Democrats

WaPo Fact-checking Day 1 of the 2024 DNC

8/20/24
from The Gray Area:
8/20/24:
The first night of the Democrat National Convention included speeches full of tired and false political narratives. To his credit, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler attempted to isolate those "exaggerations". Below is a list of these Mr. Kessler attempted to clarify. Now again, that is a welcome effort from a left-wing journalist, but it is still easily seen as light on criticism. If these were fact checks of Donald Trump, you would see them described as 'FALSE', not 'exaggerated' or 'in the eye of the beholder'. You might also observe that these are years old political narratives, that only now are getting some minor attempt at correcting. Here is the list being reviewed:
from The Washington Post,
8/20/24:
Speakers said that Trump called for injecting bleach, wrote love letters to dictators and advocated that women be punished for abortion, among other claims. The first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention featured many attacks on former president Donald Trump, some of which quoted him out of context. Here’s a roundup of a dozen claims that caught our attention, in the order in which they were made. “We tried to expand Social Security and Medicare. Donald Trump tried to cut them year after year after year.” — Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) This is mostly false. Earlier on this first day of the convention, we awarded the Harris-Walz campaign Three Pinocchios for a version of this claim. “He [Trump] told us to inject bleach into our bodies.” — Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) This is exaggerated. Trump did not say people should inject bleach into their bodies. Instead, at a pandemic briefing in 2020, he spoke confusingly of an “injection inside” of lungs with a disinfectant. He made the remarks after an aide presented a study showing how bleach could kill the virus when it remained on surfaces. Trump later claimed he was speaking “sarcastically,” though he seemed serious at the time. “When Donald Trump was president, corporate America ran wild. Donald Trump did not bring back the auto industry. When Donald Trump was president, auto plants closed. Trump did nothing.” — Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers president This is exaggerated. Trump often falsely bragged that before he became president, no new auto plants had been built for decades, but there were some new plants built during his presidency. Until the pandemic, Trump’s overall record on auto industry jobs was pretty good. From February 2017 to February 2020, just before the pandemic crashed the U.S. economy, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows a gain of 34,100 auto manufacturing jobs and 36,400 auto retail jobs — for a total of more than 70,000 jobs in three years. “She [Kamala Harris] won’t be sending love letters to dictators.” — Former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton This is in the eye of the beholder. In 2018, Trump said of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” “It has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form.” — Trump, quoted in a DNC video Trump quickly walked back this statement. This March 3, 2016, quote from Trump pops up in the video as a woman, Amanda Zurawski, describes how she was not able to seek an abortion in Texas after her water broke early and her pregnancy was no longer viable. “I was punished for three days, having to wait for either my baby to die or me to die, or both. I was stuck in this horrific hell of both, wanting to hear her heartbeat and also hoping I wouldn’t,” Zurawski said. The juxtaposition might leave the impression that Trump still believes this. But he walked back the statement the same day he made it in a town hall. “I ran for president in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017 … When the president was asked what he thought had happened, Donald Trump said, and I quote, ‘There are very fine people on both sides.’ My God, that’s what he said. That is what he said and what he meant.” — President Joe Biden Trump’s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 — and President Trump’s response to it — was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened. Biden has frequently claimed that Trump said the white supremacists were “very fine people.” But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump actually condemned right-wing hate groups — “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” “[We’re] removing every lead pipe from schools and homes so every child can drink clean water.” — Biden This is exaggerated. Biden secured $15 billion through the bipartisan infrastructure law for lead pipe replacement. But the Environmental Protection Agency has projected that replacing the nearly 10 million lead pipes that supply U.S. homes with drinking water could cost at least $45 billion. “More children in America are killed by a gunshot than any other cause in the United States — more die from a bullet than cancer, accidents or anything else in the United States of America.” — Biden This is not quite right. Biden is using a statistic on gun deaths of “children and teens,” meaning it includes deaths of 18- and 19-year-olds, who are legally considered adults in most states. When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades, though the gap is rapidly closing. Deaths of children from gun violence have increased about 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows. “We know from his own chief of staff, four-star Gen. John Kelly, that Trump while in Europe would not go to the gravesites in France of the brave service members who gave their lives in this country, he called them ‘suckers and losers.’” — Biden Kelly did not exactly say this.

Trump, on repeated occasions, had vehemently denied this story. In 2023, however, John F. Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff in 2018 — who had previously not commented on the controversy — issued a statement to CNN that Trump “rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Note that Kelly’s statement is carefully worded and does not directly say Trump refused to visit the graves

“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what is their average tax rate they pay? 8.2 percent.” — Biden Biden is comparing apples and oranges. We’ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim.

The “lower tax rate” refers to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That’s not how the tax laws work.

“Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again … He’s probably seeing a bloodbath if he loses — in his words.” — Biden Trump is being quoted out of context. Biden suggests Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. But in a March 16 rally, Trump used the word when talking about the impact of Chinese electric vehicles on the U.S. auto industry. More From The Washington Post (subscription required):


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