Fact-Checking Night 3 of the Republican National Convention
— Madison Cawthorn, Republican House candidate.
This is false.
Actually, James Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence, nor did George Washington, John Jay, or Alexander Hamilton.
— Representative Lee Zeldin of New York
This is misleading.
Testing for the coronavirus in the United States has been widely disparaged by experts across fields as inconsistent, insufficient and wholly disastrous — sentiments that Mr. Zeldin’s comments don’t reflect.
Turnaround times for results continue to stretch past a week in many parts of the country; supply shortages have hamstrung laboratories trying to process thousands of patient samples each day. Many diagnostic tests for the coronavirus are now approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration. But many of the companies that manufacture them are limited by production lines that were built for much more modest demand, and are struggling to ramp up.
What’s more, guidance from the government on testing priorities has fluctuated and even reversed. Just this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its recommendations on testing for people without symptoms, even those who have recently been exposed to known coronavirus cases. Federal officials said pressure to make the change came from higher-ups in Washington at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Aug. 26, 2020, 10:11 p.m. ET
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— Burgess Owens, former N.F.L. player
This needs context.
It’s true that Black and Hispanic workers did see record-low unemployment during the Trump administration before the pandemic hit, but women did not — they had lower unemployment in the 1950s. It is also difficult to judge whether the groups have seen “unprecedented prosperity.” Poverty has come down in recent years, and wages have risen. But inequality has also risen, and economic outcomes have often been uneven. For instance, participation rates — the share of adults who are actually in jobs or looking — has fallen across demographic groups. It is also worth noting that the same groups who made recent labor market gains have in many cases been the hardest hit economically during the pandemic, although that was the result of the shock that hit the economy rather than the administration’s labor-related policies. Minority workers, women and those with lower education levels faced heavy job losses as service industries shut down across much of the country.
— Lou Holtz, former football coach
False.
Like most Democrats, Mr. Biden supports abortion rights and has said he would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and restore federal funding to reproductive-care facilities like Planned Parenthood. But he only reversed his support for the Hyde Amendment, which bars using federal money for most abortions, last year. And he has grappled for years over the issue of abortion. There is no evidence that his campaign is more radical about abortion rights than most recent Democratic candidates.
While there is plenty of room for subjective judgments about religious tenets and there are deep divisions between left and right about how politics should intersect with faith, Mr. Biden is a practicing Catholic. His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention that her husband’s “faith is in the providence of God.” John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, called Mr. Biden “a man of faith.” And one of Mr. Biden’s close friends, Senator Chris Coons, offered a lengthy testimony to Mr. Biden’s faith, saying Mr. Biden would be “a president for Americans of all faiths, as well as people of conscience who practice no particular faith.”
— Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa.
This is false.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration did roll back the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule, which had restored and extended the federal government’s authority to limit pollution in the nation’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands. President Trump echoed farm-state Republicans’ claims that the Obama-era water rule would have aggressively expanded the government’s authority to regulate on farmland. And the Iowa Farm Bureau suggested that, once fully enforced, the rule could be interpreted in such a way as to allow the federal government to regulate as much as 97 percent of the state’s land.
But legal experts in federal water law say there is no basis for that claim. In fact, the Obama rule explicitly exempted from regulation many bodies of water found on farms, including puddles, ditches, artificial ponds for livestock watering, and certain farming irrigation systems. A 2016 study found that the E.P.A.’s jurisdiction over farms was slightly diminished under the new rule.
— Representative Lee M. Zeldin of New York
This is true.
In April, the Trump administration sent a trove of personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., to Suffolk County, where health workers had blown through stockpiles while battling an overwhelming surge in coronavirus cases.
However, in many other parts of the country, shortages of P.P.E. persisted — some lasting even through present day. Across the country, doctors, nurses, and other health workers took to social media, pleading for masks. When they arrived, many were forced to ration their stocks, wearing single-use face coverings for days and sometimes weeks, all the while treating patients stricken with the coronavirus.
— Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa
This is true.
Ms. Ernst was referring to devastating wind storms that whipped through Iowa this month, and it’s true that Mr. Trump acted fast in granting part of the state’s request for help. He visited in the wake of the storms, and he promptly signed a disaster relief order. That order provided roughly $45 million for public utilities and buildings, but the president did not approve money that the state had requested for individual homeowners and farmers.
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:47 p.m. ET
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— Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary
This is false.
While President Trump has paid lip service to protecting people who would have pre-existing medical conditions and may have provided support to Ms. McEnany during her recovery from a preventive mastectomy, he is currently trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. The federal law requires health insurers to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions and not charge them more when they have an expensive medical condition. He has also allowed the sale of short-term health insurance plans and association health plans that do not require pre-existing conditions to be covered.
Some 54 million Americans are estimated to have pre-existing conditions that would likely disqualify them from coverage without the protections from the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump’s first legislative priority was to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. Although those efforts failed, his Justice Department is now actively trying to overturn the entire law. The administration has also taken several steps to weaken the law by encouraging the sale of health plans that do not meet the standards of Obamacare. While Mr. Trump has repeatedly promised to introduce his own plan that would protect people with pre-existing conditions, he has not yet done so.
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:42 p.m. ET
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— Scott Dane, executive director of the Associated Contract Loggers and Truckers of Minnesota
This lacks context.
The Minnesota logging industry struggled deeply during the Obama administration, but that was partly because former President Barack Obama’s entry into the White House coincided with the onset of the Great Recession and a historic crash in the housing market.
In the early 2000s, a booming housing market led to record lumber consumption, according to the Western Wood Products Association. But in 2009, housing starts fell to a 50-year low, sharply decreasing demand for wood and wood products. The lumber industry had been automating and consolidating, and small mills in Minnesota that operated on slim profit margins were exceptionally hard hit.
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:40 p.m. ET
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— Michael McHale, president of the National Association of Police Organizations
This is exaggerated.
Across 25 large American cities, violent crime has risen by about 0.4 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the latest available data assembled by crime analysts at the consulting firm AH Datalytics. That’s a small uptick, not quite the lawless chaos Mr. McHale portrayed. He is correct, however, that murders have increased 26 percent.
In Portland, New York and Chicago, violent crime has actually decreased by 7 percent, 3.3 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. In Minneapolis, it has increased 13 percent.
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:18 p.m. ET
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— Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
This is false.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was referring to an American intelligence report released earlier this month that concluded that China prefers that President Trump be defeated in November. “The Chinese, they said, prefer Biden over — we don’t know that, but that’s what they’re saying, but they’re not really getting involved in the presidential election,” Ms. Pelosi said during an Aug. 9 interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
The “they” she was referring to was the intelligence officials who wrote the report, as is clear in this clip of the interview. As our colleague Julian Barnes has reported, the intelligence report also concluded that Russia is the far graver, and more immediate, threat in the election.
In her interview on Fox, Ms. Pelosi objected to any suggestion that China posed as much of a threat as Russia does. “I’ve been a critic of China for over 30 years; I take second place to no one on my criticism of China,” Ms. Pelosi said. But for intelligence officials to compare China’s interest in the election to Russia’s “is not right, it doesn’t really tell the story,” she said.
While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike Mr. Trump, intelligence officials said.
— Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee
This is exaggerated.
President Trump’s relationship with law enforcement is complicated and certainly not all positive. He has was won endorsements from police unions, like the powerful Fraternal Order of Police, and he has readily expressed support for police officers while emphasizing a law-and-order agenda. But Mr. Trump has also made sharp, public attacks on the nation’s top law enforcement officers — including on his own former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, as well as the former deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein. His pointed criticism of institutions like the Justice Department and F.B.I. — especially in the context of the special counsel inquiry focused on Russia’s interference in the election — has prompted Democrats and Republicans alike to express concern that he has eroded public confidence in law enforcement. And he has mercilessly mocked F.B.I. agents who investigated his campaign’s contacts with Russia, accusing them repeatedly of law breaking, even treason.
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:10 p.m. ET
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— Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence
This is misleading.
The Trump administration has budgeted more than $2 trillion to the defense budgets for the past three fiscal years: $671 billion in 2018, $685 billion in 2019 and $713 billion in 2020. But Mr. Kellogg’s suggestion that the military spending was declining before Mr. Trump took office and had seldom received such a large amount of money is wrong.
Adjusted for inflation, the Pentagon operated with larger budgets every year from the 2007 fiscal year to 2012 fiscal year, peaking at $848 billion in 2008. Under Mr. Trump, the amount appropriated for procurement — buying and upgrading equipment — averaged $132 billion over the past three fiscal years. That is lower than the annual averages of $134 billion under President Barack Obama and $140 billion under President George W. Bush.
Though the Trump administration has invested in operational readiness, there are signs that the military continues to face substantial challenges in addressing an array of threats from around the world. For example, the military earned a middling grade of “marginal” last year in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s annual index of military strength, based on factors like shortages in personnel and aging equipment. The think tank noted that American forces are probably capable of meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict but “would be very hard-pressed to do more and certainly would be ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous major regional contingencies.”
Aug. 26, 2020, 9:05 p.m. ET
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— Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee
This is exaggerated.
Ms. Blackburn is painting the Democratic Party with too broad of a stroke and oversimplifying positions held by some members of its progressive wing. Calls to defund the police generally refer to shifting some resources out of police departments and reinvesting them into other services — not eliminating police departments altogether. The Democratic Party’s nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has specifically said he does not agree with this aim. Similarly, some Democrats and liberals have criticized military budgets as too large, but there are no examples national party leaders calling for its elimination. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, recently proposed a bill reducing the military budget by 10 percent; it failed 23 votes to 77. And calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which became a symbol of President Trump’s immigration policies — have also divided Democrats, with some supporters proposing to eliminate the agency and replace it with two new agencies.
Aug. 26, 2020, 8:58 p.m. ET
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— Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas
This is exaggerated.
While the Islamic State has been pushed out of its so-called caliphate, the extremist group continues to carry out attacks in Iraq and Syria. And some of the territorial gains made by American troops and their allies predate the Trump administration.
The research firm IHS Markit estimated that the Islamic State lost about a third of its territory from January 2015 to January 2017, when President Trump took office. Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy to the coalition fighting the group, has said 50 percent of those losses occurred before 2017.
Officials and experts had always anticipated that the campaign, which started in 2014 during the Obama administration, would result in pushing the extremist group out of its self-declared caliphate. Mr. Trump took undue credit for defeating ISIS in a tweet last October.
“When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area,” Trump said. “We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate.” Mr. McGurk responded to the president on Twitter that “none of this is true.”
