President
Trump’s speech on Friday at the Conservative Political Action
Conference followed a familiar pattern: Blast the news media as
“dishonest,” repeat a string of falsehoods and wrap up by promising to
change the status quo.
“I want you all to know
that we are fighting the fake news,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s fake, phony,
fake. They have a professional obligation as members of the press to
report honestly. But as you saw throughout the entire campaign, and even
now, the fake news doesn’t tell the truth.”
Here is an assessment of some of the claims Mr. Trump made.
Mr. Trump criticized the news media for distorting his criticism.
“They did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. They dropped off the word fake.”
False. Mr. Trump
tweeted
on Feb. 17, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC,
@CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
All of the news organizations Mr. Trump named actually quoted the tweet in its entirety or specified the outlets he called “fake.”
Mr. Trump mocked election polls for being wrong.
“Look at CBS, look at ABC, also, look at NBC, take a look at some
of these polls. They’re so bad, so inaccurate and what that does is it
creates a false narrative.”
This is misleading. Mr.
Trump, who trailed Hillary Clinton in major national polls leading up
to the election, ended up winning the Electoral College. But most of the
polls Mr. Trump referred to actually reflected the popular vote total
within the margin of error.
The
day before the election, CBS and ABC projected Mr. Trump trailing Mrs.
Clinton by 4 points with margins of error of 3 points and 2.5 points.
About 2.9 million more people, or 2.1 percent, voted for Mrs. Clinton
than for Mr. Trump. NBC showed Mrs. Clinton with a 6-point lead and a
margin of error of 1 point.
Mr. Trump said he got many votes from supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders.
“Not that I’m a fan of Bernie, but a lot of Bernie people voted for Trump because he’s right on one issue: trade.”
No evidence. Mr.
Trump and Mr. Sanders hold similar positions on global trade, but
there’s no evidence that huge swaths of voters who supported Mr. Sanders
voted for Mr. Trump.
After the Democratic
National Convention, polls indicated that a majority of “Bernie people”
would vote for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump’s support among those who
preferred Mr. Sanders ranged from
3 percent to 13 percent, depending on whether third-party candidates were also included in the question.
Mr. Trump described the country as having open borders.
“We’ve defended other nations’ borders while leaving ours wide open, anybody can come in.”
False. The United States apprehended 415,816 people in the 2016 fiscal year, so hundreds of thousands of people did not just “come in.”
Under
the country’s visa waiver program, citizens from some 30 countries are
allowed to enter the United States without a visa for up to 90 days.
Citizens from other countries must apply for a visa and could be
rejected; waiting times vary. Refugees who are referred to resettlement
in the United States typically wait up to two years.
Mr. Trump cited a big price tag for the wars abroad.
“In the Middle East, we’ve spent as of four weeks ago, $6 trillion.”
Needs context. The
$6 trillion figure is the high end of credible estimates of the total
cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as nation building and
personnel costs. But this price also includes costs to come, such as
future spending for veterans’ health care and disability.
Estimates
for the total spent on the war thus far range from $1.6 trillion to
$3.6 trillion. Factoring money appropriated for Homeland Security raises
the cost to $4.8 trillion.
Mr. Trump said the Affordable Care Act took health care coverage away from people.
“Obamacare covers very few people. And remember, deduct from the
number all of those people who had great health care that they loved
that was taken away from them.”
False. About
20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act,
and the uninsured rate has dropped to a record low of 10.9 percent.
The
left-leaning Urban Institute estimated that 2.6 million plans were
canceled because they did not meet minimum requirements set by the act.
But fewer than one million people ended up with no insurance at all, and
it is not clear that this was entirely attributable to
health care law.
Mr. Trump deplored the economic costs of a regulatory state.
“We have begun a historic program to reduce the regulations that are crushing our economy, crushing.”
Needs context. Whether regulations stifle economic growth is the subject of debate. But the economy, by most metrics, is
faring quite well.
Unemployment
is at 4.8 percent, compared with 7.8 percent eight years ago. Stock
markets have been reporting record highs. Retail sales, the
Consumer Price Index and the number of permits for new housing units all rose in January.
As
for Mr. Trump’s executive order requiring the repeal of two rules for
every one introduced, our colleagues at the Upshot explained
why it’s no quick fix.
Mr. Trump suggested that the U.S. military has been weakened.
“We’re very depleted, very, very depleted.”
False. The size of the Army and number of warships have declined in recent years, but size is no indicator of power.
The
number of troops will be reduced by the 2018 fiscal year, a result of
pulling out of wars in the Middle East (a position Mr. Trump falsely
says that he has espoused since the United States first invaded Iraq).
The United States has the most sophisticated naval fleet in the world,
with 10 aircraft carriers compared with Russia’s one.
Mr.
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, committed billions of dollars to
updating the nuclear arsenal. Over all, the United States spends more on
its military than the next seven to eight countries combined.
Mr. Trump again invoked Sweden as an example of the detriments of immigration.
“The people over there understand that I’m right. Take a look at what’s happening in Sweden.”
False. Mr. Trump referred to a nonexistent terrorist attack in Sweden during a Feb. 18 campaign rally in Florida,
baffling an entire nation.
If he was referring to crime in a country known for taking in large numbers of refugees,
the data does not support him, either. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention found no significant increase in overall crime rates from 2015 to 2016.
Mr. Trump suggested that crime and terrorist attacks have hurt tourism to Paris.
“I said, ‘Jim, let me ask you a question, how’s Paris doing?’
‘Paris? I don’t go there anymore, Paris is no longer Paris.’ That was
four years — four or five years, hasn’t gone there. He wouldn’t miss it
for anything. Now he doesn’t even think in terms of going there.”
This is misleading. Anecdotes aside, tourism in Paris has not suffered despite the 2015 terrorist attacks. The city reported a
“moderate” 1.1 percent drop in hotel arrivals that year.
That is less than the
1.4 percent drop experienced in 2014. Paris did have steady increases in tourism from 2010 to 2013, but that occurred after a
4.4 percent decline in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault
tweeted
in response, “3.5 million American tourists visited France in 2016,
they will always be welcome #Trump #Paris #Nice #Survivor Tree.”
Correction: February 24, 2017
An
earlier version of this article misstated the number of people who have
gained health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It is 20
million, not 16 million.
