FACT FOCUS: A look back at false and misleading claims made during the Democratic convention
NEW YORK (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The Democrats’ star-studded, four-day convention drew to a close as Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president. The festivities were high on entertainment and praise for Harris and running mate Tim Walz. But while most speakers stuck to the script — and the facts — the convention was not without false information — or statements that begged for additional context.
Here’s a look at the facts around some of those claims.
Trump’s views on an abortion ban
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS said Trump would “ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress.”
THE FACTS: While Trump has said in the past that he would support a national ban on abortion, he said Thursday morning on Fox & Friends: “I would never. There will not be a federal ban. This is now back in the states where it belongs.”
In April, he said he would leave the issue up to the states in a video on his Truth Social platform.
Days later, asked by a reporter upon arriving in Atlanta whether he would sign a national abortion ban, Trump shook his head and said “no.”
But just a month earlier Trump suggested he’d support a national ban on abortion around 15 weeks of pregnancy. He also often brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
Trump has previously supported a federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy. In a letter to anti-abortion leaders during his 2016 campaign, Trump expressed his commitment to this view by vowing to sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
The Republican presidential nominee advocated for the bill again in 2018, at that year’s annual March for Life festival in Washington. The bill, which included exceptions for saving the life of a pregnant woman, as well as rape or incest, was passed by the House in 2017, but failed to move forward in the Senate.
Trump told CBS News on Monday that he would not enforce the Comstock Act to restrict the sale of abortion medication by mail. The act, originally passed in 1873, was revived in an effort to block the mailing of mifepristone, the pill used in more than half of U.S. abortions.
Trump and Project 2025
COLORADO REP. JASON CROW: “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would abandon our troops, abandon our veterans, our allies and our principles.”
THE FACTS: Many speakers at the convention have linked Trump to Project 2025. Trump has repeatedly disavowed the conservative initiative, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.” He has also denied knowing who is behind the plan.
Project 2025 has also said it is not tied to a specific candidate or campaign. And yet, it is connected in many ways to Trump’s orbit. Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior officials from the Trump administration. The project’s former director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump.
Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was featured in one of Project 2025’s videos. John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025’s team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, penned the forward of a yet unreleased book written by Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025.
__ CROW again: “Trump plans to do Putin’s bidding by abandoning Ukraine and walking away from our NATO allies. In chapters two and three, he plans to fire our national security and military professionals and then replace them with MAGA loyalists.”
THE FACTS: In regards to the Russia-Ukraine war, Project 2025 lays out three schools of thought about U.S. involvement, one of them being that it should not continue. However, it does not advocate for any one over the other.
Crow’s claim that national security and military professionals will be replaced with Trump supporters does ring true. Among its recommendations are that senior CIA leaders “must commit to carrying out the President’s agenda and be willing to take calculated risks.” It also states that the National Security Council should be made up of “personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to the President’s declared national security policy priorities.”
Trump’s alleged comments about those captured or killed in military service
ARIZONA SEN. MARK KELLY: “Trump thinks that Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice are suckers and losers.”
THE FACTS: Kelly was among many DNC speakers who brought up similar claims. He was referencing allegations first reported in The Atlantic on Sept. 3, 2020, that Trump made disparaging remarks about members of the U.S. military who have been captured or killed, including referring to the American war dead at a World War I cemetery outside Paris in 2018 as “suckers” and “losers.”
But the truth is that it hasn’t been proven definitively, one way or the other, whether Trump actually made these comments.
The Republican presidential nominee said the day the Atlantic story came out that it is “totally false,” calling it “a disgraceful situation” by a “terrible magazine.”
Speaking to reporters after he returned to Washington from a campaign rally in Pennsylvania soon after, Trump said: “I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more. No animal — nobody — what animal would say such a thing?”
And yet, a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of the events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of his remarks to The Associated Press after the Atlantic story was published, including the ones about “suckers” and “losers.”
Walz’s accomplishments as governor
MINNESOTA SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, touting Tim Walz’s accomplishments as governor of the state: “Tim has delivered — paid leave, school lunches and the biggest tax cut in Minnesota history.”
THE FACTS: Over the last two years, Walz has indeed signed legislation to create a paid family and medical leave program in Minnesota, and for free school breakfasts and lunches for all students regardless of income.
Walz also signed what his administration and Democratic legislative leaders have touted as the largest tax cut in state history, about $3 billion worth as part of the two-year budget approved last year. It included a one-time refundable tax credit of $260 for single filers and up to $1,300 for a family with three children. It also established a child tax credit of up to $1,750 per child for lower-income families, subject to income limits. In addition, it exempted more people from state taxes on Social Security income, but left the tax in place for higher-income seniors.
But critics take issue with his characterization of it as the biggest tax cut in state history. The Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank, points out that low-income Minnesotans don’t pay the state income tax, so in its view giving them tax credits amounts to income redistribution and welfare — not tax cuts.
Republican legislators tried to hold out for permanent tax cuts for everyone, but Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and went for targeted relief instead.
Bill Clinton’s keeping score
FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON on Wednesday: “Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created 51 million new jobs. I swear I checked this three times. Even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one.”
THE FACTS: The math shows Clinton is technically right, but the underlying story is more nuanced. There were four recessions since the end of the Cold War — each of them beginning during the Republican presidencies of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump. That’s the simplest explanation for the trend outlined by Clinton.
Let’s get precise: The U.S. economy has added almost 51.6 million jobs since January 1989, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That includes a net 1.3 million jobs added under Republicans.
It’s worth noting that this simple scoreboard is incomplete. There can be reasons for a recession that have nothing to do necessarily with the president — as market economies can have minds of their own. There can be bad policy choices in previous administrations that led to downturns happening later. And job growth generally comes from the combination of rising populations, improvements in workers’ skills and the actions of private employers. The U.S. economy is big and diverse enough that areas in the industrial Midwest struggled even as parts of the Sunbelt boomed.
After George H.W. Bush endured a brief downturn, the economy recovered and 2.3 million jobs were added during his term. But Americans still felt the economy was poor and elected Clinton.
Growth jumped during Clinton’s eight years as more women entered the labor force and 22.9 million jobs were added. But shortly after he left office, the tech bubble in the stock market burst and the U.S. economy entered into a brief recession. The economy shed jobs for a little over two years, then mounted a comeback only to slam headfirst into the mortgage bust and the 2008 financial crisis that produced the Great Recession and mass layoffs. Still, over eight years, George W. Bush added a little over 2.1 million jobs because the U.S. population was still growing.
Democrat Barack Obama inherited the disastrous economy in early 2009 and endured a grindingly slow but successful recovery. The U.S. economy added 11.3 million jobs.
Trump took the presidency and promised an unprecedented economic boom. The job market continued to build on its health during Obama’s final four years, only to get crushed by the coronavirus pandemic as shutdowns for health reasons led to unemployment. As a result, the country had 3.1 million fewer jobs when his term ended.
President Joe Biden oversaw a recovery with additional pandemic aid and other investments that accelerated hiring, but it was accompanied by higher inflation that left much of the public feeling pessimistic about the economy. Still, his presidency — still ongoing — has added more than 15.8 million jobs.
Whether Trump said women should be punished for having abortions
ALEXIS MCGILL JOHNSON, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, on Wednesday: “Do we want a president who said women should be punished for having abortions?”
THE FACTS: Asked whether he would be comfortable with states deciding to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned, Trump said in an April interview with Time magazine: “The states are going to say. It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”
Trump said outright during his 2016 campaign that women who get illegal abortions should receive “some form of punishment.” The comment came during a heated exchange with MSNBC host Chris Matthews at a town hall taping in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
But Trump quickly did an about-face. His campaign sought within hours to take back his comment in two separate statements, ultimately saying he believes abortion providers — not their patients — should be the ones punished.
The first statement said he believed the issue should rest with state governments, while the second entirely rejected the idea that a woman should face repercussions for undergoing an illegal abortion.
“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the second statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”
Trump faced backlash from both abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion activists, The Associated Press reported at the time.
Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin in New York, Josh Boak in Chicago and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, contributed to this report.