Fact-checking Trump’s debate claims: from abortion to Project 2025

Donald Trump repeatedly made false and misleading claims about immigrants “eating the pets”, his connection to Project 2025, and the Central Park Five, among other topics, during his debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
At the first debate of this presidential election cycle in June – when Joe Biden was still the Democratic Party’s nominee – moderators took a completely hands-off approach to fact-checking. The light moderation meant that lies and half-truths, most frequently from Mr Trump, went unchallenged during the prime-time debate.
Here are the facts on some of the false claims offered during Tuesday’s debate.
Donald Trump claimed that crime is way up in the US.
The facts: Mr Trump is wrong: crime is actually down. Data from the FBI found that violent crime decreased during the Trump administration, spiking in 2020 during the pandemic, and continuing to trend downward afterwards.
Preliminary data from the FBI found that violent crime was down 6 per cent in 2023, and 15 per cent in the first quarter of 2024.
Violent crime decreased throughout most of Mr Trump’s presidency, according to FBI data that uses information provided by law enforcement agencies. However, it spiked in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has trended downward since 2020 across the US, nearing pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Preliminary FBI data for 2023 shows that violent crime overall was down another 6 per cent that year.
Though the data is preliminary, it includes numbers from 80 per cent of the law enforcement agencies in the country.
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Mr Trump repeated one of his usual falsehoods: that abortions are taking place in the ninth month of pregnancy.
The facts: Fewer than 1 per cent of abortions are performed past 21 weeks of pregnancy; when these abortions do take place, they often occur in medical emergencies or cases of foetal anomalies.
Mr Trump also suggested, at multiple points, that abortions take place after birth. That would be infanticide, and it is illegal in all 50 states.
Mr Trump denied knowledge of Project 2025, a 900-page plan for the aggressive rightwing overhaul of nearly every aspect of the federal government.
Project 2025 suggests ridding the federal ranks of many appointed roles and stacking agencies instead with more political appointees aligned with, and more beholden, to Mr Trump’s policy prescriptions.
The facts: Though Mr Trump has tried repeatedly to distance himself from the platform, which seeks to strip away reproductive, LGBTQ+ and voting rights, his policies align heavily with Project 2025.
As the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reported: “Trump well knows the Heritage Foundation and has spoken at their events, and [Kevin] Roberts, Heritage’s leader, has previously said he and Trump have talked several times. Project 2025’s authors and supporters contain a ton of former Trump administration officials.”
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Donald Trump has spouted off a number of false claims about immigration. Among other allegations, he said immigrants are “taking over the towns … They’re going in violently.”
The facts: That’s false. Although some US cities have seen an influx of immigrants, most have arrived legally, with work permits or with authorisation to stay while their cases are worked out in the courts.
There has been no widespread violence in these cities and overall, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the US-born according to multiple, extensive studies, including from the conservative Cato Institute.
Mr Trump repeated an unsubstantiated claim that immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio town, forcing the moderator to tell him that there is no proof of that.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” the former president said.
The story of migrants allegedly eating pets has circulated in rightwing media in recent days and been repeated by Mr Trump’s running mate JD Vance.
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The facts: These are false and unsubstantiated claims.
“You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” moderator David Muir told Mr Trump.
The Springfield News-Sun reported on Monday that police have “received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten”.
Donald Trump repeated misinformation about the result of lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results.
Mr Trump said that “no judges looked at” lawsuits he and allies filed about irregularities in the election. “They said we didn’t have standing. A technicality. Can you imagine a system where a person in an election doesn’t have standing? The president of the United States doesn’t have standing. That’s how we lost,” Mr Trump said.
The facts: That’s misleading – some lawsuits were dismissed due to a lack of standing – meaning that those who brought the lawsuits didn’t have a stake in the results. Others were decided on merit. Judges found in some cases that evidence provided was speculative, or failed to show fraud.
Trump boasted that the US experienced its “best” economy under his administration, while Ms Harris noted that he left the US with “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression”.
The facts: They’re both wrong – Mr Trump by a lot, and Ms Harris by a shade.
Though unemployment spiked to its worst levels since the Great Depression in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, it dipped back by the time Mr Trump left office.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s “best economy” line has been the bane of fact checkers since he was in office. Best is a very vague term – but by several measures, including GDP, unemployment, the trade deficit – the economy was far from its peak.
Here are some final numbers from his term, compiled by FactCheck.org:
The economy lost 2.7 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 6.4 per cent. Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.4 per cent after inflation. After-tax corporate profits went up and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8 per cent. The international trade deficit Mr Trump promised to reduce went up. The US trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 36.3 per cent from 2016. The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion. Home prices rose 27.5 per cent, and the home ownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8 per cent.
Donald Trump doubled down on his claims that the exonerated Central Park Five – Black teenagers who were arrested in connection with the rape and assault of a white female jogger in 1989 and convicted based on police-coerced confessions.
Back then, Mr Trump called for the execution of the five children. When Kamala Harris brought up Mr Trump’s stance, he dug in: “They pled [sic] guilty … They badly hurt a person, they killed a person, ultimately.”
The facts: All of them were exonerated after a convicted murderer confessed to the crime in 2002. In 2014, they were awarded a $41 million settlement.
In 1989, before any of the boys had faced trial, Mr Trump paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for their execution. The headline read: “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” and above his signature, Mr Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” – The Guardian