WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden spared Tuesday in their first of three debates, hoping to move indecisive voters who plan to vote by mail and per person in the last week before the election to vote on 3 November.
A look at how their statements from Cleveland match the facts:
Crime
COMMANDMENT: “The fact is that violent crime has decreased by 17%, 15%, in our administration.”
THE FACTS: It’s too high.
Overall, the number of violent crimes dropped by about 10% from 2008, the year before Biden took office as vice president, to 2016, his last full year in office, according to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
But the number of violent crimes increased again during Obama and Biden’s last two years in office, which increased by 8% from 2014 to 2016.
For example, more people were killed in the U.S. in 2016 than at any other time under the Obama administration.
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TRUMP: “If you look at what’s going on in Chicago, where 53 people were shot dead and eight died. If you look at New York where it’s going up like nobody’s ever seen anything … the numbers go up by 100 150, 200%, crime, it’s crazy going on. ”
THE FACTS: Not quite. The statistics in Chicago are true, but these numbers are only a small snapshot of crime in the city and the United States, and its strategy highlights how data can be easily shaped to fit the moment. As for New York, Trump may have been talking about shooting incidents. They are in New York by about 93% so far this year, but total crime is down by about 1.5%. Murders increased by 38%, but there were 327 murders compared to 236, still low compared to previous years. Compared to a decade ago, for example, crime has dropped by 10 percent.
An FBI report released Monday for the year 2019 found that violent crime has declined over the past three years.
Virus response
TRUMP: Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘said very strongly:’ masks are not good. “Then he changed his mind and said, ‘Masks, good.’ ‘
THE FACTS: He emphasizes an important context. Trump tells the story in a way that ignores important lessons learned when the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, raising doubts about the credibility of public health advice.
Early in the outbreak, a number of public health officials appealed to everyday people not to wear masks, fearing they were already in short supply of personal protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses in hospitals.
But that has changed as the extremely contagious nature of the coronavirus has become apparent, as well as the fact that it can be spread by small droplets blown into the air by people who may not show any symptoms.
Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, along with Dr. Robert Redfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Steven Hahn of the Food and Drug Administration and Dr. the importance of wearing masks and practicing social distance. Redfield has repeatedly said that it can be just as effective as a vaccine if people take the advice to heart.
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TRUMP, on coronavirus and its campaign rallies: “So far we have not had a problem. It’s outside, according to experts it’s a big difference. We have huge crowds. ”
THE FACTS: This is not correct.
Trump held a rally in Tulsa in late June, drawing thousands of participants as well as large demonstrations.
The director of the health department in Tulsa City-County said the protest was likely to have contributed to a dramatic increase in new cases of coronavirus there. By the first week of July, Tulsa County had confirmed more than 200 new daily cases, which had reached a record high. This is more than twice the number the week before the rally.
TRUMP, addressing Biden: “You did not do very well with the swine flu. H1N1. You were a disaster. ‘
THE FACTS: Trump regularly twists what happened in the 2009 pandemic, which killed far fewer people in the United States than the coronavirus now kills. To begin with, Biden as vice president did not lead the federal response. And the reaction was faster outside the gate than when COVID-19 came to the US
The flu surveillance center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then sounded the alarm after two children in California became the first people to be diagnosed with the new flu strain in this country.
About two weeks later, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency against H1N1, also known as swine flu, and the CDC began releasing anti-flu drugs from the national stockpile to prepare hospitals. In contrast, Trump declared a state of emergency in early March, seven weeks after the first US case of COVID-19 was announced, and the country’s health care system struggled for months with a shortage of critical supplies and tests.
More than 200,000 people have died in COVID-19 in the US. The CDC puts the US death toll in the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic at about 12,500.
TRUMP, who addresses Biden on the death of the US due to COVID-19: ‘If you were here, it would not be 200,000 people, it would be 2 million people. You did not want me to ban China, which was heavily infested … If we had listened to you, the country would have been left wide open. ”
THE FACTS: This accusation is out of the question. Biden has never opposed Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China. Biden was slow to take a stand on the matter, but when he did, he supported the restrictions. Biden never advised leaving the country ‘wide open’ in the face of the pandemic.
Trump repeatedly and falsely claims that he banned travel from China. He limited it.
The U.S. restrictions that went into effect on February 2 have continued to allow access from the Hong Kong and Macao territories to China to the United States over the past five months. The Associated Press reports that more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals settled in the territories entered the United States in the first three months after the travel restrictions were imposed.
In addition, more than 27,000 Americans returned in the first month after the entry into force of mainland China. U.S. officials have lost track of more than 1,600 of those who were supposed to be monitored for virus exposure.
Dozens of countries have taken similar steps to control travel from hot spots before or about the same time as the US did.
Economy
BID: Trump will be the ‘first (president) in American history’ to lose his job during his presidency.
THE FACTS: No, if Trump lost re-election, he would not be the first president in American history to lose his job. It happened under Herbert Hoover, the president who lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt when the Great Depression caused huge job losses.
Official work records only date back to 1939 and in that period no president ended his term with fewer posts than when he started. Trump appears to be on track to lose his job during his first term, which will make him the first since Hoover.
Soccer
TRUMP: “I brought back the football. By the way, I brought back Big Ten football. It was me and I am very happy to do so. ”
THE FACTS: Check the tire better. While Trump appealed to the Big Ten conference to hold his football season in 2020, he was not the only one. Fans, students, athletes and university towns also urged at the conference to start playing again.
When the Big Ten announced earlier this month that they were reversing an earlier decision to cancel the season due to COVID-19, he tweeted his thanks: “It’s my great honor to help!”
The conference includes several major universities in states that may be the most important in the election, including Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.
high Court
PRAY, about nominated Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett: “She thinks the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.”
THE FACTS: This is not right.
Biden talks about Trump’s choice to replace the late Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett was critical of the Obama-era law and the court rulings confirming it, but she has never said it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on November 10, and the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to rule the law unconstitutionally.
Health care
TRUMP: ‘Drug prices will drop by 80 or 90%.’
THE FACTS: This is a promise, not a reality.
And as a promise, it’s a clear piece.
Trump could not get legislation through Congress to lower drug prices. Significant regulatory action by his administration is still ongoing and is likely to be challenged in court.
There is no plan on hand that will lower drug prices as dramatically as Trump claims.
Delaware State
TRUMP: “You said you were going to the state of Delaware, but you forgot the name of your college. You’re not in the state of Delaware. There’s nothing smart about you, Joe. ‘
THE FACTS: Trump quotes Biden out of context. The former vice president, a graduate of the University of Delaware, did not say he attended Delaware State University, but made a broader point about his years of ties to the Black community.
Trump refers to remarks that Biden regularly makes about the campaign, usually when he speaks to black audiences, that he ‘goes back a lot with HBCUs’, or black universities and colleges. Biden has spoken many times over the years in Delaware State, a public HBCU in his home state, and the school said it was the first time he had announced his bid for the Senate – his political start.
“I started an HBCU, Delaware State – now I do not want to hear anything negative about Delaware State,” Biden told a city hall in Florence, South Carolina, in October 2019. “They are my people. ”
Biden regularly expresses his deep political ties with the Black community and sometimes says that he “grew up politically” or “started politically” in the Black church. In front of some audiences, he omitted the word ‘political’, yet with a clear context about his larger point. The rulings form part of the standard section of his stump and state that Delaware has ‘the eighth largest black population in percentage’.
A Delaware State University spokesman, Carlos Holmes, said Biden’s comments needed to refer to his political beginnings, saying that in 1972 Biden announced his bid on the DSU campus.
Biden’s broader point is to push back the idea that he’s a Johnny-Come-Lately with the Black community or that his political connections there are solely due to Barack Obama’s vice president.
Associated Press authors Josh Boak, Colleen Long, Ellen Knickmeyer, Calvin Woodward, Hope Yen, Mark Sherman, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Bill Barrow, David Klepper, and Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.