Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-TruthsPOLITICO fact-checked both candidates for a week. This is what we found.
By KYLE CHENEY, ISAAC ARNSDORF , DANIEL LIPPMAN, DANIEL STRAUSS and BRENT GRIFFITHS
September 25, 2016
As August ended, a new Donald Trump emerged. Coached by his third campaign management team, he stayed on message, read from a teleprompter, and focused on policy. It lasted about a month.
After he lied on Sept. 16 that he was not the person responsible for the birtherism campaign to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency, POLITICO chose to spend a week fact-checking Trump. We fact-checked Hillary Clinton over the same time too.
We subjected every statement made by both the Republican and Democratic candidates – in speeches, in interviews and on Twitter – to our magazine’s rigorous fact-checking process. The conclusion is inescapable: Trump’s mishandling of facts and propensity for exaggeration so greatly exceed Clinton’s as to make the comparison almost ludicrous.
Though few statements match the audacity of his statement about his role in questioning Obama’s citizenship, Trump has built a cottage industry around stretching the truth. According to POLITICO’s five-day analysis Trump averaged about one falsehood every three minutes and 15 seconds over nearly five hours of remarks.
In raw numbers, that’s 87 erroneous statements in five days.
According to POLITICO’s five-day analysis, Trump averaged one falsehood every 3 minutes and 15 seconds over nearly five hours of remarks.
Trump’s misrepresentations range from false pronouncements (he again wrongly said he opposed the war in Iraq before it began) to the petty (he insisted Clinton had copied him by holding rallies with her plane in the background and insinuated she was “sleeping” when she held no public events).
He contradicted his own policy on providing health care to the poor, overstated the ad spending discrepancy between his campaign and Clinton’s and exaggerated the size of his primary victories and polling leads.
Clinton is no paragon of truth-telling either. Her misrepresentations, while less frequent, tend to involve the transgressions she’s made over her long career in public life – from her handling of classified information as secretary of state to her campaign’s obfuscation surrounding her health – rather than policy substance. We explore her smaller file of falsehoods here.
Certainly, Trump’s voluminous file is partly due to the fact that he simply talks more. His rallies this week were longer, his media appearances more regular. Clinton took two days off the trail for debate prep. But that doesn’t come close to accounting for the discrepancy.
Though Clinton spoke for less than half as long as Trump, extrapolating the frequency of her misstatements suggests that even if she, too, spoke for as many hours as Trump, he'd still surpass her nearly four times over.
In one respect, Trump has made strides: citing primary sources. Trump, perhaps chastened by previous fact-checks, tethered to his teleprompter or knee-deep in debate prep, has more regularly begun citing Pew, think tank reports and Census figures.
Some metrics on Trump’s statements this week:
Number of appearances: 6 speeches; 1 town hall, 7 TV interviews; 0 press availabilities; 37 tweets
Combined length of remarks (speeches, interviews): 4 hours and 43 minutes
Raw number of misstatements, exaggerations, falsehoods: 87
Rate: 1 untruth every 3.25 minutes
The Trump campaign was asked for comment on Saturday on specific misrepresentations identified. This fact-check will be updated if the campaign responds.
Here is a week’s worth of Trump’s factual transgressions.
ECONOMY:
1. “The reason I do manufacture things overseas -- I have to do this, there is no choice, because [other countries] have devalued their currency so much that our companies are out of business for the most part.” (Sept. 20, Fox 8 interview)
Manufacturing is diminishing as a share of the economy, but it’s hardly vanishing. The sector constituted 11.8 percent of GDP in the first quarter of 2016. In the first quarter of 2006, it made up 13.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
2. “Excessive regulation costs our economy two trillion dollars a year. Can you believe that? Two trillion dollars a year.” (Sept. 21, Toledo, Ohio rally)
One week of Donald Trump fact-checks
The $2 trillion estimate comes from a report from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. It’s widely quoted, but independent fact-checkers have questioned its methodology. Additionally, the figure excludes any benefits derived from the effect of regulations. The Cleveland Plain Dealer notes that car seat belts, for example, are included as a cost. But the lives/money saved as a result is not used as an offset, even though the federal government has estimated the benefits of regulations outsripped the costs.
3. “The World Trade Organization — disaster for us.” (Sept. 20, Kenansville, N.C. rally)
This is an oversimplification. The organization adjudicates countries economic claims against each other, and the U.S. has both won and lost cases in front of the body — including in February, when the U.S. won a big decision against rules in India that discriminated against foreign solar power technology.
4. “This NAFTA is a one-way street right out of our country. Our jobs go right out of our country, our companies. It’s a one-way street for our companies and our jobs to get out of here. Nobody comes in. Did you ever hear of NAFTA coming in and bringing jobs? Did you ever hear of a new company opening in upstate New York because of NAFTA?” (Sept. 19, Fox and Friends)
According to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, “U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico support more than three million American jobs.” NAFTA made it easier to sell U.S. goods in those countries, meaning that some — and certainly not zero — of those 3 million jobs are a result of the trade agreement.
(Read the other 83 lies at link)
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