Fact check: Trump makes at least 14 false claims in first post-hospital interview on Fox Business

Trump made at least 14 false claims during the 55-minute session with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. He also made at least one misleading allegation.

Speaking about his tariffs on China, Trump said: “No one has ever heard of tariffs. They have never even heard of tariffs. No one. In fact, when I first started doing it, they did not even. did not know what it meant. ”

Who pays the tariffs on China

Trump again claimed that China was paying the $ 28 billion in tariff revenue that he then distributed to farmers.

Facts first: This money does not come from China. Study after study found that Americans bear the cost of Trump’s tariffs on imported Chinese products. And US importers, not Chinese exporters, pay the actual tariff to the US government.

The legality of postal votes

Trump said of the ballot papers: “But it is a corrupt system because they send out millions of ballot papers.”

Facts first: It is simply not “corrupt” to send out millions of ballots; there is extremely little fraud with postal voting. You can read a longer fact check here.

Ballot papers and North Carolina

Trump has continued with unfounded allegations of widespread fraud with ballot papers. He cites, as one supposed example, that “in North Carolina, they lost 1,000 ballots or were deceived.”

Facts first: It is not true that 1,000 ballots in North Carolina are ‘lost’ or ‘cheated’.

Trump may have referred to an error that resulted in thousands of voters in North Carolina receiving absent ballot papers (not themselves) with incorrect information, or another case in which less than 500 voters in one North Carolina state accidentally received two ballot papers. None of the cases involved fraud, and none of the mistakes would make people vote more than once.

Ballot papers and a river

Trump again claimed that “they found trays in a river.”

Facts first: There is no evidence that trays were found in any river; White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not identify a river when she was pushed about Trump’s claim last week.

Trump may have referred to a case in Wisconsin in which three pickups of mail that were supposed to go to the local post office were found along the road and in a ditch off Highway 96 in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, according to the sheriff’s office in Outagamie County , reports the local TV station WBAY. The sheriff said some of the mail were absent ballots, but the Wisconsin Electoral Commission later said there were no absentee ballots from Wisconsin; it did not definitively state whether there were ballot papers from other states.

Governor & Voting in Nevada

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak is “in control of the ballot papers” in the state, warning law enforcement that he is “watching very closely” for possible violations.

Facts first: Sisolak is not ‘in control of the ballot papers’. State’s Leading Electoral Officer, Foreign Minister Barbara Cegavske, is a Republican. And provincial officials are the ones who send out the ballot papers.

Nevada Governor and Signatures

Trump claims that “in Nevada they do not want a signature on the ballot papers.”

Facts first: This is just fake. Nevada still needs signatures from postal voters and continues to check the signatures; its new election bill, signed by Sisolak, says signatures will still be checked.

Coronavirus recovery

Trump said of his coronavirus infection, “You catch this thing. A lot of people caught it.” He added a little later: “What happens, you get better. This is what happens: you get better.”

Facts first: Of course, it is not true that everyone infected with the virus is only getting better, as Trump has suggested. More than 212,000 Americans died according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Many others may have it long term damage of the virus.

Coronavirus treatments

Trump talked about the Regeneron antibody cocktail he received to treat the coronavirus, and another treatment from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, ‘we have – I call it drugs.

Facts first: It is false to suggest that these drugs cure. There is no cure for the coronavirus. And while it is possible that these therapies may be an effective treatment, their effectiveness has not yet been tested in a large number of patients; At the time Trump spoke to Bartiromo, none of the drugs had once obtained an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, let alone full approval for widespread use.

Road approval times

Trump claims it “took twenty years before a road was approved” before taking office, warning that it would take 20 years to build a highway if former Vice President Joe Biden reinstated the regulations.

Facts first: There is no clear basis for the claim that the environmental approval process for roads or highways lasted ’20 years’.

“I’ve never heard of a 20-year NEPA approval process. That does not mean there has never been one, but if it does, it will be an extremely rare outlier, not the norm,” he said. said Brad Karkkainen, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert in environmental and land use law.

The Federal Highway Administration says on its website that the average completion time for the NEPA process was 44 months in 2016 and 46 months in 2019.

Biden’s joke

Trump has denied reports that he made disparaging remarks about members of the military, saying Biden is the one who actually insulted the troops because he called them a bunch of dirty bastards. (Trump reiterated this assertion to a good friend.)

Facts first: This is very misleading; Biden’s comments was a clear joke. In a 2016 speech to troops in Abu Dhabi, Biden spoke of a lieutenant who was present and said that he was the person who nominated her personally for the Air Force Academy; when the audience did not cheer as he wished, he said, “Clap for it, stupid fools.”

Even the right-wing website Breitbart reports that Biden’s comments are a joke.

Opinion poll

Trump has said he does not believe polls show he is pursuing Biden; this is his right, and polls are not always accurate. But he also said “the polls are awkward.”

Facts first: There is simply no evidence that a significant poll is ‘knee-jerk’ to reduce support for Trump (or knee-jerk for any other reason).

Sen Kamala Harris

Trump said of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris: “She is a communist.”

Facts first: We give Trump wide space to express opinions about his opponents, but this is just false. Harris, a liberal, has never expressed support for communism or for anything close to communist ideology.

Trump and Lincoln

Trump said, as in the past, “I have done more for the Black community than any president other than Abraham Lincoln, and that is true.” He added: “And people do not even challenge me about it.”

Facts first: The claim itself is not true – Trump’s achievements do not come close to the scope of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson – nor is it true that people do not even dispute this claim. Although people in Trump’s own ally, historians and journalists definitely do.

Trump and Churchill

Trump once again compared himself to the late Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, and claimed that Churchill would go up on the roofs during the Nazi bombings in World War II and deliver provocative speeches.

Facts first: Churchill did not give speeches from rooftops during bombings, seven Churchill scholars told us; he sometimes snuck to the rooftops to watch the bombing, but he did not address the public from there.

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