Trump and Clinton debating

At their first presidential debate, on Monday night in New York, Trump, according to thestar.com report, made 34 false claims to Clinton’s four false claims, continuing his pattern of unprecedented serial lying.

Below is our complete list of false and misleading claims uttered by both of them:

Donald Trump, Republican:

1) Falsely said “you’re wrong” when the moderator told him a judge ruled New York City’s “stop and frisk” program unconstitutional. (That happened in 2013.)

2) Falsely said he had four business bankruptcies. (Clinton was correct — it’s six.)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump points toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate in New York Monday. Trump said 34 false things, Clinton 4.

3) Falsely said he “never said” that pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers. (In 2004, he said precisely that: pregnancy is “a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband, it’s certainly an inconvenience for a business. And whether people want to say that or not, the fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business.”)

4) Falsely said “I did not. I did not” to Clinton’s charge that he thinks Climate change is a “hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” (He wrote on Twitter in 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” In 2014, he tweeted, “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”)

5) Falsely said, “Wrong, wrong” when Clinton said he supported the invasion of Iraq. (He publicly supported the war; there is no evidence he changed his mind until after the war.)

6) Falsely said, “They did an article in a major magazine, shortly after the war started. I think in ’04. But they did an article which had me totally against the war in Iraq.” (The article, in Esquire, was not “shortly after the war started”— it was 17 months into the war.)

7) Falsely characterized interviews about Iraq with Howard Stern and Neil Cavuto: “The record shows that I’m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows? Essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto.” (Trump did not say “I don’t know, maybe, who knows” to Stern in 2002; in fact, he said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” In the interview with Cavuto, he did not take an actual position, saying: “Well, he has either got to do something or not do something.”

8) Falsely asserted that Clinton has “been fighting ISIS (her) entire adult life.” (ISIS was founded after Clinton turned 50.)

9) Falsely said, “And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership.” (Clinton made a significant false claim on this subject too; see below. But it is false that she “now” wants to approve it. Though she supported it as secretary of state, she is campaigning in opposition to it.)

10) Falsely said murder has increased in New York City under the current mayor who opposes stop and frisk: “Murders are up. All right. You check it.” (In Bill de Blasio’s first year, 2014, the number of murders hit another historic low: 328. The city is still near that pace; there have been 246 so far this year, down from last year.)

11) Falsely said, “As far as my tax returns, you don’t learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure.” (Tax returns provide several additional kinds of detailed information.)

12) Falsely said of his tax returns, “I don’t mind releasing. I’m under a routine audit. And it’ll be released. And as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released.” (Trump is also refusing to release tax returns from 2002 to 2008, years his lawyer says are no longer under audit. One of his sons has acknowledged that he is not releasing the returns because it would hurt his political “narrative.”)

13) Falsely said, “ISIS formed in this vacuum created by Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton.” (ISIS was created before Obama became president and Clinton became secretary of state. While it gained strength during their tenures, it is false to say it “formed” then.)

14) Falsely said he “just got today” the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. (The endorsement was delivered 10 days ago.)

15) Falsely said, “We have a Fed that’s doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed. The Fed is doing political — by keeping the interest rates at this level.” (There is no evidence that Yellen has kept rates low to help Obama or Clinton, as Trump is suggesting. In fact, he himself endorsed her strategy on CNBC in May.)

16) Falsely said Clinton was uttering “lies” when she said he had said nuclear war in East Asia would be “fine,” and that he had said “have a good time, folks.” (In Wisconsin in April, Trump said he was fine with Japan obtaining nuclear weapons for a war against North Korea, and added: “It would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do . . . Good luck. Enjoy yourself, folks.”)

17) Falsely said, “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that’s worth many, many billions of dollars.” (Trump is greatly understating his father’s help. The loan, he has previously said, was $1 million. Journalists have discovered that he actually received $14 million in loans from his father as he started his career.)

18) Falsely claimed, on the “birther” conspiracy, that “nobody was pressing it” after 2011. (Trump repeatedly tweeted and spoke about the subject in the following years. In 2013, for example, he tweeted, “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.”)

19) Falsely said the U.S. trade deficit “with all of the countries that we do business with” is “almost $800 billion a year.” (The trade deficit last year was $532 billion. It rises to $746 billion when only goods are counted, not the services at which the U.S. excels, but Trump did not specify he was excluding the U.S.’s strength.)

20) Falsely said “wrong, wrong” when Clinton told him, “You even at one time suggested that you would try to negotiate down the national debt of the United States.” (While he quickly backtracked from this May suggestion, he did make it at one time.)

21) Falsely said, “In addition, I was just endorsed by ICE. They’ve never endorsed anybody before on immigration. I was just endorsed by ICE.” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a government agency that does not endorse candidates. Trump was actually endorsed by a union of some of its employees, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council.)

22) Falsely denied that he has been “praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin.” (Trump has praised Putin repeatedly, even calling him a superior leader to Obama.)

23) Falsely said, “They’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China.” (This makes no sense — the U.S. is a net borrower from China, not the other way around, as Trump himself frequently notes.)

24) Falsely claimed Clinton has “no plan” on the economy. (He can reasonably allege that it is a bad plan, but it exists in great detail.)

25) Falsely said NATO had not “focus(ed) on terror” before he urged it to do so. (From Politifact: “NATO involvement in counter-terrorism issued its first formal declaration on terrorism in 1980, and it became a significant issue for the alliance on Sept. 11, 2001, said Lisa Sawyer Samp, a senior fellow in the international security program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”)

26) Falsely said of China, “They’re devaluing their currency, and there’s nobody in our government to fight them.” (The International Monetary Fund declared last year that China’s currency is “no longer devalued.” Binyamin Applebaum of the New York Times wrote: “There is no evidence that China is presently engaging in currency devaluation.”)

27) Falsely said, of nuclear weapons, “Russia has been expanding their — they have a much newer capability than we do. We have not been updating from the new standpoint.” (In fact, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a trillion-dollar effort the New York Times has called a “nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers.”)

28) Falsely claimed that Daesh (also known as the Islamic State) has “a lot of the oil in Libya.” (Independent experts say this is false. “They wanted to disrupt it, destroy it, not to run it,” energy analyst Matthew Bey told CNBC earlier this month. “They had control of fields around (the city of) Sirte for a while, but they have since been mostly pushed from that area, and never had control of any upstream activity.”)

29) Falsely alleged that the Clinton campaign played a high-level role in the birther conspiracy theory: “Patti Solis Doyle was on Wolf Blitzer saying that this happened.” (Trump completely mischaracterized her CNN remarks; she had said that a campaign volunteer who forwarded a birther email was fired.)

30) Falsely described Mexico’s value-added tax as a kind of trade barrier: “When we sell into Mexico, there’s a tax. When they sell in — automatic, 16 percent, approximately. When they sell into us, there’s no tax. It’s a defective agreement.” (This is a gross misunderstanding of how a VAT works.)

31) Falsely said, “She spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me.” (Clinton has spent about $100 million in total advertising, CBS reports.)

32) Falsely said of U.S. companies hoarding cash overseas: “They can’t bring their money back into our country because of bureaucratic red tape because they can’t get together.” (The issue is the high U.S. corporate tax rate, not bureaucracy; Trump did note the tax rate a little earlier.)

33) Falsely suggested that Ford’s outsourcing of small car production to Mexico will mean “thousands of jobs leaving Michigan.” (Ford is shifting the production of new products to the affected plants and not cutting any jobs.)

34) Falsely called Palm Beach, Florida “probably the wealthiest community there is in the world.” (Palm Beach is not even the wealthiest community in America, let alone the world. The Palm Beach Post put it at number three in the country; other rankings, with different measures of wealth, have it lower.)

35) Misleadingly said to Clinton, “You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history.” (Clinton’s increases are large, but they are only on wealthy people.)

36) Misleadingly said, “In New York City, stop and frisk, we had 2,200 murders, and stop and frisk brought it down to 500 murders.” (It is a great exaggeration to attribute the entire decline to stop and frisk. Crime declined massively around the country during this period, including in cities that did not use the practice.)

Hillary Clinton, Democrat

1) Falsely denied that she called the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the gold standard” or that she had backed the deal before she opposed it. (She praised TPP at length as secretary of state.)

2) Falsely said the “only years” of Trump’s tax returns that have been publicly released “showed that he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” (The documents show Trump did pay taxes in three years in the 1970s.)

3) Falsely said, “When I became secretary of state, Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb.” (Independent experts say Iran was not that close.)

4) Falsely said her tax plan “would not add a penny to the debt, and (Trump’s) plans would add $5 trillion to the debt.” (The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the group that estimated Trump’s plan would add $5 trillion to the debt, also estimated that Clinton’s would add $200 billion.)

5) Misleadingly said Trump said “women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.” (This is an exaggeration. When asked in 2015, “If you become president will a woman make the same as a man,” he responded, “You’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job.” He did not go so far as to say women “don’t deserve” equal pay.)

6) Misleadingly claimed, “I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable.” (This is a highly plausible interpretation of Trump’s words about her own deleted emails — “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” — but Clinton is wrong to suggest he had invited Russia to hack into “Americans” in general.

Credit: thestar.com. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/09/27/donald-trump-said-34-false-things-at-first-presidential-debate.html