full general DANIEL CAMERON: "On the economy: Joe Biden couldn't do it, but President Trump did build an economy that worked for everyone, particularly minorities." — Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Not accurate.
Republicans can talk successfully about the turn down in unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic workers. But that'southward just one gauge; plenty of economic troubles and inequalities abound for minorities. Minority groups still lagged behind white people with regard to incomes, wealth and home buying before the pandemic. But when the disease struck, it became clear that the economy did not work well for everybody equally the job losses and infections unduly hit minorities.
Blackness unemployment at present stands at xiv.6%. Hispanic unemployment is 12.9%. The white unemployment charge per unit is 9.two%. For every dollar of total wealth held by white households, Blacks have just v cents, according to the Federal Reserve. It's four cents for Hispanics. That is non bear witness of an economy working "especially" for minorities.
———
Law
ERIC TRUMP: "Biden has pledged to defund the police." — Wed.
REP. STEVE SCALISE of Louisiana: "Joe Biden has embraced the left's insane mission to defund them."
THE FACTS: No, Biden has explicitly rejected the call by some on the left to defund the police force. He has proposed more money for police force, conditioned on improvements in their practices.
Biden'south criminal justice agenda, released long before the protests over racial injustice, proposes more federal money for "training that is needed to avert tragic, unjustifiable deaths" and hiring more officers to ensure that departments are racially and ethnically reflective of the populations they serve.
Specifically, he calls for a $300 one thousand thousand infusion into federal community policing grant programs. That'due south more money, not less.
———
Black LIVES MATTER
GIULIANI: "Black Lives Matter and antifa sprang into action and, in a wink, they hijacked the peaceful protest into vicious, vicious riots." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: That's a hollow claim.
There's no evidence that Blackness Lives Thing or antifa, or whatsoever political group for that matter, is infiltrating racial injustice protests and injecting violence.
In June, The Associated Press analyzed court records, employment histories and social media posts for 217 people arrested in Minneapolis and the Commune of Columbia, cities at the centre of the protests earlier this year.
More than 85 percent of the people arrested were local residents, and few had affiliation with any organized groups. Social media posts for a few of those arrested indicated they were involved in left-leaning activities while others expressed back up for the political right and Trump himself.
Local police departments were forced to knock down widespread social media rumors that busloads of "antifa," a term for leftist militants, were coming to violently disrupt cities and towns during nationwide racial justice protests. In June, Twitter and Facebook busted accounts linked to white supremacy groups that were promoting some of those falsehoods online.
———
COVID-nineteen
TRUMP: "The United states of america has among the everyman example fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the earth." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: Not true. Non if you consider Russian federation, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and India to exist major countries.
The U.S. sits correct in the middle when it comes to COVID-19 mortality rates in the twenty nations most impacted by the pandemic, co-ordinate to data from the Johns Hopkins Academy Coronavirus Resource Center.
Of the xx, United mexican states has the highest mortality rate at ten.viii deaths for every 100 confirmed COVID cases, followed past Ecuador at v.viii. Saudi Arabia had the everyman charge per unit of the 20 nations at ane.2, followed by People's republic of bangladesh, the Philippines, Russian federation, Morocco, India, Argentina, Due south Africa and Chile.
The U.S. had the 10th lowest of the 20 nations, with a mortality rate of three.1.
When the middle looked at the information in another way, analyzing the COVID death rate for every 100,000 residents, the U.S. fares even worse. Only three nations — Brazil, Chile and Peru — posted higher death rates.
Understanding deaths every bit a percentage of the population or every bit a pct of known infections is problematic because countries track and written report COVID-19 deaths and cases differently. Many other factors are in play in shaping a death toll besides how well a state responded to the pandemic, such every bit the overall health or youth of national populations.
———
TRUMP: "Instead of following the science, Joe Biden wants to inflict a painful shutdown on the entire country. His shutdown would inflict unthinkable and lasting impairment on our nation'southward children, families, and citizens of all backgrounds." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: That'south false. Biden has publicly said he would close down the nation's economy merely if scientists and public health advisers recommended he do so to stalk the COVID-nineteen threat. In other words, he said he would follow the scientific discipline, not condone it.
Speaking Dominicus in an ABC interview, Biden said he "will be prepared to do any information technology takes to save lives" when he was asked if he would be willing to shut the country again.
"So if the scientists say close information technology downwardly?" asked ABC's David Muir.
"I would shut it down," Biden responded. "I would listen to the scientists." The former vice president has said repeatedly that no i knows what January would await like.
———
DONALD TRUMP JR. on the coronavirus response: "The president quickly took action and shut downwardly travel from Cathay." — Monday.
THE FACTS: No, he didn't shut down travel from China. He restricted it. Dozens of countries took like steps to control travel from hot spots before or effectually the same time the U.Southward. did.
The U.S. restrictions that took result Feb. 2 continued to let travel to the U.S. from Communist china'south Hong Kong and Macao territories over the past five months. The Associated Press reported that more than than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals based in those territories entered the U.Due south. in the first 3 months later the travel restrictions were imposed.
Additionally, more than 27,000 Americans returned from mainland China in the first month subsequently the restrictions took event. U.S. officials lost track of more than 1,600 of them who were supposed to exist monitored for virus exposure.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also told the AP that the federal government was slow to sympathize how much the coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped bulldoze the dispatch of outbreaks beyond the U.S. in belatedly February. Trump didn't announce travel restrictions for many European countries until mid-March.
———
EDUCATION
TRUMP: "Biden also vowed to oppose school choice and oppose all charter schools." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: That's simulated. Biden doesn't oppose charter schools. He opposes federal money going to for-profit charter companies.
Such companies are only a slice of the charter schoolhouse marketplace, meaning Biden's position wouldn't substantially alter the lease landscape that is dominated past nonprofit organizations.
Biden does oppose federal money for tuition vouchers.
———
HEALTH Intendance
TRUMP: "We protected your preexisting conditions. Very strongly protected preexisting ... and you don't hear that." — Mon.
THE FACTS: You don't hear it because it's not true.
People with such medical problems take health insurance protections because of President Barack Obama's health care police force, which Trump is trying to dismantle.
One of Trump's alternatives to Obama'south law — brusque-term wellness insurance, already in identify — doesn't have to cover preexisting conditions. Another alternative is association health plans, which are oriented to pocket-sized businesses and sole proprietors and do cover those weather.
Neither of the two alternatives appears to accept made much divergence in the market.
Meanwhile, Trump's administration is pressing the Supreme Courtroom for total repeal of the Obama-era law, including provisions that protect people with preexisting weather condition from health insurance discrimination.
With "Obamacare" however in place, preexisting atmospheric condition proceed to be covered by regular individual health insurance plans.
Insurers must accept all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the aforementioned standard premiums to healthy people and those who are in poor health, or have a history of medical problems.
Before the Affordable Care Act, whatever insurer could deny coverage — or charge more — to anyone with a preexisting condition who was seeking to buy an individual policy.
———
BIDEN'South AGENDA
NIKKI HALEY, old ambassador to the United nations, on the Democrats: "They want a government takeover of health intendance. They want to ban fracking and impale millions of jobs." — Monday.
REP. JIM Jordan of Ohio: "Defund the constabulary, defund edge patrol and defund our military." — Mon.
RONNA McDANIEL, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee: "You deserve to know that they would ban fracking and eliminate fossil fuels, which would impale millions of skillful-paying jobs and raise the cost of driving our cars and heating our homes. You deserve to know that they want a complete government takeover of our health care system, then moms like me won't be able to have our kids to the aforementioned pediatrician they've been seeing for years." — Monday.
THE FACTS: Those aren't Biden's positions. A number of Republican speakers seized on proposals of the Democratic left, in some cases distorting those positions, and assigned them to Biden, who doesn't share those views.
He does not favor a government takeover of health care; instead he proposes edifice on Obama'due south police force, which preserves the private insurance marketplace while expanding Medicaid.
Biden also did non endorse proposals to cease edge enforcement or fifty-fifty to decriminalize illegal crossings.
Biden supports banning only new oil and gas permits, fracking included, on federal country. Only nearly U.S. production is on private state. The government says production on federal country deemed for less than 10% of oil and gas in 2018.
In a March 15 primary debate, Biden misstated his energy policy, suggesting he would let no new fracking. His campaign quickly corrected the tape. Biden has otherwise been consistent on his middle-of-the-road position, going so far every bit to tell an anti-fracking activist that he "ought to vote for somebody else" if he wanted an immediate fracking ban.
———
VIRUS TESTING
IVANKA TRUMP: "Our president speedily mobilized the full force of authorities and the private sector ... to build the about robust testing arrangement in the world." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: Her assertion of superior U.Due south. testing for COVID-19 is dubious. The U.S. repeatedly stumbled with testing in the early weeks of the outbreak, allowing the virus to speedily spread in the U.S. The president's own experts say the U.S. is nowhere about the level of testing needed to control the virus.
The U.S. currently is conducting virtually 750,000 tests a day, far short of what many public wellness experts say the U.Due south. should be testing to control the spread of the virus. Looking to the fall, some experts accept called for 4 1000000 or more than tests daily, while a group assembled past Harvard University estimated that 20 million a day would be needed to keep the virus in bank check.
Public-health authorities acknowledge testing was a critical failure in the crucial early months. The number of tests being done has since surged but remains inadequate. Many who practice become tested take unduly long waits for results, during which time they can be spreading the virus to others.
———
Islamic republic of iran
SEN. TOM Cotton of Arkansas: "Joe Biden sent pallets of cash to the ayatollahs." — Thursday.
THE FACTS: This is a distorted tale Trump and Republicans dearest to tell. Aye, the U.South. flew cash to Iran in the Obama years, but it was money the United states owed to that state.
Cotton besides played into the convention's pattern of attributing every questionable activity of Obama's administration to Biden personally.
———
Economy
PENCE: "Four years ago nosotros inherited ... an economy struggling to break out of the slowest recovery since the Not bad Low. ... In our start three years we built the greatest economy in the world." — Wednesday.
LARRY KUDLOW, Trump economical adviser: Trump was "inheriting a stagnant economy on the forepart end of recession," and under the president, "the economy was rebuilt in 3 years." — Tuesday.
THE FACTS: This is imitation. The economy was healthy when Trump arrived at the White Business firm.
Even if the recovery from the 2008 fiscal crisis was slow, Trump took office with unemployment at a depression four.vii%, steady job growth and a falling federal budget deficit. The longest expansion in U.S. history began in the middle of 2009 and connected until the get-go of the year, spanning both the Obama and Trump presidencies.
The U.Southward. economy did benefit from Trump'southward 2022 tax cuts with a spring in growth in 2018, simply the budget deficit began to climb every bit a outcome of the revenue enhancement breaks that favored companies and the wealthy in hopes of permanently expanding the economic system.
Almanac growth during Obama's 2d term averaged well-nigh 2.iii%. Trump notched a slightly improve ii.5% during his starting time three years, just the state swung into recession this yr because of the coronavirus and will probably exit Trump with an inferior track record to his predecessor over 4 years.
———
War
SEN. RAND PAUL: "Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war, which President Trump has long called the worst geopolitical mistake of our generation." — Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Trump had no more foresight on this matter than Biden. Neither was against it when it started.
When asked during a Sept. 11, 2002, radio interview if he would support an Iraq invasion, Trump responded, "Yeah, I gauge and so." The adjacent calendar month, Biden as a senator voted to authorize George W. Bush-league to use force in Iraq.
The next March, just days later the U.S. launched its invasion, Trump said it "looks like a tremendous success from a armed forces standpoint."
It wasn't until September 2003 that Trump first publicly raised doubts well-nigh the invasion, saying "a lot of people (are) questioning the whole concept of going in in the first place." In November 2005, Biden called his Senate vote to authorize force a mistake.
———
TAXES
ERIC TRUMP: The president slashed taxes and "wages went through the roof." — Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Non quite. Wage growth did improve, simply there is clearly however a roof on workers' incomes.
The 2022 taxation cuts appear unlikely to deliver on their promised pay increases. White House economists argued that incomes would surge by at least $4,000 considering of the lower corporate tax rate. That has yet to occur and seems unlikely given the current recession.
But boilerplate hourly wages did meliorate to a 3.5% annual proceeds by Feb 2019, much ameliorate than the 2.7% almanac gain in December 2022 before Trump became president. The problem was that wage growth then began to slip through the end of last yr despite the steady hiring. Wage gains simply accelerated once again with the pandemic and layoffs of millions of poor workers that artificially raised average wages.
What workers have yet to see is a meaningful change in the distribution of income. More than than half of total household income goes to the top 20% of earners, according to the Demography Bureau. Their share has increased slightly nether Trump with data that is electric current through 2018. The bottom twenty% of earners go merely 3.1% of total income, only as they did before Trump'south presidency.
———
FARMING
CRIS PETERSON, from a Wisconsin dairy family: "Our entire economy and dairy farming are once over again roaring back. One person deserves the credit and our vote, President Donald J. Trump." — Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Not everyone in the dairy manufacture views it as booming, especially equally larger operations are putting smaller family farms out of business concern.
The Agriculture Department reported this summer that "dairy herds fell by more than one-half between 2002 and 2019, with an accelerating charge per unit of pass up in 2022 and 2019, even as milk production continued to grow."
Office of the problem is that smaller farms face college product costs. Farms with more than 2,000 cattle are more than likely for their sales to exceed their total costs, while smaller farms are more than likely to operate at a loss past this metric, according to government figures.
———
SUBURBS
PATRICIA McCLOSKEY on Democrats: "They want to abolish the suburbs birthday by catastrophe single-family unit home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it dorsum." — Monday.
THE FACTS: That's a false account of what Biden supports. In 2015, during the Obama administration, a regulation took effect intended to ensure that communities face racial segregation in housing.
The rule required more than 1,200 jurisdictions receiving federal Housing and Urban Development block grants and housing aid to analyze their housing stock and come upward with plans to combat patterns of segregation and discrimination. It did not eliminate zoning for unmarried-family homes in the suburbs.
Trump revoked the dominion; Biden supports information technology. But Biden does not support requiring municipalities to refrain from building single-family homes equally a condition for getting money from HUD.
McClosky and her husband have been charged with a felony for brandishing guns outside their St. Louis home as racial justice protesters passed.
———
VOTING FRAUD
TRUMP, on mail-in voting: "Absentee — like in Florida — absentee is proficient. But other than that, they're very, very bad." — Mon.
THE FACTS: He's making a faux stardom. Mail-in ballots are bandage in the same way equally absentee mail ballots, with the same level of scrutiny such as signature verification in many states.
In more than 30 states and the District of Columbia, voters have a correct to "no excuse" absentee voting. That means they tin use mail-in ballots for any reason, regardless of whether a person is out of boondocks or working.
In Florida, the Legislature in 2022 voted to change the wording of such balloting from "absentee" to "vote-by-postal service" to make clear a voter can cast such ballots if they wish. And so at that place is no "absentee" voting in that state, equally Trump alludes to.
More broadly, voter fraud has proved exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2022 ranked the run a risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of by elections.
———
TRUMP, on the November vote count and Democrats: "We have to be very, very careful and this time they are trying to do information technology with the whole post office scam. They will blame it on the post part. You tin see them setting it up." — Monday.
THE FACTS: No postal scam has emerged from the Democrats. Instead Trump has given credence to suspicions that he wants to suppress mail-in voting to help his chances in the election.
He's said as much. In an interview this month, he admitted he's trying to starve the U.S. Post of coin in order to brand information technology harder to procedure an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could toll him the election.
———
TRUMP, on defective ballots in an election: "What does defective mean? It means fraud." — Mon.
THE FACTS: No, lacking ballots do not equate to fraud. The overwhelming bulk aren't.
According to the Brennan Middle for Justice, the vast majority of ballots are disqualified because they arrive late, a detail worry this twelvemonth because of contempo U.Due south. Mail service delays and an expected surge in mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ballots also are accounted defective if at that place is a missing signature — mutual with newer voters unfamiliar with the procedure — or it doesn't match what's on file. In addition, some states crave absentee voters to go a witness or notary to sign their ballots.
"None of those are fraud," said Wendy Weiser, director of Brennan'southward democracy programme at NYU School of Law. When suspected cases are investigated for potential fraud, studies have borne out the chief reason for defects is voter mistake, she said.
Defective ballots also disproportionately impact voters of color, and recent lawsuits take successfully challenged some requirements as posing health risks or disenfranchising voters. Before this year, for instance, a federal judge ruled that a Southward Carolina requirement to have witnesses to mail-in ballots could put voters' wellness at take chances; the requirement was suspended it for the June primary. Others states including Minnesota and Rhode Island have also suspended that requirement due to the pandemic.
———
Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz in Chicago; David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island; Bill Barrow in Atlanta; Matthew Lee, Paul Wiseman and Matthew Daly in Washington; and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
———
EDITOR'S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
———
Notice AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-fact-check-trumps-america-great-hellscape-72720018
0 Response to "Let s See Donald Make America Great Again Now"
Post a Comment