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On his way out, President Donald Trump claimed things he did not do and distorted his record on jobs, taxes, the pandemic and more. Lies permeated his farewell remarks to the country.
Further, by noting that Americans were “horrified” by the capture of the Capitol this month, he went beyond the encouragement he had given the crowd in advance and his praise of the attackers in as “very special” people while still looting the seat of power.
A look at some of his statements from Tuesday:
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TRUMP: “Another administration would have taken three, four, five, maybe even up to 10 years to develop a vaccine. We did it in nine months.
THE FACTS: In fact, the administration has not developed any vaccine. Pharmaceutical companies have done it. And one of the two US companies that released vaccines currently in use did not take development funds from the government.
Trump’s claim that a vaccine would have taken years under a different administration stretches credulity. COVID-19 vaccines were indeed remarkably fast, but other countries have developed them as well. A coronavirus vaccine is not a singular achievement of the United States, let alone the Trump administration.
US pharmaceutical maker Pfizer developed its vaccine in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, avoiding federal development money, while benefiting from an early pledge from Washington to purchase large quantities if the vaccine was successful. A vaccine from Moderna from the United States is also widely used.
But the British AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is given in several countries, and vaccines from China and Russia are also of limited use. More than a dozen potential vaccines are in the final stages of testing around the world.
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VETERANS
TRUMP: “We made it through VA Choice.”
THE FACTS: No, he didn’t pass the Choice program. President Barack Obama has done it. Trump expanded it. The program allows veterans to obtain medical care outside of the Veterans Affairs system under certain conditions. Trump has tried to take credit for Obama’s success on numerous occasions.
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TAXES
TRUMP: “We have passed the biggest tax cut and reform package in American history.”
THE FACTS: His tax cuts aren’t close to the biggest in US history.
That’s a tax cut of $ 1.5 trillion over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of this size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The 1981 cut by President Ronald Reagan is the largest, followed by the tax cut in 1945 that funded World War II.
The post-Reagan tax cuts are also among the most historically significant: the cuts by President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and their renewal by Obama a decade later.
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ECONOMY
TRUMP: “We have also built the largest economy in the history of the world.”
THE FACTS: No, the numbers show it wasn’t the biggest in US history. And he’s the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to step down with fewer jobs than when he started.
Did the United States have the most jobs on record before the pandemic? Of course, the population had increased. The 3.5% unemployment rate before the recession was at its lowest level in half a century, but the percentage of people working or looking for work was still below the high of 2000.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer has examined Trump’s record of economic growth. Growth under Trump was on average 2.48% per year before the pandemic, barely above the 2.41% gains achieved during Obama’s second term. In contrast, the economic expansion that began in 1982 under Reagan’s presidency averaged 4.2 percent per year.
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TRUMP: “We have kick-started job creation in the United States and achieved record unemployment for African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, women – almost everyone.
THE FACTS: Not an ignition. Job creation actually slowed in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, to around 2 million, down from nearly 2.5 million in 2016, Obama’s last year in office.
Low unemployment rates refer to a pre-pandemic economy that no longer exists. The pandemic has cost the U.S. economy 10 million jobs and made Trump the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net loss of jobs. The United States has about 2.8 million fewer jobs today than it did during Trump’s inauguration and lost 140,000 just in December. And the job losses fell disproportionately on black Americans, Hispanics and women.
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TRUMP: “We have rebuilt the American manufacturing base, opened thousands of new factories and brought back the beautiful phrase Made in USA.
THE FACTS: It’s overkill. There are now 60,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States than when Trump took office. Despite the progress made before the pandemic, the manufacturing base had not been exactly “rebuilt”.
Before the coronavirus, nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs were added under Trump, slightly better than the nearly 400,000 gained during Obama’s second term. Yet even before the pandemic, the United States had 4.3 million fewer factory jobs than in 2001, the year China joined the World Trade Organization and a wave of Cheaper imports from this country entered the United States.
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CAPITOL INSURRECTION
TRUMP: “All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.
THE FACTS: This perhaps sums up the reaction of most Americans, but it ignores its own contribution to stoking the anger of his supporters before they stage the heated melee.
For months Trump falsely claimed that the November election was stolen, then invited supporters to Washington and sent them to Capitol Hill with the urge to “fight like hell.”
With the uprising still ongoing and the speed of the attack apparent from video and reports from the scene, Trump released a video telling them to ‘go home now’ while repeating ‘it was a fraudulent election. And adding: “We love you. You are very special. “
The House impeached Trump, accusing him of instigating an insurgency. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump’s political ally for four years, said Tuesday that Trump supporters were “fed on lies” and “provoked by the President and other powerful people.”
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CHINA
TRUMP: “We have imposed historic and monumental tariffs on China. … Our trade relationship was changing rapidly, billions and billions of dollars poured into the United States, but the virus forced us to go in a different direction.
THE FACTS: This is a familiar statement, fundamentally wrong.
It is wrong to suggest that the United States has never levied tariffs on Chinese products before acting. The tariffs on Chinese products are simply higher in some cases than before. It is also wrong to suggest that the tariffs are paid by China.
Most of the tariff money that goes into government coffers comes from American businesses and consumers, not China. Tariffs are essentially, if not entirely, a tax paid in the domestic market.
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ISLAMIC STATE
TRUMP: “We wiped out the caliphate from IS.”
THE FACTS: His suggestion of 100% defeat is misleading because ISIS is still a threat.
ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, then lost its last of its assets in Syria in March 2019, marking the end of the self-proclaimed extremist caliphate. Yet extremist sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria in recent weeks and are believed to be responsible for targeted killings against local officials and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The continuing attacks are a sign the militant group is taking advantage of governments otherwise focused on the pandemic and the ensuing slide into economic chaos. The virus compounds long-standing concern among security and UN experts over the group’s return.
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Robert Burns, and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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EDITOR’S NOTE – A look at the veracity of the claims of political figures.
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Find the AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck
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