A Rally Filled with Repeats

Summary

President Donald Trump has embarked on a string of political rallies around the country to support Republican candidates and tout his accomplishments as president. These speeches are often sprinkled with a regular roster of false and misleading claims. Here, we are highlighting more than a dozen familiar claims the president made at an August rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

For instance:

• Trump claimed that a person who “killed nine people” could be sent to the U.S. through the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. There is a screening process that would specifically bar entry to a convicted killer.
• He claimed the tax bill he championed “saved our family farms and our small businesses from the estate tax.” But only 80 small businesses or farms paid any estate tax in 2017, according to the Tax Policy Center.
• The president said that “nobody reports” that the “trade deficit just fell” by $52 billion during the second quarter of 2018. They shouldn’t, because the figure is $20 billion, according to the recent federal data on trade in goods and services.
• Trump claimed an Uzbekistan national charged with killing eight people in New York last year had “22 relatives” that he brought to the U.S. through “chain migration.” There’s no evidence of that, and it’s likely not possible.
• He said job growth since the election was “a number that nobody would have believed, and that I would have never said on the campaign trail.” The growth has been slightly slower than in the previous few years and is lagging the promise Trump did make during the campaign.
• Trump said that “U.S. Steel is opening up seven plants.” We found no evidence of that. A company spokeswoman said announcements of new plants are available on the company website.

And there’s more — on the Department of Veterans Affairs, NATO, infrastructure, support from women, health care and the Russia investigation.

Analysis

In the Aug. 2 rally, Trump urged the crowd in Wilkes-Barre to vote for Rep. Lou Barletta, who is running for Senate against incumbent Sen. Bob Casey. But along the way, the president rattled off assertions that have become staples of his campaign events.

Immigration

Trump continues to find new ways to mangle the facts about immigration policy, specifically about three programs or policies he seeks to eliminate or overhaul: the diversity visa lottery, chain migration and catch-and-release.

Diversity Visa Lottery

As he has done repeatedly, Trump wrongly suggested foreign governments decide who gets to enter into the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, and that they use the system to offload their worst citizens. In this case, Trump went even further, wrongly posing a hypothetical in which a person convicted of multiple murders is sent to the U.S. through the lottery system. There is a screening process that would specifically bar entry to a convicted killer.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, or DV program, uses a computer lottery system to randomly issue up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year to applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Millions of applicants annually apply for the diversity visas.

Here’s what the president said in Wilkes-Barre.

: We got to get rid of visa — how about that? — visa, visa lottery. You know what a lottery is? You pick it out of a hat. … “Ladies and gentlemen, our first lottery winner.” You know, they think we’re playing, like, a game show. “Our first lottery winner. Let’s see he has seven convictions for death. He’s killed nine people. And we’re getting him the hell out of our country and giving them to