When a politician gives rally speeches lasting nearly two hours, it’s hard to decide what factually challenged statements should be examined. In the case of Donald Trump, it’s especially difficult because he frequently says so many things that are false or misleading.
Last Saturday, in Georgia, when Trump spoke for 1 hour and 55 minutes, he devoted huge chunks of time to inaccurate accounts of the legal cases against him. He made nearly five dozen references to President Biden, but they consisted mostly of epithets — such as “incompetent,” “crooked,” “out of control,” and “weak, angry, flailing.” Trump also repeatedly labeled Biden as “corrupt” — but he applied the same charge to MSNBC, the 2020 elections, the judge in a libel case Trump lost, the judge in a business fraud case Trump lost, the prosecutor in a pending Georgia case, New York state and finally the entire United States.
“We have a very corrupt country,” he declared during a 30-second rant that touched on allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help him win, his first impeachment over blocking aid to Ukraine, Hunter Biden’s laptop, his firing of FBI director James B. Comey and unproven allegations that Pfizer forged informed consent signatures for clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine.
On top of that, Trump frequently recycles false claims of achievement from when he was president that we have repeatedly fact-checked, including:
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* He created the greatest U.S. economy in U.S. history (not by any metric).
* He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).
* He did more for Black people than any president but Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).
* He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).
* He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced U.S. tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).
* He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (False).
Rather than repeat ourselves, we are going to focus on new false claims that Trump has introduced to his repertory in recent months. Many appeared in his Georgia speech, but others came up in other recent speeches, a town hall and an interview. Any of these would be worthy of at least Three or Four Pinocchios, but we don’t award Pinocchios when we do quick roundups.
Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case
“He’s [Biden] at great jeopardy, really, but they said: ‘Look, he’s incompetent to go to court but he can be president.’ Figure that one. In other words, he can’t represent himself at court because he’s incompetent.” (Fox News town hall, Feb. 20)
“Well, Joe Biden had more boxes than any human being ever, and they let him off. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be let off that way. They say: ‘He’s incompetent, we’ll let him off.’” (rally in Richmond, March 2)
“He has no clue, like with the documents hoax. How about that? He’s not competent to stand trial, but he’s allowed to be the president.” (rally in Rome, Ga., March 9)
Trump faces a criminal trial for hoarding classified documents after he left office and refusing to return them. But Biden also discovered that he had retained classified documents at his home and office. He returned them, but a special counsel was appointed to see if he, too, should face criminal charges. The special counsel, Robert K. Hur, concluded that it would be tough to win a case — because Biden had reasonable defenses, the facts were occasionally murky and Biden (unlike Trump) had cooperated fully with the investigation. In a controversial passage, he wrote that jurors probably would view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Trump has now absurdly twisted this sentence to falsely claim that Biden was not competent to stand trial — which under the law means a person is incapable of understanding or assisting in their defense. In reality, Hur was making the point that, if a case were brought to trial, Biden could make a credible case he did not willfully retain the documents, especially because he cooperated. In many cases, the special counsel decided that the documents were mishandled by mistake — or were not especially important anymore, despite the classification level.
During a congressional hearing on his report Tuesday, Hur was asked if he found that the president was senile and exhibited a decline of cognitive ability. “I did not,” Hur said. “That conclusion does not appear in my report.”
In his report, Hur addressed the difference between the Trump and Biden document cases. “Several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear,” Hur wrote. “After being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”
The United States is a Third World country
[...]
Congo has released murderers into the United States
“Last night they had four from the Congo. Where in the Congo do you live? I wonder what beautiful place do you live in the Congo? ‘We are from prison.’ What did you do? ‘Murder.’ They’re in the United States right now, right? This is what they’re allowing.” (Richmond)
“The Congo — very big population coming in from the jails of the Congo.” (speech at Eagle Pass, Tex., Feb. 29)
“The other day from Africa, the Congo, they had numerous prisoners caught from the Congo.” (Rome, Ga.)
As part of his falsehood on prisons being emptied, Trump often conjures up another bit of fiction — that a conflict-riven country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is shipping murderers to the United States. Fair says no such decline in Congo’s prison population is shown in the data. Instead, the DRC’s prison population keeps growing.
When Trump was president, he greatly restricted refugee admissions, stranding Congolese who had been waiting in camps seeking to reunite with relatives already in the United States. Still, Customs and Border Protection data show that during his presidency there was a surge in undocumented arrivals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2017 and 2018, no one from Congo sought to cross either the southern or northern border, but in 2019 and 2020, that changed, with 614 and 267 encounters, respectively.
15 million migrants have entered the United States under Biden
“They’ve let in 15 million people … and I think it’s going to be 18 million by the time we get the worst president in our history out of office.” (Richmond)
“I think the number is 15 million people already, I think it’ll be 18 to 20 million people by the time we get rid of this guy. Think of it, that’s bigger than New York state. I think it’s going to be close to 20 million people.” (Rome, Ga.)
“This is the worst invasion probably. We’ve never had anything like it. No country has ever had anything like it. The number today could be 15 million people, and they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.” (Super Tuesday remarks.)
Trump never met a number that he could not double, triple or quadruple. Here, he manages to take a real number — 4 million to 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it threefold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.
Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 8.5 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through December of last year. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (about 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.
CBP has released more than 2.3 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through September, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to between 4 and 5 million.
That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.
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