Trump repeated some of his favorite lies in his video farewell speech, which was released on Tuesday, and in his final speech Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews.
Again, here’s a roundup of the facts.
In the video speech, Trump said he has appointed “nearly 300 federal judges.” In his final speech, likewise, Trump said he had “nearly 300 federal judges and three senior Supreme Court justices.” He added in the speech: “This is a record number.”
Facts first: Trump was incorrect, both with his number and with his claim to have set a record. It has obtained a total of 234 confirmed judges in the Supreme Court, district courts and appellate courts, according to figures from the Brookings Institution; visiting colleague Russell Wheeler; even if you round up generously, that doesn’t add up to nearly 300. And President Jimmy Carter appointed 261 judges in total, according to Wheeler – 39% of available judges at the time versus 27% of Trump.
Choice of veterans
Trump asserted in the video speech, for more than the 160th time as President, that he is the creator of the Veterans Choice healthcare program: “We made VA Choice.” (He made a less explicit version of this claim in his final speech.)
Facts first: Trump was once again wrong. Former President Barack Obama enacted the Veterans Choice program in 2014. What Trump signed was a 2018 law, the law VA MISSION, which changed and expanded the eligibility criteria for the Choice program.
The 2014 law Obama signed, which allowed some veterans to be covered by the government for health care provided by physicians outside the VA system, was a bipartisan initiative led by two senators Trump criticized on several occasions, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the late John McCain of Arizona. .
We have called Trump’s claim of winning Veterans Choice one of his 15 most notable lies in power.
Oil and gas production
Trump said in the video speech: “We have also unlocked our energy resources and have become by far the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.”
Facts first: While American energy production increase under Trump, Trump deserves no credit for the United States to take the top spot in overall energy production. The United States actually became the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas under President Barack Obama. in 2012, according to data released by the government’s Energy Information Administration. This was in particular crude oil in which the United States became the world’s largest producer during Trump’s tenure.
“The United States has been the world’s largest producer of natural gas since 2009, when US production of natural gas exceeded that of Russia, and it has been the world’s largest producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when its production exceeded that of Saudi Arabia, ”the Information Administration magazine said.
The border wall
Trump claimed in the video address that under him the United States had built “over 450 miles of mighty new wall.”
Facts first: It needs context. It’s true that over 450 miles of border fences were built under Trump – 453 miles as of Jan.8, 2021, according to official U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. However, only 47 of those 453 miles were erected where no barrier previously existed.
Of the remaining 406 miles: 351 miles replaced previously existing primary barriers which the government describes as dilapidated or obsolete; 22 miles replaced previously existing dilapidated or obsolete secondary barriers; 33 miles were new secondary barriers where previously there were only primary barriers.
We should not ignore the importance of replacement barriers, even though many Trump-era barriers are
bigger, more expensive and more controversial than the barriers they replaced. But it should be noted that Trump did not put up 450 miles of barriers on land that previously had no defenses.
Trump’s total votes for 2020
Trump said in his final speech that “we just got 75 million votes,” a record for a sitting president.
Facts first: This is another little exaggeration. Trump received 74.2 million votes in the 2020 election, which does not turn out to be 75 million. Trump’s total is indeed a record for a sitting president, but Trump also failed to acknowledge that Joe Biden got more than 7 million votes more than him.
– Tara Subramaniam
Unemployment rate
Trump boasted in the video speech that he “has hit record high unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women …”
Facts first: There are two inaccuracies here. First, the unemployment rate for women has never reached an all-time high under Trump. (Before the coronavirus pandemic, it was among the lowest in US history, but not the lowest.) Second, unemployment rates for all of these groups are no longer reaching all-time highs; Trump’s bragging ignores the fact that unemployment rates soared at the start of the pandemic and remain high today.
The unemployment rate for African Americans in December 2020 was 9.9%. That’s well above the 8.0% in Trump’s first full month in office, February 2017, and the record 5.2% in August 2019.
The unemployment rate for American Hispanics in December 2020 was 9.3%. That’s well above the 5.6% in February 2017 and the record 4.0% in September 2019.
The unemployment rate for women in December 2020 was 6.7%. This is well above the 4.6% of February 2017 and the record of 2.7% of May 1953.
The unemployment rate for Asian Americans in December 2020 was 5.8%. (This rate is not seasonally adjusted; the rates for the other groups in this fact check are seasonally adjusted.) That’s well above the 3.5% in February 2017 and the record 2.0% in May 2018 .
Trump’s job record
In his final speech, Trump bragged about his jobs record, saying that we “have such good – and have had – such good employment numbers. The jobs numbers have been absolutely amazing.” He continued: “When we started, if we hadn’t been affected by the pandemic, we would have had numbers that would never have been seen – already our numbers are the best ever.”
Facts first: Trump’s grammar makes this claim a little hard to verify – he seemed to come and go from bragging about the past to bragging about the present – but he obviously doesn’t “already” have the best job record of any. President. In fact, thanks to the big job losses in the pandemic era, he is leaving his post in the United States. about 3 million fewer jobs only when he took office. No other president in the post-World War II period, for which we have good official data, the employment record was negative.
Trump’s job creation record was lower than that of several other presidents even before the pandemic.
Trump’s tax cuts
Trump claimed in the farewell video and in his final speech that he passed the biggest tax cuts in U.S. history.
Facts first: Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 were not the biggest in American history. There have been larger tax cuts, whether you measure in inflation-adjusted dollars or as a percentage of the national economy.
Tax cuts in 1981, 2010 and 2013 were larger, both in inflation-adjusted dollars and as a proportion of the economy. As a part of the economy, there were even others that were more important, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank focused on fiscal policy.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed in 2017 under Trump, provided for some of the biggest cuts in nominal terms, but even then they are still smaller than the tax cuts passed in 2013.
– Katie Lobosco
