— What Trump Said
“This year, for the first time in 50 years, drug prices went down.”
This is misleading.
Multiple analyses have shown that drug prices are still increasing, albeit at a slower pace than in previous years.
An Associated Press analysis found that from January to July 2018, drug companies raised prices on more than 4,400 products, with a median increase of 5.2% in June and July. That was lower than the median increase of 8% for the same period in 2017. Rx Savings Solutions, a company that advises employers on how to reduce drug costs, found that drug companies increased prices on more than 2,800 medicines in the first quarter of 2019. The average increase was 8.6%, compared with 11.3% in the same period of 2018.
The White House pointed PolitiFact to a decrease in the Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs as evidence for a similar claim made by Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff. But the head of Rx Savings Solutions noted in an interview with PolitiFact that the index does not include high-priced drugs sold through mail order. The index also showed declines in several months in recent years before Trump took office — contradicting his claim that prices had fallen for the first time in five decades.
— What Trump Said
“We will have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year.”
This is exaggerated.
Trump is once again mixing projects to replace existing barriers with construction of entirely new sectors of wall along the southwestern border — and inflating the mileage.
The Customs and Border Protection agency received funding for 40 miles of barriers in congressional appropriations in the 2017 fiscal year, 80 miles in the 2018 fiscal year and 55 miles in the 2019 fiscal year, according to an agency spokesman. Outside of traditional congressional funding, Trump has also tapped a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund to build 30 miles and the Pentagon’s coffers to fund another 53 miles, according to the spokesman.
Altogether, that’s about 258 miles — 142 miles less than what Trump promoted — and that relies on counting replacement projects as new wall, contracts that have yet to be awarded, as well as funding that is tenuous. The 40 miles funded in the 2017 fiscal year, for example, is to replace old barriers with new fencing. Several states and House Democrats have sued the Trump administration over the transfer of money for the wall from the Pentagon funds.
— What Trump Said
“The asylum — where rough, tough MS-13 gang members come in, you don’t want to meet with these people, but ICE doesn’t mind because ICE is throwing them out of our country by the thousands.”
This is exaggerated.
Members of MS-13, a violent street gang, represent a tiny fraction of the number of people apprehended while trying to illegally cross the southwestern border.
In the 2019 fiscal year thus far, border officials apprehended more than 360,000 people attempting to cross the border illegally. Of those people, 221, or 0.06 percent, were MS-13 members.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement deported more than 1,300 MS-13 members in the 2018 fiscal year — more than 1,000, but not quite “thousands.”
— What Trump Said
“In the last administration, President Obama signed the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. And in his waning days in office, he sent the treaty to the Senate to begin the ratification process. This treaty threatened your subjugate — you know exactly what’s going on here — your rights, your constitutional and international rules and restrictions and regulations. Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom.”
False.
The 2014 Arms Trade Treaty regulates international sales of conventional weapons (like tanks, combat vehicles, warships, missiles and firearms). It does not “surrender American sovereignty” over gun laws to the United Nations or hand enforcement powers over guns to “foreign bureaucrats.”
The United States was a signatory to the treaty, but did not ratify it as 101 other nations have. Trump withdrew the United States’ signature during his speech.
The treaty aims to establish international norms for regulating arms sales between countries and addressing illegal arms sales. It prohibits selling weapons to nations that are under arms embargoes or will use them to commit genocide, terrorism, war crimes or attacks against civilians.
In the preamble, the treaty explicitly reaffirms the “the sovereign right of any state to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” The Congressional Research Service noted that the treaty “does not affect sales or trade in weapons among private citizens within a country” and, even if ratified, “would likely require no significant changes to policy, regulations, or law” since “the United States already has strong export laws in place.”
“It has absolutely no effect on U.S. domestic gun laws,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which supports the treaty.
Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in the Second Amendment, agreed and noted that withdrawing the United States as a signatory will have very little impact given that the Senate never ratified the treaty. What Trump is relinquishing, Kimball said, is a seat at the international table to set global standards and better enforcement in countries most affected by the illegal arms trade.
— What Trump Said
“We are supplying police with surplus military equipment supplies and gears that the previous administration refused to give up. This is surplus. This is extra. We don’t need it. Great equipment sitting in warehouses all over the country. Billions of dollars of equipment that the military no longer needs or wants or uses, but they are top-of-the-line. Some of it’s never been used. Brand-new. From vehicles to, essentially, supplies of all kind, including bulletproof vests.”
This is exaggerated.
Trump is referring to the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which has been sending excess military equipment to police since the 1990s.
In 2014, the shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a nationwide debate on the use of police force and the militarization of law enforcement across the United States. The next year, the Obama administration prohibited local police departments from obtaining certain weapons typically used in warfare such as tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft, grenade launchers and bayonets.
Trump reversed those restrictions in 2017. But more conventional equipment such as bulletproof vests as well as rifles, trucks, jackets and radios were still available to police under the Obama administration. In fact, law enforcement agencies received $43 million worth of equipment per month during the 2016 fiscal year.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.