Wednesday on the PBS NewsHour, Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to fact-check some of President Trump’s claims.
President Donald Trump made several misleading statements Tuesday during an hour-long campaign-style speech in Nashville. Trump traveled to Tennessee in part to boost the Senate candidacy of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
But Trump’s support for Blackburn, who is running to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was largely overshadowed by criticism that he exaggerated his record in office. Here’s a look at four misleading or outright false assertions Trump made in his speech.
On the size of the GOP tax cut…
Trump said the tax law Republicans passed last year — the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 — was the “largest tax cuts and reform in American history.” The president has made this claim several times before, including during a White House event last December celebrating the passage of the tax bill. But when measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, the tax cut is the fourth-largest in U.S. history, according to Politifact.
And by another key metric — the size of a tax cut plan as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, or GDP — Trump’s tax plan trails several tax cuts enacted over the past seven decades. By that measurement, the largest tax cut in U.S. history was the Economic Recovery Tax Cut of 1981, passed under President Ronald Reagan.
On rising wages…
Trump claimed Tuesday that “wages for the first time in many years are finally going up.” It’s true that wages have increased on Trump’s watch: according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s wage growth tracker, average annual wages in 2017 grew by nearly 3 percent. But the data shows wages also increased under former President Barack Obama — including in 2016 — disproving Trump’s claim that wages are going up for the “first time in many years.”
On who’s paying for a border wall…
Reprising one of his favorite lines from the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said that “Mexico’s going to pay for the wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, took to Twitter to fact-check Trump in real-time. “NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever,” Peña Nieto wrote. He has said that before as well, including after a meeting with Trump in Mexico during the 2016 election.
On the border crossings crackdown…
Trump also said, “We have borders down 40 percent,” an apparent reference to illegal border crossings. It’s a claim Trump has made several times since taking office. The number of border crossings did drop during Trump’s first few months in office. But according to a fact-check this month by the Associated Press, border crossings in the past year are up 20 percent, based on the number of arrests by Border Patrol agents. The New York Times has also found Trump frequently exaggerates or cherry picks data on illegal border crossings.
What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.