The much-anticipated first debate of 2024 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump featured a relentless barrage of false and misleading statements from the two candidates on immigration, the economy, abortion, taxes and more.<\/p>\n
\u2022Both candidates erred on Social Security, with Biden incorrectly saying that Trump \u201cwants to get rid\u201d of the program, and Trump falsely alleging that Biden will \u201cwipe out\u201d Social Security due to the influx of people at the border.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump misleadingly claimed that he was \u201cthe one that got the insulin down for the seniors,\u201d not Biden. Costs were lowered for some under a limited project by the Trump administration. Biden signed a law capping costs for all seniors with Medicare drug coverage.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump warned that Biden \u201cwants to raise your taxes by four times,\u201d but Biden has not proposed anything like that. Trump was also mostly wrong when he said Biden \u201cwants the Trump tax cuts to expire.\u201d Biden said he would extend them for anyone making under $400,000 a year.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden repeated his misleading claim that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8 percent. That White House calculation factors in earnings on unsold stock as income.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump repeated his false claim that \u201ceverybody,\u201d including all legal scholars, wanted to end Roe v. Wade\u2019s constitutional right to abortion.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump falsely claimed that \u201cthe only jobs\u201d Biden \u201ccreated are for illegal immigrants and bounced back jobs that bounced back from the COVID.\u201d Total nonfarm employment is higher than it was before the pandemic, as is the employment level of native-born workers.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden claimed that Trump oversaw the \u201clargest deficit of any president,\u201d while Trump countered that \u201cwe now have the largest deficit\u201d under Biden. The largest budget deficit was under Trump in fiscal year 2020, but that was largely because of emergency spending due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden misleadingly said that \u201cBlack unemployment is the lowest level it has been in a long, long time.\u201d The rate reached a record low in April 2023, and it was low under Trump, too, until the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden said Trump called U.S. veterans killed in World War I \u201csuckers and losers,\u201d which Trump called a \u201cmade-up quote.\u201d The Atlantic reported that, based on anonymous sources. A former Trump chief of staff later seemed to confirm Trump said it.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump claimed that Biden \u201ccaused the inflation,\u201d but economists say rising inflation was mostly due to disruptions to the economy caused by the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump grossly inflated the number of immigrants who have entered the country during the Biden administration \u2014 putting the number at 18 million to 20 million \u2014 and he said, without evidence, that many of them are from prisons and mental institutions.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump claimed that \u201cwe had the safest border in history\u201d in the \u201cfinal months\u201d of his presidency. But apprehensions of those trying to cross illegally in the last three full months of his presidency were about 50 percent higher than in the three months before he took office.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden criticized Trump for presiding over a loss of jobs when he was president, but that loss occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump falsely claimed that \u201csome states\u201d run by Democrats allow abortions \u201cafter birth.\u201d If it happened, it would be homicide, and that\u2019s illegal.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump made the unsupported claim that the U.S. border with Mexico is \u201cthe most dangerous place in the world,\u201d and suggested that it has opened the country to a violent crime wave. The data show a reduction in violent crime in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump overstated how much food prices have risen due to inflation. Prices are up by about 20 percent, not double or quadruple. <\/p>\n
\u2022Trump boasted his administration \u201chad the best environmental numbers ever.\u201d Trump reversed nearly 100 environmental rules limiting pollution. Although greenhouse gas emissions did decline from 2019 to 2020, the EPA said that was due to the impacts of the pandemic on travel and the economy.<\/p>\n
\u2022Biden said he joined the Paris Agreement because \u201cif we reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius, and then \u2026 there\u2019s no way back.\u201d Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees would reduce the damages and losses of global warming, but scientists agree that climate action is still possible after passing the threshold.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump said immigrants crossing the border illegally were living in \u201cluxury hotels.\u201d New York City has provided hotel and motel rooms to migrant families, but there is no evidence that they are being placed in \u201cluxury\u201d hotels.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump falsely claimed that there was \u201cno terrorism, at all\u201d in the U.S. during his administration. There were several terrorist acts carried out by foreign-born individuals when he was president.<\/p>\n
\u2022While talking about international trade, Trump falsely claimed that the U.S. currently has \u201cthe largest deficit with China.\u201d In 2023, the trade deficit in goods and services with China was the lowest it has been since 2009.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump wrongly claimed that prior to the pandemic, he had created \u201cthe greatest economy in the history of our country.\u201d That\u2019s far from true using economists\u2019 preferred measure \u2014 growth in gross domestic product.<\/p>\n
\u2022As he has many times before, Trump wrongly claimed, \u201cI gave you the largest tax cut in history.\u201d That\u2019s not true either as a percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.<\/p>\n
\u2022Trump contrasted his administration with Biden\u2019s by misleadingly noting that when he left office, the U.S. was \u201cenergy independent.\u201d The U.S. continues to export more energy than it imports.<\/p>\n
The debate<\/a> was hosted by CNN in Atlanta on June 27.<\/p>\n Biden claimed that Trump \u201cwants to get rid\u201d of Social Security, even though the former president has consistently said he will not cut the program and has advised Republicans against doing so.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Biden and his campaign based the claim on Trump saying in a March 11 CNBC interview<\/a> that \u201cthere is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.\u201d As we\u2019ve said<\/a>, in context, instead of reducing benefits, Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud in those programs \u2014 although there\u2019s not enough of that to make the program solvent over the long term.<\/p>\n \u201cI will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,\u201d Trump later said in a March 13 Breitbart interview<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to do it elsewhere. But we\u2019re not going to do anything to hurt them.\u201d<\/p>\n During the GOP presidential primary, Trump also criticized<\/a> some of his Republican opponents for proposing to raise the retirement age for Social Security, which budget experts have said<\/a> would reduce scheduled benefits for those affected.<\/p>\n Some critics of Trump have argued<\/a> that he cannot be expected to keep his promise because of his past budget proposals. But, as we\u2019ve written<\/a>, Trump did not propose cuts to Social Security retirement benefits.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump claimed during the debate that Biden \u201cis going to single-handedly destroy Social Security\u201d because of illegal immigration. \u201cThese millions and millions of people coming in, they\u2019re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security,\u201d Trump said of Biden.<\/p>\n As we<\/a> and others<\/a> have explained before, immigrants who are not authorized to be in the U.S. aren\u2019t eligible for Social Security. In fact, because many such individuals pay into Social Security via payroll taxes but cannot receive benefits, illegal immigrants bolster rather than drain the finances of the program.<\/p>\n In referring to what seniors pay for insulin, Trump misleadingly claimed, \u201cI heard him say before, \u2018insulin.\u2019 I\u2019m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.\u201d Insulin costs went down for some beneficiaries under a limited project under Trump; Biden signed a more expansive law affecting all seniors with Medicare drug coverage.<\/p>\n Under Trump, out-of-pocket costs were lowered to $35 for some Medicare Part D beneficiaries under a two-year pilot project in which some insurers could voluntarily reduce the cost for some insulin products. KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, explained<\/a> earlier this month that under this model, in effect from 2021 to 2023, \u201cparticipating Medicare Part D prescription drug plans covered at least one of each dosage form and type of insulin product at no more than $35 per month,\u201d and \u201cless than half of all Part D plans chose to participate in each year.\u201d<\/p>\n But in 2022, Biden signed a law<\/a> that required all Medicare prescription drug plans to cap all insulin products at $35. The law also capped the out-of-pocket price for insulin that\u2019s covered under Medicare Part B, which covers drugs administered in a health care provider\u2019s office. The caps went into effect last year.<\/p>\n STAT, a news site that covers health care issues, reported<\/a> that the idea for a $35 cap for seniors initially came from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, which proposed it in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the only one I know he wants to raise your taxes by four times,\u201d Trump said of Biden. \u201cHe wants to raise everybody\u2019s taxes by four times. He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire. So everybody \u2026 [is] going to pay four to five times \u2014 nobody ever heard of this before.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump regularly warns of massive tax hikes for \u201ceverybody,\u201d should Biden be reelected. That doesn\u2019t jibe with anything Biden has proposed.<\/p>\n In his more than three years as president, Biden\u2019s major tax changes<\/a> have included setting a minimum corporate tax rate<\/a> of 15 percent and lowering taxes for some families by expanding the child tax credit<\/a> and, for a time, making it fully refundable, meaning families could still receive a refund even if they no longer owe additional taxes.<\/p>\n As we wrote<\/a> in 2020, when Trump made a similar claim, Biden proposed during that campaign to raise an additional $4 trillion in taxes over the next decade, although the increases would have fallen mainly on very high-income earners and corporations. The plan would not have doubled or tripled people\u2019s taxes at any income level (on average), according to analyses of Biden\u2019s plan by the Penn Wharton Budget Model<\/a>, the Tax Policy Center<\/a> and the Tax Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n In March 2023, the TPC\u2019s Howard Gleckman wrote<\/a> that Biden proposed a 2024 budget that would, on average, increase after-tax incomes for low-income households and \u201cleave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households.\u201d The Tax Policy Center noted, \u201cThe top 1 percent, with at least roughly $1 million in income, would pay an average of $300,000 more than under current law, dropping their after-tax incomes by 14 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n This March, Biden released his fiscal year 2025 budget<\/a>, which contains many of the same proposals and adds a few new wrinkles. But it still does not contain<\/a> any \u201ccolossal tax hikes\u201d on typical American families, as Trump has said.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s latest plan proposes \u2014 as he has in the past \u2014 to increase the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, and to restore<\/a> the top individual tax rate of 39.6 percent from the current rate of 37 percent. It would also increase the corporate minimum tax rate from 15 percent to 21 percent for companies that report average profits in excess of $1 billion over a three-year period. And the plan would impose a 25 percent minimum tax on very wealthy individuals. The plan also proposes to extend the expanded child tax credit enacted in the American Rescue Plan through 2025, and to make the child tax credit fully refundable on a permanent basis.<\/p>\n Trump is also mostly wrong that Biden \u201cwants the Trump tax cuts to expire.\u201d<\/p>\n As he has said since the 2020 campaign, Biden\u2019s fiscal 2025 budget vows not to increase taxes on people earning less than $400,000.<\/p>\n In order to keep that pledge, Biden would have to extend most of the individual income tax provisions enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that are set to expire at the end of 2025. And that\u2019s what Biden says he would do \u2014 but only for<\/a> individual filers earning less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000. (In order to pass the TCJA with a simple Senate majority, Republicans wrote the law to have most of the individual income tax changes expire after 2025<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The Biden budget plan \u201cwould raise marginal income tax rates faced by higher earners and corporations while expanding tax credits for lower-income households,\u201d according to a Tax Foundation analysis<\/a> of the tax provisions in Biden\u2019s budget. \u201cThe budget would redistribute income from high earners to low earners. The bottom 60 percent of earners would see increases in after-tax income in 2025, while the top 40 percent of earners would see decreases.\u201d<\/p>\n In arguing that wealthy households should pay a minimum tax, Biden repeated his misleading claim that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a thousand \u2026 billionaires in America, and what\u2019s happening?\u201d Biden said<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent in taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the average rate in the current tax system; it\u2019s a figure calculated<\/a> by the White House and factors in earnings on unsold stock as income. When only considering income, the top-earning taxpayers, on average, pay higher tax rates than those in lower income groups, as we\u2019ve written<\/a> before.<\/p>\n The top 0.1 percent of earners pay an average rate of 25.1 percent in federal income and payroll taxes, according to<\/a> an analysis by the Tax Policy Center in October 2022 for the 2023 tax year.<\/p>\n The point that Biden tried to make is that earnings on assets, such as stock, currently are not taxed until that asset is sold, which is when the earnings become subject to capital gains taxes. Until stocks and assets are sold, the earnings are referred to as \u201cunrealized\u201d gains. Unrealized gains, the White House has argued<\/a>, could go untaxed forever if wealthy people hold on to them and transfer them on to heirs when they die.<\/p>\n As he has before<\/a>, Trump wildly exaggerated the popularity of ending Roe v. Wade \u2014 even going so far as to claim that it was \u201csomething that everybody wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c51 years ago, you had Roe v. Wade and everybody wanted to get it back to the states,\u201d he said<\/a>, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, which was overturned<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n Trump:<\/strong> Everybody, without exception: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back \u2014 religious leaders. And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court and they happened to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade, and moving it back to the states. This is something that everybody wanted. Now 10 years ago or so they started talking about how many weeks and how many this and getting into other things. But every legal scholar throughout the world \u2014 the most respected \u2014 wanted it brought back to the states. I did that.<\/p>\n In fact, a majority of Americans have disagreed with ending Roe v. Wade, including plenty of legal scholars, as we\u2019ve explained before<\/a>. While some scholars criticized aspects of the legal reasoning in Roe, it did not necessarily mean they wanted the ruling overturned. Legal experts told us that Trump\u2019s claim was \u201cutter nonsense\u201d and \u201cpatently absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n After Biden talked about job creation during his administration, Trump falsely claimed that \u201cthe only jobs [Biden] created are for illegal immigrants and bounced back jobs that bounced back from the COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, as of May, total nonfarm employment<\/a> in the U.S. had gone up about 6.2 million from the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase is about 15.6 million if you count from when Biden took office in January 2021 until now \u2014 but that would include some jobs that were temporarily lost during the pandemic and then came back during the economic recovery.<\/p>\n Furthermore, there is no evidence that only \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d have seen employment gains.<\/p>\n Since Biden became president in January 2021, employment of U.S.-born workers has increased more than employment of foreign-born workers, a category that includes anyone who wasn\u2019t a U.S. citizen at birth, as we\u2019ve written before<\/a>. BLS says the foreign-born<\/a> population includes \u201clegally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.\u201d There is no employment breakdown for just people in the U.S. illegally.<\/p>\n In looking at employment since the pre-pandemic peak, the employment level of foreign-born workers<\/a> was up by about 3.2 million, from roughly 27.7 million in February 2020 to nearly 30.9 million in May. Employment for the U.S.-born population<\/a> increased by about 125,000 \u2014 from nearly 130.3 million in February 2020 to 130.4 million, as of May.<\/p>\n Biden and Trump accused each other of presiding over the largest budget deficit in the U.S.<\/p>\n After talking about Trump\u2019s plans for additional tax cuts, Biden said Trump already had the \u201clargest deficit of any president in American history.\u201d When he got a chance to respond, Trump said, \u201cWe now have the largest deficit in the history of our country under this guy,\u201d referring to Biden.<\/p>\n Biden is correct: The largest budget deficit<\/a> on record was about $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020 under Trump. However, that was primarily<\/a> because of trillions of dollars in emergency funding that both congressional Republicans and Democrats approved to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the largest budget deficit under Trump was about $1 trillion in fiscal 2019.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the most recent budget deficit under Biden was about $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2023. As of June, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected<\/a> that the deficit for fiscal 2024, which ends on Sept. 30, would be about $2 trillion.<\/p>\n Biden boasted that on his watch, \u201cBlack unemployment is the lowest level it has been in a long, long time.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that the unemployment rate for Black or African American people reached a record low of 4.8 percent in April 2023, but it is currently 6.1 percent, according to<\/a> the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has data going back to 1972.<\/p>\n Also, the unemployment rate was low under Trump, too, until the pandemic.<\/p>\n Under Trump, the unemployment rate for Black Americans<\/a> went down to 5.3 percent in August 2019 \u2014 the lowest on record at that time. It shot up to 16.9 percent in April 2020, when the economic effects of the pandemic took hold. When Trump left office in January 2021, amid the pandemic, the rate was 9.3 percent.<\/p>\n The rate has been 6 percent or less in only 29 months since 1972, and it happened only under two presidents: 21 times under Biden and eight times under Trump.<\/p>\n Biden said<\/a> Trump called U.S. veterans killed in World War I \u201csuckers and losers,\u201d which Trump called a \u201cmade-up quote \u2026 that was in a third-rate magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n It was first reported by a magazine \u2014 The Atlantic \u2014 but Trump\u2019s former chief of staff, John F. Kelly<\/a>, a retired four-star Marine general, later seemed to confirm it.<\/p>\n Biden was referring to a trip Trump made to France in November 2018, where he reportedly declined to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery<\/a> near the location of the Battle of Belleau Wood. \u201cHe was standing with his four-star general and he told him, \u2018I don\u2019t want to go in there because they\u2019re a bunch of losers and suckers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Atlantic wrote<\/a> about this alleged incident in 2020, citing unnamed sources. The magazine wrote that Trump made his remark about \u201closers\u201d when he declined to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and his remark about \u201csuckers\u201d during that same trip.<\/p>\n The Atlantic, Sept. 3, 2020:<\/strong> In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, \u201cWhy should I go to that cemetery? It\u2019s filled with losers.\u201d In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as \u201csuckers\u201d for getting killed.<\/p>\n In October 2023, Kelly \u2014 who was on that trip and visited the Aisne-Marne Cemetery \u2014 gave a statement to CNN<\/a> that seemed to confirm those remarks. CNN published Kelly\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n CNN, Oct. 3, 2023:<\/strong> \u201cWhat can I add that has not already been said?\u201d Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. \u201cA person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all \u2018suckers\u2019 because \u2018there is nothing in it for them.\u2019 A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because \u2018it doesn\u2019t look good for me.\u2019 A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family \u2014 for all Gold Star families \u2014 on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America\u2019s defense are \u2018losers\u2019 and wouldn\u2019t visit their graves in France.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said, \u201cWe had 19 people who said I didn\u2019t say it.\u201d One of those who said that he didn\u2019t hear Trump make those remarks is John Bolton, Trump\u2019s former national security adviser who was also on the trip and said he was there when the decision was made not to visit the cemetery.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t hear that,\u201d Bolton told the New York Times<\/a> in 2020 after the magazine story first appeared. \u201cI\u2019m not saying he didn\u2019t say them later in the day or another time, but I was there for that discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden ignored the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic when he criticized Trump for employment going down over Trump\u2019s time in office.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the only president other than Herbert Hoover that lost more jobs than he had when he began,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n Job growth during Trump\u2019s term was positive until the economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April 2020, as efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus led to business closures and layoffs. By the time Trump left office in January 2021, employment had partly rebounded, but was still 9.4 million jobs below the February 2020 peak, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump repeatedly claimed that Biden \u201ccaused the inflation\u201d and that \u201cI gave him a country with no essentially no inflation. It was perfect. It was so good.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that inflation was relatively modest when Trump was president. The Consumer Price Index rose 7.6 percent<\/a> under Trump\u2019s four years \u2014 continuing a long period of low inflation. And inflation has been high over the entirety of Biden\u2019s time in office. The Consumer Price Index<\/a> for all items rose 19.3 percent between January 2021 and May.<\/p>\n For a time, it was the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending in June 2022 saw a 9 percent increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said<\/a> was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.<\/p>\n Inflation has moderated more recently. The CPI rose<\/a> 3.3 percent in the 12 months ending in May, the most recent figure available.<\/p>\n Although Trump claims that Biden is entirely responsible for massive inflation, economists we have spoken to<\/a> say Biden\u2019s policies are only partly to blame. The economists placed the lion\u2019s share of the blame for inflation on disruptions to the economy caused by the pandemic, including supply shortages, labor issues and increased consumer spending on goods. Inflation was then worsened by Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine, which drove up oil and gas prices, experts told us.<\/p>\n Indeed, inflation has been a worldwide problem<\/a> post-pandemic.<\/p>\n However, many economists say Biden\u2019s policies \u2014 particularly aggressive stimulus spending early in his presidency to offset some of the economic damage caused by the pandemic \u2014 played a modest role.<\/p>\n Jason Furman<\/a>, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama and now a Harvard University professor, told us in June 2022 that he estimated about 1 to 4 percentage points worth of the inflation was due to Biden\u2019s stimulus spending in the American Rescue Plan<\/a> \u2014 a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure that included $1,400 checks to most Americans; expanded unemployment benefits; and money for schools, small businesses and states. Mark Zandi<\/a>, chief economist of Moody\u2019s \u2014 whose work is often cited by the White House \u2014 said the impact of the stimulus measure now \u201chas largely faded.\u201d<\/p>\n Economists note that the American Rescue Plan came after two other pandemic stimulus laws enacted under Trump that were worth<\/a> a total<\/a> of $3.1 trillion. That spending, too, could have contributed to inflation.<\/p>\n Trump grossly inflated the number of immigrants who have entered the country during the Biden administration \u2014 putting the number at 18 million to 20 million. The number, by our calculation, is about a third of that. Trump also claimed, without evidence, that many of those immigrants are from prisons and mental institutions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could be 18, it could be 19, and even 20 million people,\u201d Trump said of the immigrants who have entered the U.S. during the Biden administration. Later in the debate, Trump asked Biden why there had been no accountability \u201cfor allowing 18 million people, many from prisons, many from mental institutions\u201d into the country.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a greatly exaggerated number. We took a deep dive into the immigration numbers in February<\/a>, and again in mid-June<\/a>, and we came up with an estimate of at most a third of Trump\u2019s number.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the breakdown:<\/p>\n Department of Homeland Security data show nearly 8 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border between February 2021, the month after Biden took office, and May, the last month of available statistics<\/a>. That\u2019s a figure that includes both the 6.9 million apprehensions of migrants caught between legal ports of entry \u2014 the number typically used for illegal immigration \u2014 and nearly 1.1 million encounters of migrants who arrived at ports of entry without authorization to enter the U.S.<\/p>\n DHS also has comprehensive data, through February, of the initial processing of these encounters. That information shows 2.9 million were removed by Customs and Border Protection and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole. (Encounters do not represent the total number of people, because some people attempt multiple crossings. For example, the recidivism rate was 27 percent in fiscal year 2021, according to the most recent figures<\/a> from CBP.) <\/p>\n As we\u2019ve explained before<\/a>, there are also estimates for \u201cgotaways,\u201d or migrants who crossed the border illegally and evaded the authorities. Based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78 percent, which DHS provided to us, that would mean there were an estimated 1.8 million gotaways from February 2021 to February 2024. The gotaways plus those released with court notices or other designations would total about 5 million.<\/p>\n There were also 407,500 transfers of unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services and 883,000 transfers to ICE. The ICE transfers include those who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in \u201calternatives to detention<\/a>\u201d (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE. We don\u2019t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice. But even if we include those figures, it still doesn\u2019t get us to anywhere near 18 million to 20 million.<\/p>\n And we should note that these figures do not reflect whether a migrant may ultimately be allowed to stay or will be deported, particularly since there is a yearslong backlog of immigration court cases.<\/p>\n Also, as we have written<\/a> repeatedly<\/a>, Trump has provided no credible support for his incendiary claim that countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending those people to the U.S. Experts tell us they have seen no evidence to substantiate it.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, we looked into<\/a> Trump\u2019s claim as it relates to Venezuela, because Trump has repeatedly cited a drop in crime there to support his claim about countries emptying their prisons and sending inmates to the U.S. Reported crime is trending down in Venezuela, but crime experts in the country say there are numerous reasons for that \u2014 including an enormous out-migration of citizens and a consolidation of gang activity \u2014 and they have nothing to do with sending criminals to the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,\u201d Roberto Brice\u00f1o-Le\u00f3n, founder and director of the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told us.<\/p>\n Trump claimed that \u201cwe had the safest border in history\u201d in the \u201cfinal months\u201d of his presidency, according to Border Patrol. But according to data<\/a> provided by Customs and Border Protection, apprehensions of those trying to cross illegally into the U.S. in the last three full months of Trump\u2019s presidency were about 50 percent higher than in the three months<\/a> before he took office.<\/p>\n In fact, as we wrote in our piece, \u201cTrump\u2019s Final Numbers<\/a>,\u201d illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the southwest border<\/a>, were 14.7 percent higher in Trump\u2019s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.<\/p>\n But these statistics tell only part of the story. The number of apprehensions fluctuated wildly during Trump\u2019s presidency, from a monthly<\/a> low of 11,127 in April 2017 to a high of 132,856 in May 2019.<\/p>\n Back in April, we wrote<\/a> about a misleading chart that Trump showed to the crowd during a speech in Green Bay, Wis. \u201cSee the arrow on the bottom? That was my last week in office,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThat was the lowest number in history.\u201d But Trump was wrong on both points.<\/p>\n The arrow was pointing to apprehensions in April 2020, when apprehensions plummeted during the height of the pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pandemic was responsible for a near-complete halt to all forms of global mobility in 2020, due to a combination of border restrictions imposed by countries around the world,\u201d Michelle Mittelstadt<\/a>, director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, told us.<\/p>\n After apprehensions reached a pandemic low in April 2020, they rose every month after that. In his last months in office, apprehensions had more than quadrupled from that pandemic low and were higher than the month he took office.<\/p>\n Trump falsely claimed that \u201csome states\u201d run by Democrats allow abortions \u201cafter birth.\u201d As we have written<\/a>, that\u2019s simply false. If it happened, it would be homicide<\/a>, and that\u2019s illegal<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cNo such procedure exists,\u201d the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says<\/a> on its website.<\/p>\n The former president has wrongly said<\/a> that abortions after birth were permitted under Roe v. Wade \u2014 the Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion until it was reversed<\/a> in 2022. It was not.<\/p>\n Under Roe, states could outlaw abortion after fetal viability, but with exceptions for risks to the life or health of the mother. Many Republicans have objected<\/a> to the health stipulation, saying it would allow abortion for any reason. Democrats say exceptions are needed to protect the mother from medical risks. We should note, late-term abortions are rare<\/a>. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, less than 1 percent of abortions in the U.S. in 2020 were performed after 21 weeks gestational time.<\/p>\n In June 2022, after Trump had appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, the court overturned<\/a> Roe in a 5-4 ruling. Biden supports<\/a> restoring Roe as \u201cthe law of the land,\u201d as he said in his State of the Union address in March.<\/p>\n In his focus on the U.S. border with Mexico, Trump made<\/a> the unsupported claim that it is \u201cthe most dangerous place in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that unauthorized border crossings can be dangerous<\/a> \u2014 895 people died while doing so in fiscal year 2022, which is the most recent year for which the Customs and Border Protection has data<\/a>. Most of those deaths were heat related.<\/p>\n And the International Organization for Migration called calendar year 2022 \u201cthe deadliest year on record\u201d for migration in the Americas, with a total of 1,457 fatalities throughout South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean. The organization began tracking deaths and disappearances related to migration in 2014.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of these fatalities are related to the lack of options for safe and regular mobility, which increases the likelihood that people see no other choice but to opt for irregular migration routes that put their lives at risk,\u201d the organization said in its 2022 report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump suggested that the border crossings imperil Americans when he went on to say, \u201cthese killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women.\u201d<\/p>\n But, as we\u2019ve written before<\/a>, FBI data show a downward trend in violent crime in the U.S., and there\u2019s no evidence to support the claim that there\u2019s been a crime wave driven by immigrants.<\/p>\n Crime analyst Jeff Asher, co-founder of the New Orleans firm AH Datalytics<\/a>, told us in May that there\u2019s no evidence in the data to indicate a migrant crime wave.<\/p>\n Similarly, Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the New York Times<\/a> in February there was no evidence of a migrant crime wave in New York City after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing migrants there in April 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cI would interpret a \u2018wave\u2019 to mean something significant, meaningful and a departure from the norm,\u201d Butts said at the time. \u201cSo far, what we have are individual incidents of crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Also, it\u2019s worth noting that the Institute for Economics and Peace\u2019s Global Peace Index<\/a> \u2014 which measures the safety of 163 countries based on 23 indicators, including violent crime, deaths from internal conflict and terrorism \u2014 said the \u201cleast peaceful country\u201d is Afghanistan, followed by Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n In discussing inflation, the former president embellished the degree to which food prices have increased.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s killing people. They can\u2019t buy groceries anymore,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou look at the cost of food, where it\u2019s doubled, tripled and quadrupled. They can\u2019t live.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index for food has gone up 17.5 percent<\/a> \u2014 not 100 percent to 300 percent \u2014 since January 2021. The Consumer Price Index specifically for groceries, or \u201cfood at home,\u201d has risen 20.8 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n During a short exchange about climate change, Trump boasted that during his tenure \u201cwe had the best environmental numbers ever.\u201d It is not clear what he was referring to exactly, but he said if elected president he wanted to have \u201cabsolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air \u2014 and we had it.\u201d He might have been referring to a talking point that Andrew Wheeler, Trump\u2019s former EPA administrator, had recommended Trump mention during the debate: \u201cCO2 emissions went down\u201d during his administration, as the Hill reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n Greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for global warming, did decline<\/a> from 2019 to 2020. But that was \u201clargely due to the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on travel and economic activity,\u201d according to the EPA. Emissions increased by 5.7 percent from 2020 to 2022, once the economy started getting reactivated again, the agency said. <\/p>\n According to an analysis by the New York Times<\/a>, Trump\u2019s administration reversed nearly 100 environmental rules, including 28 regulations on air pollution and emissions, and eight rules that limited water pollution. Reportedly, Trump recently asked<\/a> oil executives and lobbyists to donate to his campaign, promising he would roll back other environmental rules that hurt fossil fuel interests.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not done a damn thing for the environment,\u201d Biden said in response, pointing out that Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement<\/a>. \u201cI immediately joined it because if we reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius \u2026 there\u2019s no way back,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve reported<\/a>, although reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming comes with a number of very serious impacts, it is not a point of no return. Scientists agree that every increment of global warming increases these negative impacts, but 1.5 degrees is not a magic number after which everything is doomed, they say.<\/p>\n During the debate, Trump mentioned<\/a> twice<\/a> that while immigrants crossing the border illegally were \u201cliving in luxury hotels,\u201d in New York City and other cities \u201cour veterans are living in the street.\u201d<\/p>\n While it is true that New York City has provided<\/a> hotel<\/a> rooms<\/a> to migrant families as a temporary shelter solution, there is no evidence that immigrants are being placed in \u201cluxury\u201d hotels.<\/p>\n In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams signed<\/a> a $275 million contract with the Hotel Association of New York City to house 5,000 migrants. The deal was intended to help struggling hotels<\/a> impacted by the pandemic and did not expect to include luxury hotels. \u201cThere are no gold-plated rooms that are being given away contrary to any reports that you may have seen,\u201d the association president told NY1<\/a> at the time. In January, the city signed<\/a> another $77 million contract to shelter migrant families in hotels. <\/p>\n In April, social media posts falsely claimed immigrants had stormed New York City Hall to demand luxury hotel accommodations. But as the Associated Press reported<\/a>, the immigrants were there for a hearing about racial inequities in shelter and immigrant services.<\/p>\n In 2023, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness increased 7.4 percent from 2022, according to data<\/a> from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But homelessness among veterans has been declining in recent years, with a 4 percent overall reduction within the last three years alone. <\/p>\n While talking about Iran and terrorism, Trump falsely claimed that \u201cyou had no terror, at all, during my administration.\u201d As we\u2019ve written<\/a>, there were several acts of terrorism carried out by foreign-born individuals when Trump was in office.<\/p>\n For example, in October 2017, Sayfullo Saipov used<\/a> a truck to run down people in New York City. He killed eight people, including<\/a> Americans and tourists, in an attack carried out on behalf of the Islamic State.<\/p>\n Then in December 2017, Akayed Ullah detonated<\/a> a homemade pipe bomb he was wearing inside a New York City subway station. Ullah told<\/a> authorities he did it in response to U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and other places.<\/p>\n Then in December 2019<\/a>, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force, shot 11 people at Florida\u2019s Naval Air Station Pensacola, killing three U.S. sailors. Trump\u2019s own attorney general, William Barr, called<\/a> it an act of terrorism in January 2020. \u201cThe evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology,\u201d Barr said in a statement.<\/p>\n When discussing U.S. trade relations with China, Trump said \u201cwe have the largest deficit with China.\u201d That\u2019s false, as we\u2019ve written<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2023, the U.S. had a trade deficit with China in goods and services of roughly $252 billion, according to<\/a> revised figures the Bureau of Economic Analysis released<\/a> in early June. The deficit in goods trading was about $279 billion which was partially offset by a roughly $27 billion surplus in the trading of services<\/a> \u2014 which can include travel, transportation, finance and intellectual property.<\/p>\n The trade gap with China last year was the lowest it had been since 2009, when it was $220 billion.<\/p>\n In fact, according to BEA data going back to 1999, the highest total U.S.-China trade deficit in goods and services was about $378 billion in 2018 \u2014 when Trump was president. Under Biden, the highest trade deficit with China was $366 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n Trump falsely said that prior to the pandemic, the U.S. had \u201cthe greatest economy in the history of our country. \u2026 Everything was locked in good.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s boast about creating the \u201cgreatest economy in history\u201d is ubiquitous in his campaign speeches. And it\u2019s not true, at least not by the objective measure typically used to gauge the health of the economy.<\/p>\n As we have written<\/a>, economists generally measure a nation\u2019s health by the growth of its inflation-adjusted gross domestic product<\/a>. Under Trump, growth was modest. Real GDP in Trump\u2019s four years grew annually by 2.5 percent in 2017, 3 percent in 2018 and 2.5 percent in 2019 \u2014 before the economy went into a tailspin during the pandemic in 2020, when real GDP declined by 2.2 percent, according to<\/a> the Bureau of Economic Analysis.<\/p>\n So, in the best year under Trump, U.S. real GDP grew annually by 3 percent. By contrast, the nation\u2019s economy grew at a faster annual rate 48 times<\/a> and under every president before and after Trump dating to 1930, except Barack Obama and Herbert Hoover. The economy grew at more than 3 percent six of Ronald Reagan\u2019s eight years, including 7.2 percent in 1984, and it grew 5 percent or more 10 times under Franklin D. Roosevelt, including 18.9 percent in 1942. Under Biden<\/a>, the GDP grew by 5.8 percent in 2021 \u2014 a post COVID-19 bounce-back \u2014 by 1.9 percent in 2022 and 2.5 percent in 2023.<\/p>\n As he has many times before, Trump wrongly claimed, \u201cI gave you the largest tax cut in history.\u201d But saying this over and over, as Trump has for years, doesn\u2019t make it any more true.<\/p>\n As we have been writing<\/a> even before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act<\/a> was enacted into law, while the law provided tax relief to nearly all Americans, it was not the largest tax cut in U.S. history either as a percentage of gross domestic product (the measure preferred by economists) or in inflation-adjusted dollars.<\/p>\n According to a Tax Policy Center analysis<\/a>, the law reduced the individual income taxes owed by Americans by about $1,260 on average in 2018. It also reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent<\/a>, beginning in January 2018.<\/p>\n The law signed by Trump was initially projected to cost $1.49 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation<\/a>. It could end up costing substantially more if individual tax provisions are extended past 2025. Over the first four years, the average annual cost was estimated to be $185 billion. That was about 0.9 percent of gross domestic product<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n That\u2019s nowhere close to President Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1981 tax cut, which was 2.89 percent of GDP over a four-year average. That\u2019s according to a 2013 Treasury Department analysis<\/a> on the revenue effects of major tax legislation. Five more tax measures since 1940 had an impact larger than 1 percent of GDP, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget includes<\/a> a 1921 measure as also being larger than the 2017 plan. That\u2019s eighth place for Trump\u2019s \u201cbiggest tax cut in our history.\u201d<\/p>\n In inflation-adjusted dollars, the Trump-era tax cut is also less than the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which comes in at No. 1 with a $320.6 billion cost over a four-year average. And it\u2019s less than tax reductions in 2010 ($210 billion) and 1981 ($208 billion).<\/p>\n Trump boasted, as he often does<\/a>, that \u201con Jan. 6 [2021], we were energy independent,\u201d implying that\u2019s no longer the case under Biden. But by Trump\u2019s definition, the country remains energy independent.<\/p>\n To be clear, under Trump, the U.S. never stopped importing<\/a> sources of energy, including crude oil<\/a>, from other countries. What he likely means is that the country either produced<\/a> more energy than it consumed, or exported<\/a> more energy than it imported. During Trump\u2019s presidency, after years trending in that direction, the U.S. did hit a tipping point where exports of primary energy exceeded energy imports from foreign sources in 2019 and 2020 \u2014 the first times that had happened since 1952, according to<\/a> the U.S. Energy Information Administration. <\/p>\n But contrary to Trump\u2019s suggestion, that has continued in the Biden presidency. The U.S., during Biden\u2019s presidency, has exported<\/a> more energy, including petroleum<\/a>, than it imported, and it has produced<\/a> more energy than it consumed. Also, the U.S. is producing record amounts of oil<\/a> and natural gas<\/a> under Biden.<\/p>\nSocial Security<\/h3>\n
Insulin<\/h3>\n
Trump on Biden tax plan<\/h3>\n
Biden on taxes paid by billionaires<\/h3>\n
Roe v. Wade<\/h3>\n
Trump wrong on jobs<\/h3>\n
Conflicting budget deficit claims<\/h3>\n
Black unemployment<\/h3>\n
\u2018Suckers and losers\u2019<\/h3>\n
Biden misleads on jobs<\/h3>\n
Inflation<\/h3>\n
Immigrants entering U.S. under Biden<\/h3>\n
Border under Trump<\/h3>\n
Abortion<\/h3>\n
Trump calls border \u2018the most dangerous place\u2019<\/h3>\n
Food costs<\/h3>\n
Climate change<\/h3>\n
Immigrants living in hotels<\/h3>\n
Terrorist attacks under Trump<\/h3>\n
China trade deficit<\/h3>\n
Not \u2018greatest economy\u2019 under Trump<\/h3>\n
Trump\u2019s was not largest tax cut in history<\/h3>\n
Energy independence<\/h3>\n