By Linda Qiu
June 22nd, 2016
"Just look at her pathetic email server statements ..."
Trump is likely referring to Clinton’s defense of her use of a private email server. She’s repeatedly said the practice was "allowed."
We rated Clinton’s claim False. No one ever stopped Clinton from using a private serve exclusively, but that doesn’t mean it was allowed. On the contrary, the State Department said if she had asked, she wouldn’t have been allowed to use it.
"I started off in Brooklyn, N.Y., not so long ago, with a small loan and built a business that today is worth well over $10 billion."
While it’s difficult to pin down just how much Trump started off with and just how much he’s worth now, one thing is clear: Trump is no Horatio Alger.
The "small loan" was the $1 million from Trump’s father, Fred, to finance his Grand Hyatt hotel in 1978. (At this point, Donald was already president of his father’s real estate company.) But Fred Trump made out many other loans to Donald until his death in 1999, including a $70 million construction loan for the Grand Hyatt and a $3.5 million casino chip loan to bail out Trump’s struggling gaming empire, the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker reported.
"Now, because I have pointed out why it would be such a disastrous deal, she is pretending that she is against (the Trans-Pacific Partnership). She’s … deleted the entire record from her book."
One reference to TPP didn’t make it into the paperback edition of her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, which the publisher says was trimmed for size. Clinton said she worked to include Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile in TPP.
But that’s a description of negotiation efforts, not a ringing endorsement. The parts where she does praise TPP were left completely intact. Nothing was deleted from the two pages where she details her support for the deal. Furthermore, we found no evidence Trump influenced Clinton’s position on the deal.
We rated Trump’s claim Pants on Fire!
The Benghazi victims were "left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed."
We rated this claim False. Clinton was not literally sleeping when the Benghazi attacks unfolded, as it was mid afternoon on a Tuesday in Washington. She worked late into the night, as is evidenced by an 11 p.m. email.
If we take Trump’s claim more broadly, that Clinton was inattentive throughout the hours in which the attacks occurred, none of the many congressional investigations into Benghazi have made that assertion.
"Ambassador (Chris) Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds and hundreds of requests for security. ...Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all."
While it’s true that the State Department was repeatedly asked to provide additional security, there’s no evidence that these reached Clinton directly, let alone that she personally denied the requests.
"I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started."
Trump often points to his early opposition to the Iraq war as evidence of his foresight, but this claim is still False. We could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion where he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. In a more damning interview, Trump said he supported the invasion.
"But Hillary Clinton learned nothing from Iraq, because when she got into power, she couldn’t wait to rush us off to war in Libya."
While it’s true that Clinton advocated for intervention in Libya, Trump conveniently neglects to mention that he did as well.
"Now we should go in, we should stop this guy (Muammar Gaddafi), which would be very easy and very quick," Trump said in his 2011 video blog. "We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it, and save these lives. This is absolutely nuts. We don’t want to get involved and you’re gonna end up with something like you’ve never seen before."
There’s "no way to screen who they are, what they are, what they believe, where they come from."
We rated an earlier claim from Trump like this — there is "no system to vet" refugees — False. There are concerns about information gaps, but a way to screen refugees does exist and has existed since 1980.
It involves multiple federal intelligence and security agencies as well as the United Nations. Refugee-vetting typically takes one to two years and includes numerous rounds of security checks.
"Already, hundreds of recent immigrants and their children have been convicted of terrorist activity inside the U.S."
The most credible estimate we found is at least 139 immigrants and up to 184 children of immigrants implicated in jihad-inspired domestic terrorist activity.
Experts said it’s worth noting that the number of jihadist terrorism attacks pales in comparison to other violent acts. And there’s the fact that immigrants and children of immigrants make up a quarter of the U.S. population. Trump, himself, is a child of Scottish immigrant.
"Even though other people who have done similar things (as using a private email server), but much — at a much lower level, their lives have been destroyed."
Trump may have been referring to Scott Gration, the former ambassador to Kenya, who installed a commercial Internet connection in his embassy office bathroom and encouraged his staff to use their personal email.
Gration resigned from his post before a harsh State Department audit of him was released. But while the audit condemned Gration for his email practices, he had many other faults and ranked at or near the absolute bottom among other ambassadors.
In short, Gration’s life wasn’t "destroyed" solely because of his Clinton-like email practices.
"She’s pledged to grant mass amnesty and in her first 100 days, end virtually all immigration enforcement, and thus create totally open borders in the United States."
This is False. Clinton has pledged to act on immigration reform within the first 100 days and supports a path to equal citizenship. But she also supported a 2013 bill that would have invested billions in border security and her plan also calls for protecting the border and targeting deportation to criminal and security threats. To say that this would lead to "open borders" is a huge distortion.
"For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America."
Clinton hasn’t said how much she would spend, but the Obama administration requested a bit under $2.2 billion for 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017. Clinton has said she would take in about 55,00 more Syrians so scaling up the cost, that’s roughly $3 to $4 billion.
Barely scratching the surface of the needs of America’s cities, we would need $225 billion for substandard housing and infrastructure. So refugee admissions would be a tiny fraction of the price tag for rebuilding America’s inner cities.
We rated Trump’s claim Pants on Fire!
"We’ll pass massive tax reform (that will) lower taxes for everyone."
While everyone would be paying less under Trump’s tax plan, the cuts are disproportionate across income strata. In fact, the top 0.1 percent would get more tax relief than the bottom 60 percent combined. What’s more, multiple analyses have shown that his plan would bloat the deficit by at least $10 trillion in the next decade.
"We are, by the way, highest taxed nation in the world. Please remember that."
We’ve given Trump three False ratings for this claim. Whether you’re looking at tax burden as a percentage of GDP or per capita or specifying corporate tax revenue, the United States is nowhere near the top. Please remember that.
"Our military" has been "totally depleted."
While military spending has decreased, the United States’ defense budget is larger than the next seven to eight countries combined.
And while the number of ground troops and Navy ships have shrunk, size is no guarantee of military might. In fact, experts say the Army and Navy of today are much more capable than they were decades ago.
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Hmmmmm................................................................
Who is ‘a world-class liar’ now?
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