Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump started the ultimate full day of the 2024 presidential marketing campaign as he has spent most of the days prior: mendacity about immigration, the economic system and different topics.
On the first marketing campaign rally of his deliberate four-rally day, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Trump repeated quite a few immigration-related lies he has instructed again and again over the last month. He additionally revived a baseless conspiracy principle concerning the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including in some new imaginary particulars for good measure, and made two separate false claims about former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Here’s a truth verify of a few of Trump’s Raleigh remarks:
The federal response to Hurricane Helene: Trump repeated his false declare that the Federal Emergency Administration Company is “nonetheless not there” in North Carolina responding to Hurricane Helene, which hit in late September.
This isn’t even near true; FEMA instantly responded to the catastrophe in North Carolina and mentioned October 25 that it had greater than 1,700 employees deployed within the state. FEMA mentioned October 16 that it had accredited greater than $100 million in particular person assist to North Carolina residents.
At a briefing in early October, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, mentioned, “We’re grateful for the short actions and shut communications that we have now had with the president and with the FEMA group.” Will Ray, the state’s emergency administration director, mentioned on the briefing: “We’re grateful for the help not simply from the 22 states which have despatched groups to help us but in addition from our FEMA group and different members of the federal household.”
FEMA and migrants: Trump falsely claimed that FEMA didn’t reply in North Carolina as a result of the company “spent all their cash on bringing in murderers and lots of people; they spent all their cash on bringing in unlawful migrants.”
FEMA didn’t spend its catastrophe reduction cash on undocumented individuals. Congress appropriated the company greater than $35 billion in catastrophe reduction funds for fiscal 2024, in line with official FEMA statistics, and likewise gave FEMA a a lot smaller pool of cash, $650 million in fiscal 2024, for a program aimed toward serving to communities shelter migrants. Opposite to Trump’s claims, these are two separate pots of funds.
The variety of migrants: Trump repeated his false declare that “21 million individuals” crossed the border underneath the Biden administration. By means of September, the nation had recorded underneath 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants through the Biden administration, together with thousands and thousands who had been quickly expelled from the nation. Even including in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by Home Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no means the full is “21 million.”
Migrants and murder: Trump repeated a false declare about figures launched in September about immigrants and crime, wrongly saying that the numbers confirmed 13,099 murderers crossed the border through the Biden administration.
In actuality, the Division of Homeland Safety and impartial consultants have famous that this determine for immigrants who now have murder convictions is about individuals who entered the nation over many years, together with throughout Trump’s personal administration, not slightly below Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — and that the determine contains people who find themselves at present incarcerated in federal, state and native prisons and jails. You’ll be able to learn extra right here.
Prisons and overseas leaders: Trump repeated his false declare that overseas governments are “releasing all of their prisoners from jails everywhere in the world — not South America, everywhere in the world.” He then recommended the worldwide jail inhabitants is down in consequence.
There is no such thing as a proof for these claims, which Trump’s personal marketing campaign has been unable to defend. The recorded international jail inhabitants elevated from October 2021 to April 2024, from at the least about 10.77 million individuals to at the least about 10.99 million individuals, in line with the World Jail Inhabitants Record compiled by consultants in the UK.
“I do a each day information search to see what’s occurring in prisons world wide and have seen completely no proof that any nation is emptying its prisons and sending all of them to the US,” Helen Truthful, co-author of the jail inhabitants record and analysis fellow on the Institute for Crime & Justice Coverage Analysis at Birkbeck, College of London, mentioned in June, when Trump made the same declare.
Trump’s favourite chart: Trump repeated his long-debunked false declare that his favourite chart about migration numbers on the southern border — which he had thankfully turned his head to have a look at when a gunman tried to kill him at a marketing campaign rally in July — has an arrow on the backside pointing to “the day I left workplace,” when, he mentioned, the US had “the bottom unlawful immigration” in its historical past.
The chart doesn’t present that. In truth, the arrow really factors to April 2020, when Trump nonetheless had greater than eight months left in his time period and when international migration had slowed to a trickle due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers on the southern border elevated every month by way of the tip of Trump’s time period.
Wall building: Trump repeated his false declare that he had “571 miles of wall” constructed on the southern border throughout his administration. That’s a big exaggeration; official authorities information exhibits 458 miles had been constructed underneath Trump — together with each wall constructed the place no boundaries had existed earlier than and wall constructed to exchange earlier boundaries.
Migrants in Springfield: Trump repeated his false declare that “they dropped 30,000 unlawful migrants” on Springfield, Ohio, saying that whereas others use “a bit technicality” to say these new arrivals from Haiti should not unlawful migrants, they’re “unlawful” in his view.
That is false in a couple of means. Whereas we don’t know the immigration standing of each Haitian immigrant in Springfield, the neighborhood is, on the entire, within the nation lawfully. The Springfield metropolis web site says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are right here legally, underneath the Immigration Parole Program. As soon as right here, immigrants are then eligible to use for Momentary Protected Standing (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Occasions op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a supporter of Trump and JD Vance, he’s “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the authorized migrants dwelling in Springfield.”
Second, no person “dropped” the immigrants into Springfield; town’s Haitian residents had been not despatched there by a authorities resettlement program. Moderately, they independently determined to maneuver to town due to employment alternatives, inexpensive housing and the presence of a Haitian neighborhood, amongst different elements.
And whereas there is no such thing as a official tally of the variety of immigrants in Springfield, Trump’s “30,000” determine exceeds native estimates. The web site for town of Springfield says there are an estimated 12,000 to fifteen,000 immigrants within the county that features Springfield, the place the full inhabitants is about 138,000. Chris Cook dinner, the county’s well being commissioner, mentioned in July that his group estimated the most effective quantity was 10,000 to 12,000 Haitian residents within the county.
The roles revision in August: Trump repeated his false declare {that a} “whistleblower” was answerable for a downward revision to jobs numbers by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which introduced in August that its annual revision of labor information discovered that the economic system added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March.
“They thought they’d have the ability to get away with it by way of the election, however there was a whistleblower, and the whistleblower couldn’t stand what they had been doing, and blew the whistle on them, and so they acquired caught,” Trump mentioned in Raleigh.
That is fiction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics often releases the preliminary revised information in August, and it had disclosed the exact date of this explicit information launch — August 21 — weeks upfront.
William Seashore, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to guide the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For individuals who assume the large revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come back out after the election, do not forget that BLS at all times proclaims its draft revisions in August and introduced this 12 months’s date, August 21, many months in the past. It is very important verify your information.”
The newest jobs revision: Trump falsely claimed that there was one other downward revision of jobs numbers, final week, “as a result of they’d one other whistleblower, in order that they needed to do it — they wished to attend till after the election once more.” That is nonsense, too; this was one other regular revision carried out and introduced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself, and there’s no signal any whistleblower was concerned.
The October jobs report: Trump spoke of the October jobs report, which confirmed a below-expectations achieve of 12,000 jobs amid main storms and labor strikes, and mentioned he was grateful it was launched — “as a result of they tried to carry it; they tried to not put the report out. Kamala mentioned, ‘Don’t put that report, it’ll value me the election.’”
That is imaginary, too. The report got here out at its publicly scheduled time Friday. There is no such thing as a indication that Harris or anybody else tried to stop its launch.
Pelosi and inventory: Trump repeated a false declare about Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the previous Home speaker, saying that she offered Visa inventory “final week” after which “the next day” the federal authorities introduced a “main investigation” of Visa.
Visa inventory was really offered by Pelosi’s husband — greater than two and a half months earlier than the Justice Division filed a lawsuit towards the corporate. And the lawsuit was filed in September, not final week.
Pelosi and Trump’s State of the Union tackle: Trump revived a false declare from his presidency, saying that Pelosi “may have gone to jail” for ripping up a duplicate of his 2020 State of the Union tackle after he accomplished it, as a result of she was “not allowed to try this.”
It was not unlawful underneath authorities information legal guidelines for Pelosi to tear a duplicate of Trump’s tackle. Pelosi’s copy of the speech didn’t qualify as an official authorities file, consultants have instructed media retailers.
Trump and Nord Stream 2: Trump repeated a false declare concerning the Nord Stream 2 gasoline pipeline, which was a prized initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “I closed up his pipeline, it was useless.” Trump didn’t kill the pipeline. He signed sanctions associated to the challenge into legislation about three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already about 90% full, and the state-owned Russian firm behind the challenge introduced in December 2020 that building was resuming.
