Most notably, Trump’s first post-presidency deal with, on the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, included his normal lies concerning the 2020 election. He continued to falsely insist he was the professional winner and continued to falsely insist the election was “rigged.”
Trump repeated a bunch of different false claims we commonly heard from him as president, on topics starting from commerce with China to his stance on the battle in Iraq. He additionally provided up some new false claims about President Joe Biden’s early days in workplace.
We are nonetheless going by way of the transcript of Trump’s remarks, however right here is an preliminary breakdown of among the issues he stated.
Who received the election
Trump repeated numerous variations of his normal lie that he received the 2020 election. He stated that Democrats “just lost the White House,” stated that “it’s not possible” that he misplaced, stated “no” after asking the rhetorical query “did Biden win?” and stated one other election win sooner or later can be his “third.”
Facts First: This is all false. Trump misplaced the 2020 election, truthful and sq.. Democrat Joe Biden received a 306-232 victory within the Electoral College — incomes over seven million extra votes than Trump, good for a margin of 51.3% to 46.8%. Mail-in ballots and lifeless voters
Trump repeated his assault on mail-in voting and claimed that lifeless individuals voted within the election.
“(T)ens of millions of ballots. Where are they coming from? They’re coming from all over the place.” He then claimed that “dead people are voting.”
Facts First: Both of those claims are unsuitable. As we have now fact checked many instances earlier than, mail-in voting is just not rife with fraud and there weren’t tens of thousands and thousands of ballots that got here from unknown origins. CNN looked into several claims of lifeless individuals’s ballots being forged within the election and located no proof of widespread fraud. Early morning vote batches
Trump repeated the declare that some nefarious vote-dumping occurred within the earlier hours of the morning after the election.
“What happened at 3:02 in the morning?” Trump requested the CPAC viewers.
Facts First: There’s nothing inherently suspicious or mysterious about giant batches of votes being reported late at evening and even after Election Day. Votes from mail-in ballots had been usually reported in a while Election Day and afterwards as a result of they could not be counted forward of time in lots of states, together with
Michigan and
Pennsylvania. And in a number of lawsuits over the election, judges
determined the witness affidavits claiming they noticed literal late evening dumps of ballots had been
baseless and never proof of fraud.
More votes than individuals
Trump repeated one other of his arguments about voter fraud, claiming that in a number of cities there have been extra votes than individuals. He particularly known as out Detroit, Michigan, which got here beneath scrutiny shortly after the election when Republican county election officers tried to dam the certification of election outcomes.
“We have a little problem adjusting in Detroit, we seem to have more votes than we have people. A lot more votes. An election changing number,” Trump stated.
Facts First: It’s false that there have been extra votes than individuals in Detroit. The metropolis noticed 250,138 votes cast this election, lower than half the variety of registered voters (504,714) and much fewer than the 670,031 individuals within the metropolis as of 2019, based on the US Census Bureau. Trump’s insistence that there are “more votes than people” possible refers to precincts which might be out of stability, which implies the variety of voters recorded did not match the variety of ballots forged in sure locations. However, former and present Michigan state officers
told CNN these imbalances are sometimes clerical errors that are addressed as a part of the canvassing course of and never indicative of widespread fraud.
Votes in Pennsylvania
Trump additionally claimed that “in Pennsylvania, they had hundreds of thousands of more votes than they had people voting.”
Facts First: This is fake. State officers and reality checkers have repeatedly explained that the declare that Pennsylvania had extra votes than registered voters is simply not true; Trump could have been counting on an incorrect determine from a Republican state legislator, who had relied on incomplete data. Biden
Biden and the Keystone Pipeline
Trump claimed that Biden had not stated throughout his marketing campaign that he was planning to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.
“In one of his first official acts — which was incredible, because again, he talked about energy, he never said he was going to do this — he canceled the Keystone pipeline,” Trump stated.
Facts First: T
his is deceptive. Biden’s marketing campaign announced in May 2020 that he would cancel the Keystone XL pipeline if elected, and reiterated that place later within the marketing campaign. An preliminary search of newspaper and tv archives didn’t flip up any examples of Biden personally talking about his plan to kill Keystone, so there could also be a slender foundation for Trump’s declare that Biden himself “never said” he would achieve this. But on condition that the Biden marketing campaign’s announcement was broadly reported, the info do not help Trump’s broader suggestion that the cancellation was a shock transfer. Biden and fracking
Trump claimed Biden reversed his stance on fracking between the first and the overall election, stating, “During the primary, ‘no fracking.’ As soon as he got through that, he said ‘no, of course, everybody can frack.'”
Facts First: While Trump’s characterization of Biden’s stance on fracking is inaccurate, there’s some basis for the Trump marketing campaign’s continued criticism that Biden flipflopped on the difficulty. Biden’s written plan by no means included a whole ban on fracking however his feedback over the course of the marketing campaign did create confusion about his place on the difficulty. During the July 2019 Democratic
primary debate, CNN’s Dana Bash requested whether or not there can be “any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?” to which Biden responded, “No, we would — we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either — any fossil fuel.”
After the first, Trump
referenced these previous remarks from Biden within the last presidential debate, prompting the previous vice chairman to falsely insist he by no means stated he opposed fracking. Biden then tried to make clear his place and
claimed his previous opposition was particularly about fracking on federal land solely. But Biden didn’t go as far as to specific the unbridled help for fracking Trump implied and his feedback shouldn’t be construed as such.
Biden’s plan through the common election
proposed “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” not ending all new fracking wherever or ending all present fracking on public lands and waters. Per week after taking workplace, Biden
signed an govt order ordering a
moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land and water areas.Refugees
Trump stated: “Your family still can’t go out to eat at local restaurants, but Joe Biden is bringing in thousands upon thousands of refugees from all over the world. People that nobody knows anything about. We don’t have crime records. We don’t have health records.”
Facts First: While it’s true that Biden is planning to considerably enhance the variety of refugees the US accepts, it is unsuitable to recommend that the US would not know “anything about” the refugees it brings in. Refugees are rigorously vetted; the admissions course of includes an interview evaluation by US authorities personnel, medical screening, and numerous sorts of background checks, together with fingerprint checks towards databases maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense. Trump lowered the utmost quantity to a historic low of 15,000 for the 2021 fiscal 12 months; Biden
plans to lift the cap to 62,500 for 2021 after which to 125,000 in his first full fiscal 12 months, 2022.
President Barack Obama set a cap of 85,000 in his final full fiscal 12 months in workplace, 2016. Obama
raised the cap to 110,000 for his last partial fiscal 12 months, 2017.
Biden and colleges
Trump known as for kids to return to highschool “immediately,” then stated, “The only reason most parents do not have that choice is because Joe Biden sold out America’s children to the teachers unions.” He stated Biden is “cruelly keeping our children locked in their homes.”
Facts First:
It’s not true that Biden, who has known as for the reopening of most faculties by his one hundredth day in workplace, is personally retaining youngsters locked out of faculty or that Biden’s place on the difficulty is “the only reason” some colleges proceed to supply solely digital instruction. While the federal authorities can situation guidelines for the reopening of colleges, it’s as much as state and particularly local officials to make the precise choices on when to reopen. Also, the present steerage from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t inform colleges that they can not reopen. It says: “At any level of community transmission, all schools have options to provide in-person instruction (either full or hybrid), through strict adherence to mitigation strategies.”
Biden’s administration will be pretty criticized for shifting from its unique place on what would rely as assembly his objective of getting a majority of colleges open inside 100 days. (You can
read more here on its shifting explanations. But it isn’t truthful to say Biden is the one individual retaining youngsters out of school rooms. Recent
polling reveals a majority of adults help ready till any instructor who desires a vaccine can get it.
And it is price noting that Trump himself couldn’t open colleges as president even when he wished to; Trump instructed in 2020 that he would possibly reduce off federal funding to varsities that didn’t reopen, however consultants stated he couldn’t unilaterally perform that menace, and he did
not find yourself making an attempt.
Trump’s repeated falsehoods
Florida, Ohio and Iowa
Trump claimed that “no president has ever lost an election after carrying Florida, Ohio and Iowa.”
Facts First: This wants context. Richard Nixon received Florida, Ohio and Iowa in 1960 however lost the election to John F. Kennedy. Unlike a earlier version of this declare, through which Trump declared that no person in any respect ever misplaced the election after profitable these three states, this “no president” model is just not flat false as a result of Nixon was not an incumbent president on the time. Still, Trump omitted the truth that anyone has received these three states and been defeated. Also, in fact, this historic tidbit doesn’t inform us something concerning the legitimacy of Trump’s defeat.
Deportations to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
Trump repeated an previous false declare about Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, saying that earlier than he took workplace, these nations had been “refusing to take back illegal alien gang members, including MS-13.” He added quickly after: “We’d fly ’em in, they wouldn’t let the plane land. We’d bus ’em in, they wouldn’t let the buses get anywhere near the border.”
Facts First: This stays false. In 2016, simply previous to Trump’s presidency, not one of the three nations was on the list of nations that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thought-about “recalcitrant” (uncooperative) in accepting the return of their residents from the US. Randy Capps, director of analysis for US applications on the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington suppose tank, famous to CNN in 2019 that within the 2016 fiscal 12 months, the final full 12 months earlier than Trump took workplace, ICE
reported that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador ranked second, third and fourth for the nation of citizenship of individuals being faraway from the US. The similar was true within the
2017 fiscal year, which encompassed the tip of Barack Obama’s presidency and the start of Trump’s. ICE didn’t determine any widespread issues with deportations to those nations.
ICE officers stated there have been some exceptions to the three nations’ common cooperativeness, however Trump’s common declaration that the nations had been uncooperative was by no means true.
Trump’s stance on the battle in Iraq
Trump repeated his normal false declare about his pre-war stance on the battle in Iraq.
“Iraq: remember I used to say don’t go in, but if you’re gonna go in, keep the oil. Well, we went in and we didn’t keep the oil,” he stated.
Facts First: Contrary to his repeated claims, Trump didn’t publicly express opposition to the invasion of Iraq before it occurred. He started criticizing the battle in 2003, after the invasion, however he additionally stated that 12 months that American troops shouldn’t be withdrawn from Iraq. He emerged as an express opponent of the battle in 2004. We couldn’t discover any examples of Trump saying something earlier than the battle about retaining Iraq’s oil. (We requested the Trump-era White House communications workers if it might present any proof; we by no means acquired a response.) Trump seemed to be describing feedback he made through the battle, through which he did discuss taking Iraq’s oil, as if he made them through the run-up to the battle.
You can learn an extended reality test
here.
Past tariffs on China
Trump repeated a well-known declare about how, earlier than he took workplace, China “never gave us 10 cents,” however then, beneath him, the US took in “hundreds of billions” from China due to his tariffs.
Facts First: This was unsuitable in two methods. First, studies repeatedly confirmed that it isn’t true that China paid Trump’s tariffs; Americans bore the vast majority of the price. Second, Trump’s declare that the federal government had not beforehand acquired “10 cents” from tariffs on China can also be false. The US has had tariffs on China for greater than two centuries; President Barack Obama imposed new tariffs on China; FactExamine.org reported that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.” China additionally made
tens of billions of annual purchases of US exports beneath Obama — greater than $100 billion in items purchases yearly from 2011 by way of 2016.”
The commerce deficit with China
Trump repeated one of many
most frequent false claims of his presidency — his lie that, up to now, the US used to have a commerce deficit of about $500 billion with China.
“We used to lose $504 billion commerce deficit with China…not million; $504 million is so much…now take $504 million, make it $504 billion; we had deficits with China,” he said.
Facts First: Trump was wrong again. The US had never had a $504 billion (or $500 billion) trade deficit with China before Trump took office. The record was set in the Trump era: a $380 billion deficit in goods and services trade with China in 2018. The goods and services deficit with China declined to $308 billion in 2019. (We don’t have final figures for 2020.)
US deaths in Afghanistan
Trump said, “Not one American soldier has been killed in Afghanistan in over a 12 months.”
Facts First: This is true if you are talking specifically about combat deaths but not true if you count all deaths. There have been at least three US troopers killed in Afghanistan since February 28, 2020, one in a non-combat car rollover and two in different non-combat incidents. 
