FactChecking the November Democratic Debate

Summary

We spotted several false claims and factual flubs:

• South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg falsely claimed that President Donald Trump “had to confess in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.” Trump’s 2016 campaign unlawfully ran a veterans fundraiser for his namesake foundation, but the money raised was in fact donated to veterans groups.
• A poll released earlier in the day contradicted former Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that “the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All.” The survey showed 77% of Democrats favored the single-payer health care plan.
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that under her wealth tax proposal Americans worth more than $50 million would have to “pitch in 2 cents” and those worth over $1 billion “have to pitch in a few pennies more.” Those extra “pennies” would mean an annual 6% wealth tax on billionaires that would raise an estimated $1 trillion over 10 years.
• Rep. Tulsi Gabbard claimed that Buttigieg said that he “would be willing to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels.” Actually, Buttigieg talked about further building a “security cooperation” with Mexico’s support, and placed specific conditions on ever sending U.S. troops to combat Mexican drug cartels.
• Sen. Kamala Harris accused Trump of “shutting down the [military] operations with South Korea for the last year and a half.” In fact, those operations were scaled back significantly, but not eliminated.
• Warren wrongly said a new study found 94% of white students “have paid off their student loan debt,” while only “5% of African Americans have paid it off.” Actually, the study says 49% of white student-loan holders and 26% of black student borrowers were debt-free after 20 years.
• Biden falsely said that PolitiFact called his 1987 climate change legislation “a game changer.” The fact-checking site did not use that phrase to describe the bill, and instead highlighted its limitations.
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar went too far when she claimed “90% of the people support funding for Planned Parenthood.” One survey found support at 69%.
• Harris wrongly suggested that figures representing the pay gap between full-time, year-round male and female workers were for men and women doing “equal work.”
• Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed 87 million Americans “have no health insurance or are underinsured,” a statement he has made in two past debates. The figure includes 19.3 million who were insured at the time of the survey but had a gap in coverage in the previous year.

And Biden corrected himself before we could fact-check him after he said he had the support of “the only African American woman that had ever been elected to the United States Senate.” Harris, standing mere feet from Biden on the stage, interjected, “The other one is here.” Biden corrected himself, “I said the first African American woman — the first.”