Presidential debate fact-check: Trump and Clinton's claims reviewed

Presidential debate fact-check: Trump and Clinton’s claims reviewed

Posted by John P. Bradford // September 28, 2016

Alan Yuhas fact-checks the statements of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York

Donald Trumps claims

Trump: Our jobs are fleeing the country, theyre going to Mexico theyre going to many other countries Hundreds of hundreds of companies are doing this.

Trump is primarily talking about the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the long-term decline in manufacturing around the US cant only be attributed to the trade deal. Economists still debate the effect of the deal on jobs, since US trade with Canada and Mexico is modest at best. In 2015, the Congressional Research Service wrote: Nafta did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters.

Manufacturing is down 37% since its peak in 1979, but this change has a great deal to do with the general shift toward a service-based economy, which the US has had surpluses in in recent years. Its true that many manufacturing jobs have been outsourced, especially since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, but its also true that the US has added more than 800,000 factory jobs since 2010.

Trump: My father gave me a small loan in 1975.

Trump never struggled for money or started with anything modest. In 1978 his father gave him a loan totaling almost $1m about $3.7m today and acted as guarantor for the young Trumps early projects. A 1981 report by a New Jersey regulator also shows a $7.5m loan from the patriarch, and years later he bought $3.5m in gambling chips to help his son pay off the debts of a failing casino, which was found to have broken the law by accepting them. Trump also borrowed millions against his inheritance before his fathers death, a 2007 deposition shows.

Trump has not proven that he is worth $10bn, though his tax returns, which he has refused to release, could provide a clearer picture of his worth. His financial filings suggest he has less than $250m in liquid assets, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Trump has a history of overstating his properties: he has, for instance, told the FEC that a New York golf club is worth $50m but also argued in court that it is worth only $1.4m.

Trump claimed that his tax plan will be the largest cuts since Ronald Reagan and create jobs, while in his words Clintons would create a huge tax hike.

Trumps tax plan would disproportionately help the wealthiest Americans, saving them millions of dollars and adding trillions to the national debt, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, a conservative thinktank. He would reduce the business tax rate to 15%, eliminate the estate tax (aka the death tax), which mostly affects wealthy inheritors, and would reduce revenue from taxes by about $5tn. According to the Foundation, the top 1% of earners would see a 10.2% increase to their incomes.

Clintons tax plan does not change tax rates for the middle class, but does increase taxes by 4% on people who have an adjusted income of more than $5m, as well as closing corporate loopholes. Only about 0.5% of small businesses in the US reported a profit of more than $1m in 2011, according to the US treasury department. Clinton would increase tax revenue by $1.1tn by taxing the top 1% of earners, increasing the estate tax and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, and by implementing and a more complex tax code, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Trump has not proven that he pays any federal income tax, and did not deny that he doesnt pay, saying simply that it would prove hes smart.

Trump: African Americans and Hispanics are living in hell because its so dangerous. In Chicago theyve had thousands of shootings since 1 January Almost 4,000 people in Chicago have been killed since Barack Obama became president.

Trump often cites Chicagos shooting crisis as evidence that the US is plagued by dangerous crime, but not even that city, which has the most homicides in the US, compares to a war zone as Trump says. In 2015, Chicago had 2,988 people who were victims of gun violence, according to the Chicago Tribune, and 488 homicides in all. The city has more than 500 homicides so far this year, per the paper, and more than 2,100 victims of gun violence.

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In Afghanistan a country Trump often compares the city to between January and June 2016, 1,601 civilians have been killed and 3,565 injured, according to the United Nations. The figures include 388 killed and 1,121 injured children. The UN reported 3,545 civilians killed and 7,457 injured in 2015. More than 80,000 people have been displaced by violence this year. The US and Afghan forces control only about 70% of the country, while the Taliban and militants control the other 30%, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff told the Senate on Thursday.

Trump on stop and frisk police tactics: Stop and frisk which worked very well in New York it It brought the crime rate way down.

The controversial police tactic of stop and frisk, which became a hallmark of New York policing through the mayorships of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, has landed the city in federal court, where a judge ruled it unconstitutional. One research paper, unpublished through peer review, found modest drops in some crimes. A second paper, published through peer review, found problems in the first study and few significant effects of the tactic.

A New York Civil Liberties Union report, on 12 years worth of police data, found young black and Hispanic men were targeted for stops at a vastly higher proportion than white men: more than half the people searched were black and about 30% were Hispanic. Among more than 5m stops during the Bloomberg administration, police found a gun less than 0.02% of the time, according to the report. NYPD records between 2004 and 2012 show similar figures: in 4.4m stops, weapons were seized from 1.0% of black people, 1.1% from Hispanic people and 1.4% of white people.

New Yorks long-term decline in crime rates began before Giuliani took office in 1994, and its causes were and are diverse: data-driven policing with the Compstat system, the growth of the police force by 35% over the decade, incarceration increases by 24% and the 39% unemployment decline that matched with national economic growth. Not even the loudest supporters of stop and frisk, including Bloomberg whose last term Trump has called a disaster have argued the tactic alone reduced crime to its current lows.

Trump said that the tactic was ruled unconstitutional because of a judge who was against policing, but his personal opinion about the judge does not mean she did not rule it unconstitutional.

Trump: We have to take the guns away from the people that shouldnt have them These are bad people.

This argument flies in the face of Trumps pro-gun rights stance for legal owners; he has repeatedly and falsely insisted that Clinton wants to take away guns from legal owners.

Trump claimed that New Yorks crime rate is up since the end of stop and frisk. It remains near historic lows.

Trump blames Sidney Blumenthal, a friend of the Clintons, and Patti Solis Doyle, a 2008 campaign manager, for creating the false claim that Barack Obama was not born in the US.

There is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with the false rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the US, nor did Clinton have anything to do with Trumps five years of questions about birth certificates, which he finally recanted last Friday.

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Trumps campaign has tried to blame several people who were, if at all, tangentially related to the Clinton campaign. There is no evidence that Solis Doyle had anything to do with the claim either. She told CNN that there was a volunteer coordinator in Iowa who forwarded the email and that the volunteer was dismissed, and that she called the Obama campaign to apologize.

A former aide named Mark Penn wrote a 2007 memo that Obamas lack of American roots could hold him back. But he added: We are never going to say anything about his background. The Clinton campaign never acted on his advice, and he was dismissed in April 2008.

Some Clinton supporters have been blamed over anonymous chain emails for questioning Obamas citizenship, but none of the rumormongers were linked to the campaign. Philip Berg, a former Pennsylvania official who supported Clinton, filed a lawsuit in 2008 over Obamas birth certificate; the suit was thrown out because it was groundless. Blumenthal, an old friend of the Clintons who frequently sent them unsolicited advice, reportedly asked reporters to investigate Obamas birth, but he has denied this and denounced the conspiracy.

As fellow fact-checkers at Politifact have noted, a Texas volunteer for Clinton named Linda Starr eventually joined Bergs failed lawsuit; there is nothing to suggest Starr had any influence in the campaign at any level. Campaign volunteers who forwarded emails falsely alleging Obama is Muslim resigned when they were found out.

Trump did not answer the question about what convinced him that the president was born in the US, even though the birth certificate has been public for the five years that has Trump continued questioning Obamas birthplace.

Trump: Clinton has been fighting Isis your entire adult life.

The Islamic States first segments formed out of the post-invasion civil war in Iraq, while George W Bush was president. The group took root in Syrias civil war, where the US did not intervene until 2014. The terror group largely formed out of the remnants of Saddam Husseins government and the factions that formed al-Qaida in Iraq all of which happened in the last decade or so. The group also gained international notoriety only in 2014, when it invaded Iraq in significant forces and when Clinton was out of office.

Trump: Whether [the DNC hack] was Russia, whether that was China, whether that was another country, we dont know.

Several independent security firms, in addition to intelligence officials, have pointed to Russian-backed hackers as the culprits behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee. Trump is correct in an extremely technical sense: no one has provided 100% proof that Russia was behind the hack, and the Obama administration has proven loath to escalate a hacking war. But security experts have found technical fingerprints that seem to hint back toward Russia, just as they have found links back to Chinese hacks in unrelated cases.

Trump: President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum for Isis.

The claim that Obama and Clinton created the conditions for Isis ignores that Isiss first segments formed out of the post-invasion civil war in Iraq, while George W Bush was president; that the group took root in Syrias civil war, where the US did not intervene until 2014; and that Obama withdrew American forces in 2011 under the timeline agreed on by Bush and Baghdad.

Trump has claimed that Nato must turn to a directly anti-terror campaign in the Middle East, and that his urging has already influenced the alliance.

But Nato has had a Defense Against Terrorism program since June 2004, almost a full 12 years before Trump called the alliance obsolete. In July its member nations decided to increase efforts against Isis, specifically, in Syria and Iraq, as its leaders had discussed for months. Trump was not involved.

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Trump also claimed that his new Washington DC hotel came in before schedule and under budget.

Not quite. Per the AP:

A June 2013 press release posted on the Trump Organizations website announced that the redevelopment of the old post office was expected to start in 2014 with the hotel opening scheduled in 2016. A few months later, the Trump Organization announced the expected grand opening of the hotel would happen at the end of 2015. The Trump Organization said in a third statement in 2013 … completion was expected in late 2015.

In 2014, the Trump Organization went back to announcing the hotel would open in mid-2016. In February, in the midst of Trumps presidential campaign, the organization shifted and announced the hotel was planned to open in September, almost two years ahead of schedule, which is unheard of for a project of this size and complexity, Ivanka Trump is quoted as saying.

And during a March visit to the site, Donald Trump said: Were two years ahead of schedule. Were going to be opening in September.

The hotel is now only partly open.

Trump on the Iran nuclear deal: One of the worst deals ever made by any country in history. He said $400m in cash was part of that deal and Clinton was responsible.

Clinton had nothing to do with the delivery of $400m to Iran as part of a settlement for a failed arms deal that Tehrans pre-revolutionary government had made with the US in the 1970s.

The State Department under John Kerry has admitted, however, that it wanted to use that money as leverage to secure the sailors release, although its transfer had been mediated through an international court. The money was delivered as foreign currency because US law bars any transaction in US dollars and sanctions make bank transactions difficult.

The US is not giving any of its own money to Iran as part of an international nuclear arms deal meant to prevent the construction of weapons. The deal gradually unfreezes assets that belong to Iran but were frozen under sanctions related to the nations nuclear program. Sanctions related to human rights, terrorism and other issues remain in place and still lock Iran out of billions.

Trumps guess of how much Iran will benefit by unfrozen assets is far higher than most experts estimates, though not inconceivable. Treasury secretary Jack Lew has put the number at $56bn, and Iranian officials have said $32bn and $100bn. Independent economists have calculated that Iran will free up anything between $30bn to $100bn. Complicating the math are Irans debts: it will have to pay off tens of billions to countries such as China.

There is no evidence that the brief capture in January of 10 American sailors had any effect on the nuclear deal, which had been finalized five months earlier, although the incident rattled fragile relations between Washington and Tehran. A few days after the sailors were released, UN inspectors confirmed that Iran had complied with the deal.

What Iran does next remain an open question subject to inspection by UN officials and Clintons argument in favor of the deal hinges on a degree of good faith that Tehran will comply by the terms of the deal.

Trump: I was just endorsed by ICE.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a government agency. It does not endorse political candidates. A group of former customs officials endorsed Trump just before the debate.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the debate stage on Monday night. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Presidential debate fact-check: Trump and Clinton’s claims reviewed