Former President Donald J. Trump has made inaccurate attacks on his successor during his first public appearance since leaving the White House, reviving well-known falsehoods in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday.
In a speech full of false and misleading allegations, Mr. Trump reiterated the lie that he won the 2020 election, falsely claiming that President Biden and the Democrats “just lost the White House.”
Here is a fact check.
What mr. Trump said
“We have brought illegal crossings to historic lows.”
Untrue. The fear of unauthorized migrants is the best measure of illegal border crossings. Under Mr. Trump said there were 200,000 arrests on the southern border in the 2020 financial year; just over 850,000 in 2019; not less than 400,000 in 2018; and about 300,000 in 2017. None of these numbers are unprecedented.
The figure for the 2020 financial year – during which a pandemic began – was the lowest since the 1970s, while the figures for Mr. Trump’s first two years in office were at the same level as the numbers under President Barack Obama.
what mr. Trump said
‘First Fauci said you do not need masks, no masks, no goods. Then suddenly, now he wants double masks. ‘
This is misleading / exaggerated. The government’s initial guidance on wearing masks was mixed up, but health agencies promoted the practice long before Mr.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in the early days of the pandemic that it did not recommend that the general public wear masks. Dr Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading specialist in infectious diseases, said in March that ‘there is no reason to walk around with a mask on,’ because it could lead to shortages for health workers, but he is’ not against ‘the practice.
But by April, when the virus spread faster across the country, dr. Fauci and the CDC begin to encourage the wearing of cloth masks. (Mr. Trump, meanwhile, wore a mask and mocked Mr. Biden for doing so in the fall.)
Dr. Fauci said earlier that Mr. Trump misrepresented his remarks, pointing out that he had been consistently begging people to wear masks for months.
what mr. Trump said
‘He effectively ordered to stop ICE and stop virtually all deportations. Everyone, killers, everyone. ”
Untrue. The Biden government ordered a 100-day hiatus over deportations, but that did not apply to ‘killers’ and all. In a February memorandum, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would “focus the agency’s resources on maintaining and removing civilian immigration on threats to national security, border security and public safety.” This includes someone who has been convicted of a serious crime, such as murder.
Moreover, the immigration of immigrants is not the only function of the agency. As ICE scaled back removal actions, it continued investigations into other illegal activities.
what mr. Trump said
“Border security is just one of the many issues on which the new government has already betrayed the American people. He did not talk about these things. I debated him. He did not talk about this. He was not – what he signed with the executive orders, these were not things that were discussed. ”
This is misleading. Immigration policy was briefly discussed during the second presidential debate. There is no to Mr. Biden did not ask and did not mention most of his suggestions, but Mr. Trump is wrong that Biden’s immigration orders are a surprise. In fact, Mr. Trump has explicitly criticized and shown ads that were attacked on the same proposals.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly warned about – and often mischarged – the plans of Mr. Pray to increase admission to refugees, place a moratorium on deportations and create a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.
what mr. Trump said
“And when I asked the questions on television, during the debate, Chris Wallace in this case and others refused to answer.”
This is misleading. During the first presidential debate, Mr. Trump repeatedly Mr. Wallace, the anchor and moderator of Fox News, to ask questions to Mr. Pray to set, and interrupt Mr. Pray repeatedly as he tries to answer this, which Mr. Wallace asked to intervene several cases. But none of the questions were about immigration policy.
Mr. Trump interrupts to Mr. Biden to ask about Roe v. Wade; whether he agreed with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on health care; whether he was in favor of “law and order”; and about the packaging of the Supreme Court, the H1N1 flu pandemic and his son Hunter. Mr. Biden tried to answer all the questions.
what mr. Trump said
“With me at the top of the list, not a single Republican member of Congress is losing their race for the first time in decades.”
Untrue. While no Republican official in the House lost their race for a Democrat, Republican incumbents lost two Senate seats during the November election, while Mr. Trump was a presidential candidate. Martha McSally of Arizona and Cory Gardner of Colorado lost their re-election to Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper.
Other claims
Mr. Trump reiterates a number of claims previously made by The New York Times:
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He falsely said that ‘nobody knows about’ refugees and ‘we have no criminal records, we have no health records’. (Refugee background checks take one to two years to complete.)
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He claims that the Keystone XL pipeline created ‘42,000 well-paid works’. (This is an estimate of the temporary work that will support the pipeline over two years.)
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He misleadingly claimed that Mr. Biden reversed his position from the resistance to fracking during the Democratic primary to the fact that he said during the general election: “we like fracking”. (Mr. Biden has consistently said he opposes breaking on public lands.)
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He wrongly blamed ‘the disaster of the windmill’ in Texas and criticized windmills for killing birds. (Wind power is not the main cause of power outages, and birds die far more from collisions with buildings and cars than with windmills.)
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He misleadingly claimed that the United States had become the best ‘energy superpower on earth’ under his watch. (The United States became the world’s leading oil producer in 2013, surpassing Russia as the world’s largest gas producer as early as 2009.)
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He falsely claimed credit for the ‘strongest economy in the history of the world’. (Metrics did not set a historical record.)
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He misrepresented tariffs as ‘taking billions and billions of dollars out of China’. (Rates are paid by US consumers, not China.)
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He claims “we have lost $ 504 billion in trade deficit with China.” (This was a reference to the trade deficit in goods – which does not include services and is not a ‘loss’) with China, which has grown to $ 538 billion under its watch.)
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He falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants and dead people were voting in “hefty” numbers. (There is no evidence of this.)
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He falsely claimed that there were “more votes than people” in Detroit and Pennsylvania. (This does not apply to both places.)
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