Former president Donald Trump’s 92-minute speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on the final night of his party’s national convention rambled, often incoherently, through a hit parade of his favorite falsehoods, many of them ad-libbed instead of drawn from his prepared remarks.
CNN:
Former President Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday with the most dishonest speech of the four-day Republican National Convention, making more than 20 false claims by CNN’s count.
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump argued there was "a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land."
FACT CHECK: This is false. There is no evidence of a major surge in crime caused by recent arrivals, and Trump's claims ignore the fact that crime is down across the country overall.
Did Democrats ‘use Covid to cheat’ in the 2020 election?
“The election result, we’re never going to let it happen again. They used Covid to cheat," Trump said. This is false.Trump is referring to changes made during the Covid pandemic, largely to make it easier to vote by mail or absentee, as congregating at the polls posed a health risk. Democrats embraced the changes and turned out many voters by mail, while Trump slammed mail voting. There is no evidence the changes led to fraud, even though Trump and his allies filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging some facet of the 2020 election. All were denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn, including multiple that made it to the Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump says he oversaw the "best economy in the history of our country, in the history of the world:" False
What we know: It is not true that Trump oversaw the best economy in the history of the U.S. by many of the metrics used to judge economic performance.
GDPThe claim struggles when looking at GDP. If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation under Trump averaged just over 2.5%, according to figures from the World Bank. Including the time period after COVID spread, that average drops by almost a percentage point. By comparison, Growth between 1962 to 1966 ranged from 4.4% to 6.6%. In 1950 and 1951, GDP ranged between 8.7% and 8%.
Under Mr. Biden, annual GDP growth is averaging 3.4%, according to the World Bank.
AP:
TRUMP: “We had the greatest economy in the history of the world.”
THE FACTS: That’s far from accurate. The pandemic triggered a massive recession during his presidency. The government borrowed $3.1 trillion in 2020 to stabilize the economy and Trump left the White House with fewer jobs than when he entered.
But even if you take out issues caused by the pandemic, economic growth averaged 2.67% during Trump’s first three years, which is pretty solid. But it’s nowhere near the 4% averaged during Bill Clinton’s two terms from 1993 to 2001, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, growth has been stronger so far under Biden than under Trump.
Trump did have the unemployment rate get as low as 3.5% before the pandemic, but the labor force participation rate for people 25 to 54 — the core of the U.S. working population — was higher under Clinton. The participation rate has also been higher under Biden than Trump.
There you go. One stop shopping for the fact-checking.
