Trump’s Talking Points
As the Republican National Convention begins today, we present here a rundown of President Donald Trump’s repeated false and misleading claims during the 2020 campaign.
If Trump’s recent speeches are a guide, he may well repeat some of these claims during convention remarks this week. His campaign has said Trump will speak at some point every night, in addition to the nominee’s traditional acceptance speech on Thursday.
Last week, we presented a similar roundup of claims made by the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, in advance of that party’s convention.
Claims are grouped by subject matter. For more on each statement, follow the links to our full stories.
Economy
At an Aug. 19 press briefing, the president repeated one of his favorite talking points: “Don’t forget, until the China virus came in, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world.” This is simply false and constantly repeating it doesn’t make it so.
The president likes to point to the stock market as a measure of economic success. But the stock market isn’t the economy. Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product measures economic growth. Prior to the pandemic, the economy grew by 2.2% last year, down from 3% in 2018 — which was the largest rate of growth under Trump, according to revised figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Over the last 39 years — dating to Ronald Reagan’s presidency — the nation’s real economic growth has exceeded Trump’s peak year of 3% 17 times, including most recently under then-President Barack Obama in 2015.
“FactChecking Trump’s Scranton Town Hall,” March 6
At an Aug. 18 ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, Trump repeated a meaningless boast that prior to the pandemic, “we had 160 million people working. We’ve never even been close to that.” As we’ve written, that’s to be expected. The number of employed Americans generally increases with population growth — except when there are economic downturns, such as the Great Recession that started in December 2007 and now during the pandemic.
Trump also often exaggerates the peak employment number. It’s not 160 million, as he said. It peaked at 152.5 million in February. As of July, there were 139.6 million people employed — the fewest since October 2014, when it was 139.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Trump Touts Strong Jobs Report, Flubs Some Facts,” June 5
In his bid for reelection, Trump has promised a big economic comeback — a “super V” recovery, as he said in an Aug. 21 speech to conservatives — unless Biden wins and raises taxes. At an Aug. 17 campaign speech in Wisconsin, Trump promised that “you’re going to have an even greater year next year,” before falsely claiming “unless somebody comes in and quadruples your taxes. In which case it’s called the depression folks.”
It’s true that
