Washington
CNN
 — 

As president, Donald Trump made a few of his most completely dishonest speeches on the annual Conservative Political Motion Convention.

As he embarks on one other marketing campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered one other CPAC doozy Saturday night time.

Trump’s prolonged tackle to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was crammed with wildly inaccurate claims about his personal presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, overseas affairs, crime, elections and different topics.

Here’s a truth verify of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s removed from the whole.)

Crime in Manhattan

Whereas Trump criticized Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg, who has been investigating Trump’s firm, he claimed that “killings are happening at a quantity like no person’s ever seen, proper in Manhattan.”

Information First: It isn’t even near true that Manhattan is experiencing a lot of killings that no person has ever seen. The area categorized by the New York Police Division as Manhattan North had 43 reported murders in 2022; that area had 379 reported murders in 1990 and 306 murders in 1993. The Manhattan South area had 35 reported murders in 2022 versus 124 reported murders in 1990 and 86 murders in 1993. New York Metropolis as an entire can also be nowhere close to report murder ranges; the town had 438 reported murders in 2022 versus 2,262 in 1990 and 1,927 in 1993.

Manhattan North had simply eight reported murders this yr by way of February 19, whereas Manhattan South had one. The town as an entire had 49 reported murders.

The Nationwide Guard and Minnesota

Speaking about rioting amid racial justice protests after the police homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Trump claimed he had been able to ship within the Nationwide Guard in Seattle, then added, “We saved Minneapolis. The factor is, we’re not supposed to try this. As a result of it’s as much as the governor, the Democrat governor. They by no means need any assist. They don’t thoughts – it’s virtually like they don’t thoughts to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s one thing unsuitable with these folks.”

Information First: This can be a reversal of actuality. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, not Trump, was the one who deployed the Minnesota Nationwide Guard throughout the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard greater than seven hours earlier than Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s workplace informed CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities additionally run by Democrats.

Trump has repeatedly made the false declare that he was the one who despatched the Guard to Minneapolis. You possibly can learn an extended truth verify, from 2020, right here.

Trump’s govt order on monuments

Trump boasted that he had taken efficient motion as president to cease the destruction of statues and memorials. He claimed: “I handed and signed an govt order. Anyone that does that will get 10 years in jail, with no negotiation – it’s not ’10’ however it turns into three months.” He added: “However we handed it. It was a really outdated legislation, and we discovered it – one among my excellent authorized folks together with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they discovered it. They mentioned, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you wish to try to convey this again.’ I mentioned. ‘I do.’”

Information First: Trump’s declare is fake. He didn’t create a compulsory 10-year sentence for individuals who harm monuments. In truth, his 2020 govt order didn’t mandate any improve in sentences.

Relatively, the manager order merely directed the lawyer basic to “prioritize” investigations and prosecutions of monument-destruction instances and declared that it’s federal coverage to prosecute such instances to the fullest extent permitted below current legislation, together with an current legislation that allowed a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail for willfully damaging federal property. The manager order did nothing to pressure judges to impose a 10-year sentence.

Vandalism in Portland

Trump claimed, “How’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Every thing’s two-by-four’s as a result of they get burned down each week.”

Information First: This can be a main exaggeration. Portland clearly nonetheless has a whole bunch of lively storefronts, although it has struggled with downtown industrial vacancies for numerous causes, and a few companies are generally vandalized by protesters. Trump has for years exaggerated the extent of property harm from protest vandalism in Portland.

Russian expansionism

Boasting of his overseas coverage report, Trump claimed, “I used to be additionally the one president the place Russia didn’t take over a rustic throughout my time period.”

Information First: Whereas it’s true that Russia didn’t take over a rustic throughout Trump’s time period, it’s not true that he was the one US president below whom Russia didn’t take over a rustic. “Completely false,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a Loyola College Chicago historical past professor who’s an skilled on Russian imperialism, mentioned in an electronic mail. “If by Russia he means the present Russian Federation that existed since 1991, then the very best instance is Clinton, 1992-98. Throughout this time Russia fought a battle in Chechnya, however Chechnya was not a rustic however one among Russia’s areas.”

Khodarkovsky added, “If by Russia he means the united states, as folks typically do, then from 1945, when the united states occupied a lot of Jap Europe till 1979, when USSR invaded Afghanistan, Moscow didn’t take over any new nation. It solely despatched forces into international locations it had taken over in 1945 (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).”

NATO funding

Trump mentioned whereas speaking about NATO funding: “And I informed delinquent overseas nations – they had been delinquent, they weren’t paying their payments – that in the event that they wished our safety, they needed to pay up, and so they needed to pay up now.”

Information First: It’s not true that NATO international locations weren’t paying “payments” till Trump got here alongside or that they had been “delinquent” within the sense of failing to pay payments – as quite a few fact-checkers pointed out when Trump repeatedly used such language throughout his presidency. NATO members haven’t been failing to pay their share of the group’s widespread funds to run the group. And whereas it’s true that almost all NATO international locations weren’t (and nonetheless should not) assembly NATO’s goal of every nation spending a minimal of two% of gross home product on protection, that 2% determine is what NATO calls a “guideline”; it isn’t some kind of binding contract, and it doesn’t create liabilities. An official NATO recommitment to the two% guideline in 2014 merely mentioned that members not at the moment at that stage would “purpose to maneuver in the direction of the two% guideline inside a decade.”

NATO Secretary Common Jens Stoltenberg did credit score Trump for securing will increase in European NATO members’ protection spending, however it’s value noting that these international locations’ spending had additionally elevated within the final two years of the Obama administration following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the recommitment that yr to the two% guideline. NATO notes on its web site that 2022 was “the eighth consecutive yr of rising defence spending throughout European Allies and Canada.”

NATO’s existence

Boasting of how he had secured extra funding for NATO from international locations, Trump claimed, “Really, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.”

Information First: That is nonsense.

There was by no means any indication that NATO, created in 1949, would have ceased to exist within the early 2020s with out extra funding from some members. The alliance was steady even with many members not assembly the alliance’s guideline of getting members spend 2% of their gross home product on protection.

We don’t typically fact-check claims about what might need occurred in another state of affairs, however this Trump declare has no foundation in actuality. “The quote doesn’t make sense, clearly,” mentioned Erwan Lagadec, analysis professor at George Washington College’s Elliott College of Worldwide Affairs and an skilled on NATO.

Lagadec famous that NATO has had no bother getting allies to cowl the roughly $3 billion in annual “direct” funding for the group, which is “peanuts” to this group of nations. And he mentioned that the one NATO member that had given “any signal” lately that it was fascinated about leaving the alliance “was … the US, below Trump.” Lagadec added that the US leaving the alliance is one state of affairs that would realistically kill it, however that clearly wasn’t what Trump was speaking about in his remarks on spending ranges.

James Goldgeier, an American College professor of worldwide relations and Brookings Establishment visiting fellow, mentioned in an electronic mail: “NATO was based in 1949, so it appears very clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with its existence. In truth, the concern was that he would pull the US out of NATO, as his nationwide safety adviser warned he would do if he had been reelected.”

The price of NATO’s headquarters

Trump mocked NATO’s headquarters, saying, “They spent – an workplace constructing that price $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its aspect. It’s one of many longest buildings I’ve ever seen. And I mentioned, ‘You must have – as a substitute of spending $3 billion, you must have spent $500 million constructing the best bunker you’ve ever seen. As a result of Russia didn’t – wouldn’t even want an airplane assault. One tank one shot by way of that lovely glass constructing and it’s gone.’”

Information First: NATO did spend some huge cash on its headquarters in Belgium, however Trump’s “$3 billion” determine is a significant exaggeration. When Trump used the identical inaccurate determine in early 2020, NATO informed CNN that the headquarters was truly constructed for a sum below the accepted funds of about $1.18 billion euro, which is about $1.3 billion at change charges as of Sunday morning.

The Pulitzer Prize

Trump made his standard argument that The Washington Publish and The New York Instances mustn’t have gained a prestigious journalism award, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, for his or her reporting on Russian interference within the 2016 election and its connections to Trump’s crew. He then mentioned, “They usually had been precisely unsuitable. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax. It was a complete hoax, and so they received the prize.”

Information First: The Instances and Publish haven’t made any kind of “hoax” admission. “The declare is totally false,” Instances spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander mentioned in an electronic mail on Sunday.

Stadtlander continued: “When our Pulitzer Prize shared with The Washington Publish was challenged by the previous President, the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an impartial evaluate. The board said that ‘no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the profitable submissions had been discredited by information that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.’ The Instances’s reporting was additionally substantiated by the Mueller investigation and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”

The Publish referred CNN to that very same July assertion from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Consciousness of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

Trump claimed of his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gasoline pipeline to Germany: “Nord Stream 2 – No one ever heard of it … proper? No one ever heard of Nord Stream 2 till I got here alongside. I began speaking about Nord Stream 2. I needed to go name it ‘the pipeline’ as a result of no person knew what I used to be speaking about.”

Information First: That is normal Trump hyperbole; it’s simply not true that “no person” had heard of Nord Stream 2 earlier than he started discussing it. Nord Stream 2 was an everyday topic of media, authorities and diplomatic dialogue earlier than Trump took workplace. In truth, Biden publicly criticized it as vice chairman in 2016. Trump might properly have generated elevated US consciousness to the controversial challenge, however “no person ever heard of Nord Stream 2 till I got here alongside” isn’t true.

Trump and Nord Stream 2

Trump claimed, “I received alongside very properly with Putin although I’m the one which ended his pipeline. Keep in mind they mentioned, ‘Trump is giving so much to Russia.’ Actually? Putin truly mentioned to me, ‘For those who’re my buddy, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy.’ As a result of I ended the pipeline, proper? Do you keep in mind? Nord Stream 2.” He continued, “I ended it. It was useless.”

Information First: Trump didn’t kill Nord Stream 2. Whereas he did approve sanctions on firms engaged on the challenge, that transfer got here practically three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already round an estimated 90% full – and the state-owned Russian gasoline firm behind the challenge mentioned shortly after the sanctions that it could full the pipeline itself. The corporate introduced in December 2020 that development was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s time period in January 2021, Germany introduced that it had renewed permission for development in its waters.

The pipeline by no means started operations; Germany ended up halting the challenge as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early final yr. The pipeline was broken later within the yr in what has been described as an act of sabotage.

The Obama administration and Ukraine

Trump claimed that whereas he supplied deadly help to Ukraine, the Obama administration “didn’t wish to get entangled” and merely “provided the bedsheets.” He mentioned, “Do you keep in mind? They provided the bedsheets. And perhaps even some pillows from [pillow businessman] Mike [Lindell], who’s sitting proper over right here. … However they provided the bedsheets.”

Information First: That is inaccurate. Whereas it’s true that the Obama administration declined to supply weapons to Ukraine, it supplied greater than $600 million in safety help to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 that concerned excess of bedsheets. The help included counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night time imaginative and prescient units and medical provides.

Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor

Trump claimed that Biden, as vice chairman, held again a billion {dollars} from Ukraine till the nation fired a prosecutor who was “after Hunter” and an organization that was paying him. Trump was referring to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian vitality firm Burisma Holdings.

Information First: That is baseless. There has by no means been any proof that Hunter Biden was below investigation by the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been extensively faulted by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and European international locations for failing to analyze corruption. A former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor and a high anti-corruption activist have each mentioned the Burisma-related investigation was dormant on the time Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fireplace Shokin.

Daria Kaleniuk, govt director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Motion Middle, informed The Washington Publish in 2019: “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t wish to examine Burisma. And Shokin was fired not as a result of he wished to try this investigation, however fairly on the contrary, as a result of he failed that investigation.” As well as, Shokin’s successor as prosecutor basic, Yuriy Lutsenko, informed Bloomberg in 2019: “Hunter Biden didn’t violate any Ukrainian legal guidelines – a minimum of as of now, we don’t see any wrongdoing.”

Biden, as vice chairman, was finishing up the coverage of the US and its allies, not pursuing his personal agenda, in threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US mortgage assure if the Ukrainian authorities didn’t sack Shokin. CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims on this topic at size in 2019.

Trump and job creation

Promising to avoid wasting People’ jobs if he’s elected once more, Trump claimed, “We had the best job historical past of any president ever.”

Information First: That is false. The US misplaced about 2.7 million jobs throughout Trump’s presidency, the worst total jobs report for any president. The web loss was largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however even Trump’s pre-pandemic jobs report – about 6.7 million jobs added – was removed from the best of any president ever. The economic system added greater than 11.5 million jobs within the first time period of Democratic President Invoice Clinton within the Nineteen Nineties.

Tariffs on China

Trump repeated a commerce declare he made ceaselessly throughout his presidency. Talking of China, he mentioned he “charged them” with tariffs that had the impact of “bringing in a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} pouring into our Treasury from China. Thanks very a lot, China.” He claimed that he did this although “no different president had gotten even 10 cents – not one president received something from them.”

Information First: As we have now written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president earlier than Trump had generated any income by way of tariffs on items from China. In actuality, the US has had tariffs on China for greater than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “common of $12.3 billion in customized duties a yr from 2007 to 2016, in line with the U.S. Worldwide Commerce Fee DataWeb.” Additionally, American importers, not Chinese language exporters, make the precise tariff funds – and examine after examine throughout Trump’s presidency discovered that People had been bearing most of the price of the tariffs.

The commerce deficit with China

Trump went on to repeat a false declare he made greater than 100 instances as president – that the US used to have a commerce deficit with China of greater than $500 billion. He claimed it was “five-, six-, seven-hundred billion {dollars} a yr.”

Information First: The US has by no means had a $500 billion, $600 billion or $700 billion commerce deficit with China even should you solely depend commerce in items and ignore the companies commerce during which the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump report for a items deficit with China was about $367 billion in 2015. The products deficit hit a brand new report of about $418 billion below Trump in 2018 earlier than falling again below $400 billion in subsequent years.

Trump and the 2020 election

Trump mentioned folks declare they wish to run towards him although, he claimed, he gained the 2020 election. He mentioned, “I gained the second election, OK, gained it by so much. You recognize, after they say, after they say Biden gained, the good folks know that didn’t [happen].”

Information First: That is Trump’s common lie. He misplaced the 2020 election to Biden truthful and sq., 306 to 232 within the Electoral Faculty. Biden earned greater than 7 million extra votes than Trump did.

Democrats and elections

Trump mentioned Democrats are solely good at “disinformation” and “dishonest on elections.”

Information First: That is nonsense. There may be simply no foundation for a broad declare that Democrats are election cheaters. Election fraud and voter fraud are exceedingly uncommon in US elections, although such crimes are sometimes dedicated by officers and supporters of each events. (We’ll ignore Trump’s subjective declare about “disinformation.”)

The liberation of the ISIS caliphate

Trump repeated his acquainted story about how he had supposedly liberated the “caliphate” of terror group ISIS in “three weeks.” This time, he mentioned, “In truth, with the ISIS caliphate, a sure basic mentioned it may solely be completed in three years, ‘and possibly it might probably’t be completed in any respect, sir.’ And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a fantastic basic. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You’ve heard that story. ‘I can do it in three weeks, sir.’ ‘How are you going to try this?’ They defined it. I did it in three weeks. I used to be informed it couldn’t be completed in any respect, that it could take a minimum of three years. Did it in three weeks. Knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”

Information First: Trump’s declare of eliminating the ISIS caliphate in “three weeks” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared totally liberated greater than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019. Even when Trump was beginning the clock on the time of his go to to Iraq, in late December 2018, the liberation was proclaimed greater than two and a half months later. As well as, Trump gave himself far an excessive amount of credit score for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has previously, when he mentioned “I did it”: Kurdish forces did a lot of the bottom combating, and there was main progress towards the caliphate below President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

IHS Markit, an data firm that studied the altering dimension of the caliphate, reported two days earlier than Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, together with key areas very important for the group’s governance challenge,” an analyst there mentioned in a press release on the time.

Navy tools left in Afghanistan

Trump claimed, as he has earlier than, that the US left behind $85 billion value of army tools when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He mentioned of the chief of the Taliban: “Now he’s received $85 billion value of our tools that I purchased – $85 billion.” He added later: “The factor that no person ever talks about, we misplaced 13 [soldiers], we misplaced $85 billion value of the best army tools on this planet.”

Information First: Trump’s $85 billion determine is fake. Whereas a major amount of army tools that had been supplied by the US to Afghan authorities forces was certainly deserted to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Protection Division has estimated that this tools had been value about $7.1 billion – a piece of about $18.6 billion value of apparatus supplied to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And a few of the tools left behind was rendered inoperable earlier than US forces withdrew.

As different fact-checkers have beforehand defined, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up determine (it’s nearer to $83 billion) for the whole sum of money Congress has appropriated throughout the battle to a fund supporting the Afghan safety forces. A minority of this funding was for tools.

The Afghanistan withdrawal and the F-16

Trump claimed that the Taliban acquired F-16 fighter planes due to the US withdrawal, saying: “They feared the F-16s. And now they personal them. Consider it.”

Information First: That is false. F-16s weren’t among the many tools deserted upon the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan armed forces, for the reason that Afghan armed forces didn’t fly F-16s.

The border wall

Trump claimed that he had stored his promise to finish a wall on the border with Mexico: “As you already know, I constructed a whole bunch of miles of wall and accomplished that job as promised. After which I started so as to add much more in areas that gave the impression to be permitting lots of people to come back in.”

Information First: It’s not true that Trump “accomplished” the border wall. In keeping with an official “Border Wall Standing” report written by US Customs and Border Safety two days after Trump left workplace, about 458 miles of wall had been accomplished below Trump – however about 280 extra miles that had been recognized for wall development had not been accomplished.

The report, supplied to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, mentioned that, of these 280 miles left to go, about 74 miles had been “within the pre-construction section and haven’t but been awarded, in areas the place no boundaries at the moment exist,” and that 206 miles had been “at the moment below contract, instead of dilapidated and outdated designs and in areas the place no boundaries beforehand existed.”

Latin America and deportations

Trump informed his acquainted story about how, till he was president, the US was unable to deport MS-13 gang members to different international locations, “particularly” Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as a result of these international locations “didn’t need them.”

Information First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take again migrants being deported from the US throughout Obama’s administration, although there have been some particular person exceptions.

In 2016, simply previous to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the listing of nations that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thought of “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.

For the 2016 fiscal yr, Obama’s final full fiscal yr in workplace, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind solely Mexico, by way of the nation of citizenship of individuals being faraway from the US. You possibly can learn an extended truth verify, from 2019, right here.