The first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention featured many attacks on former president Donald Trump, some of which quoted him out of context. Here\u2019s a roundup of a dozen claims that caught our attention, in the order in which they were made.<\/p>\n
As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios for a roundup of statements made during convention events.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to expand Social Security and Medicare. Donald Trump tried to cut them year after year after year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.)<\/p>\n
This is mostly false. Earlier on this first day of the convention, we awarded the Harris-Walz campaign Three Pinocchios for a version of this claim.<\/p>\n
On Medicare, virtually all anticipated savings sought by Trump would have been wrung from health providers, not Medicare beneficiaries, as a way of holding down costs and improving the solvency of the old-age health program. Trump, in fact, borrowed many proposals from Barack Obama, who had failed to get them through Congress.<\/p>\n
Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which seeks to lower the budget deficit, closely studied the Trump proposals each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basic argument here is quite ridiculous,\u201d he said of the Harris-Walz campaign tweet. Goldwein noted that the Inflation Reduction Act, in which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for passage, also reduced health-care costs for Medicare, such as through inflation caps. \u201cBy the same logic, you could say Joe Biden cut Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Social Security, Trump kept his promise not to touch retirement benefits, bucking longtime efforts by Republicans to raise the retirement age. But Trump did seek, without success, to reduce spending for Social Security Disability Insurance as well as Supplemental Security Income, which is administered by the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n
Goldwein said that the reductions generally were intended to make the programs more efficient, such as eliminating double payments of both unemployment insurance and disability (also sought by Obama). He also said the proposals were relatively small.<\/p>\n
Trump has insisted he will not cut benefits for Medicare or Social Security if he is elected president again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe [Trump] told us to inject bleach into our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)<\/p>\n
This is exaggerated. Trump did not say people should inject bleach into their bodies. Instead, at a pandemic briefing in 2020, he spoke confusingly of an \u201cinjection inside\u201d of lungs with a disinfectant. He made the remarks after an aide presented a study showing how bleach could kill the virus when it remained on surfaces. Trump later claimed he was speaking \u201csarcastically,\u201d though he seemed serious at the time.<\/p>\n
Readers can judge for themselves. Here are his full remarks on April 23 that year: \u201cI see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it\u2019d be interesting to check that, so that you\u2019re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Donald Trump was president, corporate America ran wild. Donald Trump did not bring back the auto industry. When Donald Trump was president, auto plants closed. Trump did nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers president<\/p>\n
This is exaggerated. Trump often falsely bragged that before he became president, no new auto plants had been built for decades, but there were some new plants built during his presidency. Until the pandemic, Trump\u2019s overall record on auto industry jobs was pretty good. From February 2017 to February 2020, just before the pandemic crashed the U.S. economy, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows a gain of 34,100 auto manufacturing jobs and 36,400 auto retail jobs \u2014 for a total of more than 70,000 jobs in three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe [Kamala Harris] won\u2019t be sending love letters to dictators.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton<\/p>\n
There is no evidence that Trump sent such letters. Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump has written \u201clove letters\u201d to dictators.<\/p>\n
Clinton appears to be referring to a 2018 comment from Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: \u201cWe fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they\u2019re great letters. We fell in love.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s certainly an unusual statement, but he\u2019s referring to letters written by Kim. We do not know what Trump wrote to Kim \u2014 or other dictators, for that matter.<\/p>\n
Former national security adviser John Bolton, in his tell-all memoir, \u201cThe Room Where It Happened,\u201d described one of Kim\u2019s letters as \u201cpure puffery, written probably by some clerk in North Korea\u2019s agitprop bureau, but Trump loved it.\u201d After another such letter, Trump even mused that he wanted to invite Kim to the White House \u2014 what Bolton called a \u201cpotential disaster of enormous magnitude.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Trump, quoted in a DNC video<\/p>\n
Trump quickly walked back this statement. This March 3, 2016, quote from Trump pops up in the video as a woman, Amanda Zurawski, describes how she was not able to seek an abortion in Texas after her water broke early and her pregnancy was no longer viable. \u201cI was punished for three days, having to wait for either my baby to die or me to die, or both. I was stuck in this horrific hell of both, wanting to hear her heartbeat and also hoping I wouldn\u2019t,\u201d Zurawski said.<\/p>\n
The juxtaposition might leave the impression that Trump still believes this. But he walked back the statement the same day he made it in a town hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,\u201d Trump said in a statement. \u201cThe woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJD Vance says women should stay in violent marriages, and that pregnancies resulting from rape are simply inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Kentucky governor Andy Beshear<\/p>\n
Vance has said his comments have been twisted by Democrats. Here they are in context so readers can make their own judgment.<\/p>\n
Violent marriages. In a 2021 event Vance participated in at Pacifica Christian High School in California, concerning his book \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d the moderator asked Vance: \u201cWhat is causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out even in tough times?\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance praised his grandparents, who raised him, for staying together, even though his grandmother once poured lighter fluid on his grandfather and struck a match after he came home drunk, he wrote in his book.<\/p>\n
Vance said: \u201cThis is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, \u2018Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that\u2019s going to make people happier in the long term.\u2019 And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I\u2019m skeptical. But it really didn\u2019t work out for the kids of those marriages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inconvenience. In a 2021 interview Vance was asked whether laws should allow women to get abortions if they were victims of rape or incest.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong,\u201d Vance replied. \u201cIt\u2019s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it\u2019s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child\u2019s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran for president in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017 \u2026 When the president was asked what he thought had happened, Donald Trump said, and I quote, \u2018there are very fine people on both sides.\u2019 My God, that\u2019s what he said. That is what he said and what he meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014President Joe Biden<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 \u2014 and President Trump\u2019s response to it \u2014 was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened.<\/p>\n
Biden has frequently claimed that Trump said the white supremacists were \u201cvery fine people.\u201d But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump actually condemned right-wing hate groups \u2014 \u201cthose who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Trump muddied the waters on Aug. 15, a day later, by also saying: \u201cYou had people \u2014 and I\u2019m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists \u2014 because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.\u201d It was in this news conference that he said: \u201cYou had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump added: \u201cThere were people in that rally \u2014 and I looked the night before \u2014 if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I\u2019m sure in that group there were some bad ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem for Trump is that there was no evidence of anyone other than neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally on Aug. 11. He asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were \u201cvery quietly\u201d protesting the removal of Lee\u2019s statue.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But that\u2019s also wrong. A Fact Checker examination of videos and testimony about the Saturday rallies found that there were white supremacists, there were counterprotesters \u2014 and there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The evidence shows there were no quiet protesters against removing the statue that weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We\u2019re] removing every lead pipe from schools and homes so every child can drink clean water.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Biden<\/p>\n
This is exaggerated. Biden secured $15 billion through the bipartisan infrastructure law for lead pipe replacement. But the Environmental Protection Agency has projected that replacing the nearly 10 million lead pipes that supply U.S. homes with drinking water could cost at least $45 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore children in America are killed by a gunshot than any other cause in the United States \u2014 more die from a bullet than cancer, accidents or anything else in the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Biden<\/p>\n
This is not quite right. Biden is using a statistic on gun deaths of \u201cchildren and teens,\u201d meaning it includes deaths of 18- and 19-year-olds, who are legally considered adults in most states. When you focus only on children \u2014 17 and younger \u2014 motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades, though the gap is rapidly closing. Deaths of children from gun violence have increased about 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know from his own chief of staff, four-star General John Kelly, that Trump while in Europe would not go to the gravesites in France of the brave service members who gave their lives in this country, he called them \u2018suckers and losers.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Biden<\/p>\n
Kelly did not exactly say this. Trump, on repeated occasions, had vehemently denied this story. In 2023, however, John F. Kelly, Trump\u2019s White House chief of staff in 2018 \u2014 who had previously not commented on the controversy \u2014 issued a statement to CNN that Trump \u201crants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America\u2019s defense are \u2018losers\u2019 and wouldn\u2019t visit their graves in France.\u201d<\/p>\n
Note that Kelly\u2019s statement is carefully worded and does not directly say Trump refused to visit the graves because he thought they were losers, as Biden claimed. He says Trump thinks war dead are losers and he did not want to go to the cemetery. Both could be true \u2014 but not connected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what is their average tax rate they pay? 8.2 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Biden<\/p>\n
Biden is comparing apples and oranges. We\u2019ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim.<\/p>\n
The \u201clower tax rate\u201d refers to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That\u2019s not how the tax laws work. People are taxed on capital gains when they sell their stocks or other assets. So this is only a figure for a hypothetical tax system.<\/p>\n
According to IRS data on the top 0.001 percent \u2014 1,475 taxpayers with at least $77 million in adjusted gross income in 2020 \u2014 the average tax rate was 23.7 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers (income of at least $548,000) paid nearly 26 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again \u2026 He\u2019s probably seeing a bloodbath if he loses \u2014 in his words.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Biden<\/p>\n
Trump is being quoted out of context. Biden suggests Trump said there would be a \u201cbloodbath\u201d if he lost the election. But in a March 16 rally, Trump used the word when talking about the impact of Chinese electric vehicles on the U.S. auto industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina now is building a couple of massive plants where they\u2019re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they\u2019re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you\u2019re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don\u2019t get elected, it\u2019s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole \u2014 that\u2019s going to be the least of it. It\u2019s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That\u2019ll be the least of it. But they\u2019re not going to sell those cars.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign noted that one of the definitions of \u201cbloodbath,\u201d in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is \u201ca major economic disaster.\u201d It also means \u201ca notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, of course, frequently quotes his opponents out of context and unfairly twists their words.<\/p>\n
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The first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention featured many attacks on former president Donald Trump, some of which quoted him out of context. Here\u2019s a roundup of a dozen claims that caught our attention, in the order in which they were made. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}