What President Donald Trump said:
“I’ve been hearing a lot of things: ‘Oh the wall didn’t make that much of a difference.’ You know where it made a big difference? Right here in El Paso.”
False.
Trump is repeating his widely debunked claim made in his State of the Union address that El Paso, Texas, transformed from “one of the most dangerous cities” into one of the safest U.S. cities after the construction of barriers at the border.
El Paso was never one of the most dangerous cities in the country. It has had a consistently lower crime rate than the average among more than 20 similarly sized cities, according to FBI data. In that group, El Paso reported the second-lowest violent crime rate in 2008 — before the construction of border fencing. And after the barrier was completed, it held the rank while the violent crime rate did not change considerably.
The inaccurate claim has also drawn the rebuke of Democratic and Republican local politicians alike, including Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic congressman from El Paso, and the Republican mayor of the city.
“I don’t care if the mayor is a Democrat or a Republican, they are full of crap when they say the border barrier didn’t help lower the crime rate,” Trump said, again adding falsely, “It didn’t stay the same. It went way down.”
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What was said:
“If we cut detention space, we are cutting loose dangerous criminals into our country.”
This is disputed.
Before Trump took the stage Monday night in El Paso, lawmakers in Washington reached a tentative deal on border security that included funding for physical barriers at the border and the reduction of detention space for migrants.
Democrats had sought to limit the number of detention beds under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that limiting the beds would force the agency to prioritize migrants with serious criminal records. Matt Albence, the deputy director of ICE, said a reduction in the number of beds would mean the release of criminals.
Whether or not ICE would be forced to released hardened criminals is a prediction that cannot be fact checked, but available data suggests that most immigrants in detention have not committed serious crimes. Records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University show that in June 2018, for example, ICE held more than 44,000 migrants in detention facilities across the country. Of these migrants, 58 percent had no criminal conviction and 21 percent had committed minor offenses such as traffic violations or illegal entry while 18 percent had been convicted of serious crimes.
ICE has disputed that breakdown but used a broader measure for its figures: The agency said 54 percent of detained immigrants had criminal records or faced pending charges, though it did not specify what crimes they were accused of committing.
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What was said:
“So we have, let’s say, 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people, not too good.”
This is exaggerated.
Trump overestimated his crowd size and severely understated the number of people who attended a dueling rally held Monday night by Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic congressman.
A spokesman with the fire department told the El Paso Times that the arena Trump spoke at was filled to capacity at 6,500 people. Thousands more watched the rally outside, with a possible total attendance of 10,000, the spokesman said, noting that the department did not officially estimate the crowd outside.
Estimates for O’Rourke’s crowd have been far higher than 200 or 300, ranging from 7,000 to 15,000.
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What was said:
“I don’t think anybody in this room wants to pay 70, 80, 90 and 95 percent tax?”
This is misleading.
Several Democrats have introduced proposals to increase taxes, but unless the 6,500 people in the room were all among the wealthiest Americans, they would not be affected by these proposed tax hikes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., suggested a top marginal tax rate of 60 or 70 percent on incomes over $10 million. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is running for president, has proposed a wealth tax of 2 percent on people with a net worth above $50 million and 3 percent over $1 billion. And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., proposed a top estate tax rate of 77 percent on inheritances over $1 billion.
For context, households in the top 5 percent earned an average income of $385,289 in 2017, according to the Census Bureau.
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What was said:
“I really don’t like their policy of taking away your car, of taking away your airplane flights, of let’s hop a train to California, of you’re not allowed to own cows anymore.”
This is exaggerated.
Trump was referring to the Green New Deal, a proposal to combat climate change released by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.
In its current form, the plan is a broad outline, introduced as a nonbinding congressional resolution, and proposes projects like expanding renewable power sources, upgrading energy grids and buildings, working with farmers and ranchers to reform the agricultural sector, and investing in clean transportation and high speed rail. The legislation emphasizes that it intends to meet these goals “as much as is technologically feasible.”
Though the Green New Deal would significantly alter the transportation and agriculture sectors, it does not call for the elimination of cars, airplanes or cows.
Outside the text of the legislation, however, a blog post on Ocasio-Cortez’s website describing the plan did note, “The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then.”
Her staff has since said retracted the post and said that it was incomplete and published by accident.
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What was said:
“You can keep your doctor — remember that? Twenty-eight times, that didn’t happen. Turned out to be a lie. Hey, where are the fact checkers?”
This is misleading.
When President Barack Obama encouraged lawmakers to pass the health care law during his first term, he repeatedly promised that consumers would be able to keep their doctor or health care plan under the new insurance system.
Contrary to Trump’s suggestions, fact checkers and news outlets have called out Obama for failing to fulfill that pledge. The Washington Post noted in 2009 that the claim “would not necessarily be true.” Factcheck.org wrote in 2009 that the promise would not apply to everyone. PolitiFact awarded Obama its Lie of the Year, its annual selection of the most egregious falsehood, in 2013. And The New York Times called it a “broken promise” in a 2013 article on the front page.
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Other claims:
In addition, Trump repeated at least eight other claims The New York Times has previously checked:
— He exaggerated when he claimed that he had presided over an “economic miracle.” (The strong economy is a continuation of trends that began before Trump took office.)
— He falsely claimed that terminally ill patients could not get access to experimental drugs before he signed a “Right to Try” law. (A similar federal program had existed for decades before Trump signed the law last summer.)
— He claimed that the United States was “now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas.” (This has been the case since 2013.)
— He misleadingly claimed that lawmakers had been trying to pass Veterans Choice for four decades. (Although Trump has presided over reforms to the program, Veterans Choice was signed into law under President Barack Obama.)
— He falsely claimed the government “couldn’t fire anybody” before he signed a Veterans Affairs Accountability Act. (He signed a law that would make it easier to remove bad employees, but the department had been able to fire people before.)
— He falsely accused Hillary Clinton and Democrats of colluding with Russia. (There is no evidence of this.)
— He claimed that immigration officials had made 266,000 arrests of immigrants in the country illegally who had committed crimes like murder, sexual assault and kidnapping. (The most common offenses were immigration, traffic and drug violations.)
— He falsely claimed that only 2 percent of arrested immigrants in the country illegally return for court hearings. (The accurate figure is about 72 percent.)
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.