Presidential Debate - Trump Fact Check - Part Two
A comprehensive breakdown of all of the lies and misleading statement Donald J. Trump made during the Presidential Debate on 6/27/24
This is Part Two of a two part series breaking down Donald J. Trump’s many lies and misleading statements in the first presidential debate of 2024. Part One can be found here.
This document won’t quite fit the length limit for Substack but you should be able to click a link at the bottom to read the whole thing. I’ve tried my best to cut it down but there’s just so much to cover.
COVID-19
“We were able to get through COVID much better than any other country.”
FALSE - This is completely backward. The U.S. was hit harder than most industrialized countries. The U.S. had a much higher death rate per capita than other wealthy nation.
Many experts have argued that Trump’s slow response at the start of the pandemic and promotion of misinformation about the disease made things much worse. COVID-19 became politicized with rightwing media outlets, including Fox News, promoting false information about the vaccines, treatments and the severity of the disease itself.
The death rate for COVID-19 was three times higher in counties that voted heavily for Trump in the 2020 election than those that voted for Biden.
“Remember, more people died under his administration, even though we had largely fixed it. More people died under his administration than our administration, and we were right in the middle of it, something which a lot of people don't like to talk about.”
MISLEADING - This true but it lacks context.
In 2020 the last year of Trump’s presidency most of the deaths from COVID-19 occurred from March onward. Only 26 deaths were recorded in January and February.
The Trump administration had to grapple with deaths from COVID-19 for ten months while deaths from the virus have occurred for over three years since Biden was sworn in.
Many experts believe that COVID-19 deaths were undercounted at the start of the pandemic as there was not any clear guidance how to record a death that was a death that was COVID-19-related.
The U.S. also experienced a surge of new cases in December 2020 before the vaccines were widely available to the general public. Many of the people who were infected in late 2020 died in early 2021. (Politifact)
The Trump administration also struggled to get the vaccine distributed evenly as some states were far more successful than others with their vaccine drives.
He even tweeted on December 29, 2020: "The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!"
Another surge of cases hit in the summer of 2021. Most of the fatalities from the new variant were unvaccinated individuals.
By the summer of 2021 rightwing media was actively deriding the safety of vaccines while downplaying the dangers of the virus and promoting ineffective treatments.
Veterans
“I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA. He has the worst. He's gotten rid of all the things that I approve. Choice that I got through Congress. All of the different things I approved.”
PARTIALLY FALSE - The Veterans Choice program was created in 2014 during the Obama administration. Trump signed an update to that law. (The New York Times)
The U.S. Veterans Affairs Department conducts quarterly customer experience surveys. The highest scores for each administration were as follows: (Wisconsin Watch)
Trump - 80.2% 2021
Biden - 80.4% 2024
Trump Called Dead Soldiers Suckers and Losers
“First of all, that was a made up quote. Suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third rate magazine. This failing. Like many of these magazines.”
PROBABLY FALSE - (Disputed by Trump) This quote was originally published in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg who cited “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day,” reported that Trump canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he didn’t think it was important enough.
“In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,’” Goldberg wrote. “In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood [during World War I] as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”
According to reporting by the Washington Post, In 2023, John F. Kelly, the former White House Chief of Staff under Trump, and a four-star Marine general, issued a statement to CNN that Trump “rants our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
Trump has said in the past that 25 people confirmed his version of events. He later changed that number to 19 but when The Washington Post examined their statements 11 were not even with Trump when the other staffers claimed he made these statements. The other eight Trump has referenced were members of the White House communications staff.
Trump also notoriously said during the 2016 presidential election, “I like people who weren’t captured,” in reference to Sen. John McCain, who was a POW in Vietnam. McCain was tortured in captivity and suffered lifelong disabilities as a result of serving his country. (Washington Post)
Iran
“Just like Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas. You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn't let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything, no money for terror."
FALSE - Fox News also repeats this line often. Iran wasn’t broke during Trump’s administration even with U.S. sanctions. Iran still traded with other countries including Venezuela, and China.
When Trump withdrew from the Obama era nuclear agreement Iran was free to resume its nuclear program. At the very end of his presidency a leaked U.N. document showed a sharp increase in Iran’s stockpile of enriched Uranium.
Trump also cannot claim with any certainty that Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel if he was president at the time. One reason Hamas has given for the timing of its attack was the internal political divisions within Israel which had absolutely nothing to do with the United States.
Ukraine
“As far as Russia and Ukraine. If we had a real president, the president that knew that was respected by Putin, he would have never he would have never invaded Ukraine. . . He did nothing to stop it. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”
UNPROVABLE - Trump says this often at his rallies and in interviews. There’s absolutely no way to know this without inventing a time machine. Trump portrays himself as some sort of master dealmaker but there’s countless examples of his shortcomings in terms of negotiations.
Mexico didn’t pay one dime for the border wall. He had no plan for an overhaul for the ACA (Obamacare). He also lost multiple businesses due to bankruptcy and has been accused by hundreds of subcontractors for not paying them for work they did for his company.
Some experts in the art of dealmaking have said Trump is especially bad at working out deals with businesses or foreign governments.
“I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president elect before I take office on January 20th.”
UNPROVABLE - This is an absolutely absurd claim. Most experts think Trump will just try to force Ukraine to concede to Russia’s demands.
The U.S. has already imposed harsh sanctions on Russia so we don’t have much leverage. There’s no reason to think Ukraine would just surrender even without U.S. military support. European countries have increased their humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine in recent months.
“Russia. They took a lot of land from Bush. They took a lot of land from Obama and Biden. They took no land, nothing from Trump, nothing he knew not to do it. He's not going to play games with me. He knew that I got along with him very well, but he knew not to play games.”
FALSE - This is absolutely nonsensical. I assume Trump might be talking about Russian aggression towards its neighbors during the George W. Bush administration and Obama’s presidency.
None of the countries that border Russia in Asia or Eastern Europe belong to Bush, Obama or the United States.
We Had No Terrorist Attacks During My Administration
“That's why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him.”
FALSE
Here’s a breakdown of some of the more high profile terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency.
2017 - A mass murder in New York City which killed eight people in support of ISIS. - labeled a terrorist attack by the DOJ.
2017 - A white supremacist traveled to New York City and killed a Black man in an attempt to start a race war. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges including furtherance of an act of terrorism.
2018 - A Trump supporter in Florida mailed pipe bombs to members of the media and prominent Democrats. No one was harmed but the DOJ also labeled it as a domestic terrorist attack.
2019 - A member of Saudi Arabia’s military, and long time associate of al Qaeda, killed three U.S. service members on a military base in Florida. The DOJ concluded that the suspect was motivated by jihadist ideology.
2019 - A gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in a racially motivated mass shooting. The shooter intentionally targeted Latinos. The DOJ also labeled this massacre as an act of domestic terrorism.
“It's just like when you have a hostage, we always pay $6 billion for every time, which is a hostage . . . We had two cases. We paid $6 billion for five people. I got 58 people out and I paid essentially nothing.”
FALSE - The U.S. did not pay any country $6 billion for a hostage. The U.S. released $6 billion that South Korea had already paid Iran for oil but that had been held by banks in Qatar due to U.S. sanctions. The money was released as part of a prisoner exchange with Iran and the United States.
According to the agreement between the U.S. and Iran the money was only supposed to be spent on humanitarian aid. After the start of the Israel-Hamas War the money was frozen again and is still held in Qatar.
For at least two years Trump has made the claim that he helped secure the release of “58 people without paying or giving up anything.”
This is not true. For nearly every hostage deal during the Trump administration several prisoners from foreign countries were exchanged for U.S. citizens. In one negotiation about 250 Houthi rebels being held in Oman were exchanged for two Americans being held in Yemen.
“Now we have a hostage, the Wall Street Journal reporter I think a good guy, and he's over there because Putin is laughing at this guy, probably asking for billions of dollars for the reporter. I will have him out very quickly as soon as I take office. Before I take office, I said by literally as soon as I win the election, I will have that reporter out. He should have had him out a long time ago, but Putin's probably asking for billions and billions of dollars because this guy pays it every time.”
NO WAY OF KNOWING - I assume Trump is referring to Evan Gershkovich, a 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held in Russia on bogus espionage charges.
Trump has absolutely no way of knowing if he could broker a deal like this. His reckless statements make it even more unlikely that Russia would release Gershkovich sooner.
There’s no indication that Russia is seeking a monetary sum for the release of Gershkovich. The Russian government is more likely seeking some sort of hostage exchange for his release.
Trump’s statements could put Gershkovich in greater danger as Putin could exploit the situation to manipulate Trump.
NATO
“I got them to put up hundreds of billions of dollars. The secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I've ever seen. You wouldn't. They wouldn't have any. They were going out of business. We were spending almost 100% of the money was paid by us.”
“I said, no, I'm not going to support NATO if you don't pay. They asked me that question would you guard us against Russia? At a very secret meeting of the 28, states at that time, the nations at that time, and they said, no, if you don't pay, I won't do that. And you know what happened? Billions and billions of dollars came flowing in the next day and the next months.”
FALSE - Trump has repeatedly made inaccurate statements about how NATO is funded since he started his presidential run in 2015.
In 2006 NATO Defense Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending to continue to ensure the Alliance's military readiness.
If they don’t hit that benchmark the United States is not handed a bill to pay the rest as Trump has implied for years.
There is also a commonly funded NATO budget. The United States and Germany, the largest European member country in NATO, both contribute 16.2% to the fund.
It’s impossible to compare U.S. military spending to any other country as the U.S. spends more on its military than the top ten largest other militaries combined. The U.S. alone accounts for 40% of all global military spending.
The U.S. maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad on every single continent.
The U.S. also directly benefits from being a member of NATO and having military bases in Europe. Military contractors in the U.S. pitch and win contracts with other NATO countries.
NATO members have increased their military spending dramatically after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. A record number of 23 of NATO’s 32 nations hit their spending targets this year and Trump had absolutely nothing to do with it.
E.U. Economy
“Bcause if you add them up, they're about the same size economically. Their economy is about the same size as the United States . . .And they were no cars, no, they don't want anything that we have. But we're supposed to take their cars, their food, their everything, their agriculture.”
FALSE - The U.S. has the largest economy in the world, the size of the E.U. economy varies year to year but it’s not as large as the U.S. The EU also has a larger population than the U.S. at 448 million.
According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative - U.S. goods and services trade with the European Union totaled an estimated $1.3 trillion in 2022. Exports were $592.0 billion; imports were $723.3 billion.
The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with the European Union was $131.3 billion in 2022.
The U.S. doesn’t just trade material goods with Europe in terms of services the U.S. has a service trade surplus of an estimated $71.2 billion with the European Union in 2022, down 0.0 percent from 2021.
Even though the U.S. trade with Europe has a slight imbalance they are still an an important trading partner.
Environment/Climate Change
“I want absolutely immaculate, clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. And we did. We were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”
FALSE - Trump cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and boasted about cutting 70 regulations meant to protect the environment and slow down climate change.
During his administration according to the Environmental Performative Index, a project at Yale and Columbia University, the U.S. ranked #16 in the world for air quality and #24 for water quality. The air quality during the Trump administration also declined - the first time in a decade. (Washington Post)
The most troubling thing about Trump’s statement was that he was asked about climate change not air or water quality. Trump has made several statements where it appears he doesn’t think climate change is much of a threat to humanity.
Heat records were broken all over the planet last year for the 9th year in a row with areas experiencing wildfires and droughts that have never had them before. One third of Pakistan was underwater due to flooding we are on track this year for the hottest year on record so far.
Climate change isn’t an abstract idea. We are currently living at the start of what could be a climate catastrophe.
“The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion.”
FALSE - The agreement is non-binding. The Biden administration pledged $11.4 billion annually by 2024 to help vulnerable countries develop green energy and to prepare for the worst aspects of climate change. (The New York Times)
Trump’s Lies About January 6th
“And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watch the news from two days ago on tape to her daughter who is a documentary filmmaker, they say, but you're saying, oh, no, it's my responsibility. I was responsible for this because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or a National Guard, and she turned them down. And the mayor of in writing, by the way, the mayor in writing turned it down. The mayor of of D.C. they turned it down.”
FALSE - Trump is taking Pelosi’s quote out of context. According to reporting by The New York Times the full context of the quote is as follows:
“We asked them to put out a piece of paper saying, ‘Go through the tunnel. Don’t go outside.’ They say they’ve got stuff, but they can’t tell us what it is. It’s too — we don’t want the other side to know. We have responsibility, Terry, we didn’t have accountability for what was going on there.”
When the person Ms. Pelosi was addressing responded, “they thought they had sufficient resources,” Ms. Pelosi cut her off. “It’s not a question of sufficient,” the speaker said, “they don’t know. They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them prepare for me, because it’s stupid because we’re in a situation like this.”
Pelosi is clearly not talking about any pre-planning for the event in the clip. When the Capitol was under attack both Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both tried to contact the National Guard for support.
It was ultimately Vice President Mike Pence who called in the National Guard while Trump was allegedly in the White House dining room watching the Capitol building being overtaken by a violent mob.
Trump and the rightwing media have promoted the idea that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for security at the Capitol on January 6th for years. His claims have been widely debunked by multiple media outlets and fact checkers.
This story has changed over the years as Trump has also claimed Pelosi turned down 20,000 National Guard troops but in different versions of this story the number has been reduced to 10,000.
There is no evidence that Trump actually signed any order requesting 10,000 Guard troops, let alone 20,000, for Jan. 6th. Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection that Trump never gave him a formal order to have 10,000 troops ready to be deployed to the Capitol on January 6th.
“One other thing. The Unselect Committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats. They destroyed and deleted all of the information they found because they found out we were right. We were right, and they deleted and destroyed all of the information. They should go to jail for that.”
FALSE - There’s no truth to this statement. The Democratic chair of the committee made a statement that some sensitive materials were withheld from the House archive to protect witnesses.
The special counsel investigating Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election says that the withheld materials have already been provided to Trump as part of discovery in the case. (Washington Post)
Weaponization of the Justice System
“Including weaponization, which I'm sure at some point you'll be talking about where he goes after his political opponent because he can't beat him fair and square.”
NO EVIDENCE - Although Trump has made these claims before he was even criminally charged he has no evidence to support it.
In two cases the charges against Trump came from local and state prosecutors. Grand juries made up of ordinary citizens were presented with evidence and recommended criminal charges against Trump.
The other two criminal cases against Trump have been spearheaded by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland who appointed a special counsel specifically to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest. (New York Times)
Trump’s Legal Problems
“I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”
PROBABLY FALSE - Although it’s impossible to know if Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels or not it’s safe to say given the evidence that he did. The only two people who know exactly what happened are Stormy Daniels and Donald J. Trump.
“That was a case that was started and moved. They moved a high ranking official, a DOJ, into the Manhattan DA's office to start that case.”
FALSE - The criminal case brought against Donald J. Trump in Manhattan started with an investigation by Cyrus Vance Jr. a former prosecutor. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg decided to pursue the case.
Matthew Colangelo left the Department of Justice to work for Bragg. He had been serving as acting associate attorney general, the third-ranking position at the DOJ. When Colangelo joined the case, Bragg had already started work on it.
There is no evidence that anyone in the Biden administration or the Department of Justice instructed or forced Colangelo to work on the case.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges and is awaiting sentencing which is scheduled for July. (Washington Post)
Hunter Biden
“At a very high level. His son is convicted, going to be convicted probably numerous other times should have been convicted before. But his Justice Department let the statute of limitations lapse and the most important things.”
Trump and his Republican supporters have invented any number of charges against Hunter Biden but so far haven’t found much of anything besides the gun violations the president’s son openly admitted to committing in his memoir and a failure to pay his taxes while he was in the throes of addiction.
The probe into Hunter Biden’s tax violations began in 2018 when Donald J. Trump was president.
Hunter was convicted of three felony counts for lying about his drug use on a gun application and he’s facing criminal charges involving his past tax problems in the Fall. Hunter Biden has paid the IRS what he owed for two years plus penalties and interest.
In terms of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop Trump’s Department of Justice had it for over a year and did absolutely nothing with it.
Joe Biden is a Criminal
“But he could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office. Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he's done. He's done horrible things. All of the death causes that the the border, telling the Ukrainian people that we're going to want $1 billion, you can change the prosecutor, otherwise you're not getting $1 billion. Have I ever said that that's quid pro quo.”
FALSE - Despite the House Republicans spending over a year and a half on an impeachment inquiry into President Biden they haven’t found anything that would link him to a crime.
A special counsel was appointed to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials and concluded that he would not recommend criminal charges against the president.
“He gets paid by China. He's a manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. We have. So I think he's afraid to deal with them something.”
FALSE - This is the fever dream of the rightwing media propaganda machine. There’s no evidence whatsoever to this claim. This is complete and utter nonsense.
Joe Biden Invented the Fine People Hoax
“He made up the Charlottesville story, and you'll see it's debunked all over the place. Every anchor has to every reasonable actor has debunked it. And just the other day it came out where it was fully debunked. It's a nonsense story. He knows that. And he didn't run because of Charlottesville. He used that as an excuse to run.”
FALSE - Joe Biden did not invent a hoax about President Trump calling Neo Nazis “very fine people,” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump’s statements to the press about the rally have been debated since the seconds the words left his mouth.
On Aug. 15, 2017 Trump held a press conference to talk about an executive order he had signed on infrastructure. Reporters asked him about the recent violent rally that had occurred the prior weekend.
“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group,” Trump said. “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
Trump indicated that he saw photos from the event and implied that there were moderate protesters on both sides - that some folks showed up just because they were concerned about the statues.
The problem with Trump’s statement is that there’s no evidence of any moderate supporters at the event. The rally was planned by white supremacists and Neo Nazi groups who marched with lit tiki torches while shouting racist slogans.
The only other people that showed up were counter-protesters who were against the extremists. Despite the fact that entire area was covered with members of the press and people who had cameras in their phones absolutely no evidence has ever surfaced of non-extremists who supported the Confederate memorial at the event.
Trump did walk back his statement and ultimately condemned white supremacists and Neo Nazis but many extremists thought his statement at the press conference were a sign that he supported their movement.
Joe Biden Called Criminals Super Predators
“Including the fact that for ten years he called him super predators. We can't in the 1990s, we can't forget that Super Predators was his name.”
FALSE - The term "super predator" was coined in 1995 by Princeton University professor John DiIulio. DiIulio meant the term to mean "radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more preteenage boys, who murder, assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs and create serious communal disorders,'' according to a 2001 report by the New York Times.
In 1994 violent crime was also its highest in recent history at 716 crimes per 100,000 people. For context the rate of violent crime in 2022 was 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
In 1996 during a campaign speech for her husband, Hillary Clinton used the phrase ‘super predator."‘
“We need to take these people on, they are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscious, no empathy," Clinton said, according to a video recording provided by C-SPAN.”
During a Senate floor speech in 1993 Biden, then a senator representing Delaware, said the country needed to focus on young people who lacked supervision, structure or opportunities.
“Unless we do something about that cadre of young people — tens of thousands of them born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscious developing — because they literally have not been socialized, they literally have not had an opportunity ... we should focus on them now. If we don't, they will — or a portion of them will — become the predators 15 years from now," Biden said, according to a video recording provided by C-SPAN”
Biden also used the term predators in a 1998 speech at an attorneys general conference it was not in reference to Black youth. (Politifact)
Thank you for your good work. He was spewing words so quickly it was hard to even understand what he was saying. I appreciate you!
Wow! Well done! Thank you for your hard work. The fibs this man comes up with. The only thing scarier than his lies are the people who believe them.