Tin tức

51)Says "the New York Times can write a story that they know is false" yet "they can't basically be sued." (stated on February 28, 2016)

United States libel laws for public figures are indeed tilted toward media outlets and against plaintiffs. However, contrary to what Trump said, plaintiffs can always sue if they wish. And they can certainly win in the scenario Trump cited -- if the New York Times knowingly published something false and defamatory. Indeed, the seminal Supreme Court decision on this subject explicitly says that media outlets are not protected from libel suits if they knew something was false but published it anyway. We rate the statement False.

52)Says Mahatma Gandhi once said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." (stated on February 28, 2016)

There's no evidence that Gandhi ever said any such thing.

The claim is False.

53)Common Core is "education through Washington D.C." (stated on March 10, 2016)

The education standards for English and math were unveiled in 2010 after state school officials, nonprofits, teachers, parents and experts settled on broad education goals. Washington was not a player in that game, although Obama has given states that have education standards a leg up when applying for grant money.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

54)"GDP was zero essentially for the last two quarters." (stated on March 10, 2016)

Economic growth in the last two quarters of 2015 was modest: 1 percent and 2 percent. But that’s not zero.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

55)Says the man who rushed the stage at him in Dayton, Ohio, "had chatter about ISIS, or with ISIS" in his social media posts. (stated on March 13, 2016)

Trump said Thomas DiMassimo, the man who rushed at him in Dayton, Ohio, "had chatter about ISIS, or with ISIS" in his social media posts.

There is lots to offend people on DiMassimo’s social media posts. But there doesn’t appear to be any legitimate connection between DiMassimo and ISIS. The link Trump tweeted was a hoax or an effort to troll DiMassimo. It’s also unlikely that someone who really had ISIS ties and who had been arrested for threatening a presidential candidate on live television would be quickly released from custody pending trial. The police report of his arrest makes no mention of ISIS or Islamic terrorism.

We rate the claim False.

56)Under the Iran nuclear deal, "we give them $150 billion, we get nothing." (stated on March 15, 2016)

Trump is referring to the amount of previously frozen Iranian assets the deal releases. To be clear, this is money that already belongs to Iran so we’re not "giving" them anything. The $150 billion is a high estimate, and most experts say the real figure is closer to $100 billion, while Iran is probably only able to access a fraction of that.

In exchange for lifting the sanctions, the United States and its allies get to block Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in the near future. One can argue whether we got enough, but we didn’t get "nothing."

We rate Trump’s claim False.

57)The Trump Winery near Charlottesville, Va. is the "largest winery on the East Coast."(stated on March 8, 2016 )

Trump said that Trump Winery is the "largest winery on the East Coast." It’s not, regardless of whether you measure it by acreage of vines or the production of wine.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

58)"When those restrictions expire (in the Iran nuclear deal), Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go." (stated on March 21, 2016)

Key restrictions in the deal never expire, including the pledge to not conduct activities that would contribute to the design and development of a nuclear explosive.

And even if Iran were to go all-out for a nuclear program once the 15-year limit on uranium enrichment goes away, it would take months, if not years, for the country to develop a bomb and delivery system so its military could go to war with nuclear weaponry.

We rate the claim as False.

59)Wisconsin’s "effective" unemployment rate is 20 percent. (stated on March 29, 2016)

Wisconsin’s latest official unemployment rate -- the one reported most often in the news -- was 4.6 percent in February 2016. It was also 4.6 percent for all of 2015.

The government’s most expansive unemployment rate -- which includes the unemployed, people in the labor force who aren’t looking for work and people who are working part time but want to work full time -- for Wisconsin was 8.3 percent for 2015.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

60)Says Ted Cruz distributed the ad showing a nude Melania Trump on a rug.(stated on March 29, 2016)

Trump said Cruz was responsible for the racy ad questioning whether people wanted Melania Trump to be first lady.

One of the tenets of PolitiFact is that the person making the claim is responsible for substantiating it.

Trump said on CNN that he has no real proof.

And all the evidence we found points to the ad being the work of a political action committee whose goal has been to block Trump's nomination. There’s no proof of Cruz working with that committee, which would be illegal.

We rate Trump's claim as False.

61)"My numbers are better right now than Ronald Reagan's numbers were with Jimmy Carter." (stated on April 11, 2016)

Trump said, "My numbers are better right now than Ronald Reagan's numbers were with Jimmy Carter. ... Ronald Reagan had a 30 (percent) favorability and he was behind Jimmy Carter by so much everybody said, 'Oh this is going to be a disaster.' "

We found that Trump’s deficit against Clinton during March and April 2016 was twice the size of Reagan’s deficit against Carter in March and April 1980. We also found that Trump’s favorable/unfavorable ratings are much worse than Reagan’s were during that same period. We rate his claim False.

62)Says Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio "had it set so that the winner takes everything, because they wanted to make sure that I didn't get anything" in the Florida primary. (stated on April 12, 2016)

Trump says that Bush and Rubio "had it set so that the winner takes everything, because they wanted to make sure that I didn't get anything" in the Florida primary.

It wasn’t Bush or Rubio who set those rules for the March 15, 2016, primary. It was the Florida Legislature that passed the bill setting the date, allowing the state GOP to decide whether to make it winner-take-all.

By that point, Trump was a potential candidate, but he wasn’t seen as a major threat to Rubio or Bush -- especially in Florida -- at that point.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

63) The Colorado caucus system for selecting Republican delegates is "rigged." (stated on April 11, 2016 )

There are plenty of problems with Colorado’s caucus system. The delegate selection process is dominated by party activists and insiders, and this year’s caucuses were hampered -- at best -- by confusion and technical glitches.

But Trump is complaining about rules that were in place eight months ago, when the Republican presidential race was clogged with 17 candidates. There is no evidence the rules were designed to favor a specific candidate.

His campaign took a pass on the Colorado caucuses, focusing instead on the delegate-rich New York primary, while Cruz ran an exhaustive ground game in the Centennial State.

We rate his claim False.

64)Says professional football coach Rex Ryan "won championships in New York. The AFC, I think, twice." (stated on April 18, 2016)

Ryan’s teams lost in the AFC championship game both in 2009-10 (Indianapolis Colts 30, Jets 17) and in 2010-11 (Pittsburgh Steelers 24, Jets 19).

Just to round this out, Ryan hasn’t won a division championship in New York, nor did he ever play on a New York team that won a championship.

This claim rates False.

65)"I was totally against the war in Iraq, saying for many years that it would destabilize the Middle East." (stated on April 27, 2016)

The record shows at best some early reservations about the war that evolved into opposition about a year after the war began. However, we find no evidence of Trump warning about regional destabilization before or after the war started.

We rate this statement False.

66)"ISIS is making millions of dollars a week selling Libyan oil." (stated on April 27, 2016)

Experts and news reports say ISIS has attacked Libya’s oil fields in recent months, amid the country’s instability. But they roundly reject Trump’s claim that ISIS jihadists based in that country have been able to seize, refine and sell the oil for "millions of dollars a week." Instead, they say, the terrorist group is focused on disrupting oil markets and preventing rivals from getting the oil in Libya.

We rate the claim False.

67)"In the history of Republican primaries, I’ve gotten the most votes in the history of the Republican party." (stated on April 29, 2016)

Donald Trump said he’s already earned the most Republican primary votes in history.

Experts who track this say Trump is on pace to break the record, but is still shy by about 800,000 votes. They predicted a strong victory in California --- more than a month from now -- could hand Trump the milestone.

We rate Trump’s claim False … for now.

68)"You have to be a citizen to vote," but with same-day voter registration, "you have places where people just walk in and vote." (stated on May 8, 2016)

In states with same-day voter registration, people don’t just walk in and vote. They have to provide the same level of identification as when registering in advance. Experts told us there is no additional risk of noncitizens casting ballots in states with same-day voter registration, nor is there any evidence that this occurs.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

69)Says Hillary Clinton "wants to abolish the Second Amendment." (stated on May 7, 2016)

We found no evidence of Clinton ever saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly that she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, and the bulk of Clinton’s comments suggest the opposite. She has repeatedly said she wants to protect the right to bear arms while enacting measures to prevent gun violence.

Gun advocates say Trump’s claim is backed up by Clinton’s openness to a gun buyback program and her disagreement with a Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment. But whether or not these two cherry-picked comments actually reveal Clinton’s intentions is a matter of interpretation.

For this claim to hold water, the support for Second Amendment abolition needs to be more direct. So we rate it False.

70)"There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously." (stated on May 18, 2016 )

Four American cities — though not Oakland or Ferguson — have some of the highest murder rates in the world. However, experts told us homicide rates alone are not enough to gauge whether a city is dangerous or not.

In considering other security threats like war, terrorism, kidnappings, and other violence as well as the ability to mitigate risks, U.S. cities are nowhere near the most dangerous in the world.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

71)We’ve broken "by millions" the all-time record for votes in a GOP presidential primary election. (stated on June 1, 2016)

With victories on June 7th, including in California, he may well smash the record. But he’s not there yet.

We rate Trump’s claim False again … for now.

72)There is "no system to vet" refugees from the Middle East. (stated on June 13, 2016)

While there are concerns about information gaps, a system does exist and has existed since 1980. It involves multiple federal intelligence and security agencies as well as the United Nations. Refugee vetting typically takes one to two years and includes numerous rounds of security checks.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

73)Even among "second and third generation" Muslims in the United States, "there's no real assimilation." (stated on June 15, 2016)

The data and the experts agree that Trump is wrong. Substantial evidence confirms that Muslim Americans want to have an American identity and think that doing so is achievable. In fact, their preferences for self-identification mirror those of Christian Americans.

The data show that American Muslims want to be both American and Muslim. That’s different than the widely recognized "melting pot" model where immigrants of generations past blended in fully in their new country based on a shared religion and culture. But the reality is that for most Muslim Americans, religion and race would have made it impossible for them to follow that course in the first place.

We rate Trump’s statement False.

74)"I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war (in Iraq), and yes, even before the war ever started." (stated on June 22, 2016 in a speech )

The record just doesn’t support this.

We could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion where he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. In another interview, Trump said he supported the invasion.

This claim rates False.

75)"Because of Obamacare, you have so many part-time jobs." (stated on June 18, 2016 )

While some research suggests a small uptick in the number of part-time jobs as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Trump’s claim goes too far.

Neither the data nor the experts (on the right and left) say Trump’s claim is accurate.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

76)The Benghazi victims were "left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed." (stated on June 22, 2016)

Clinton was not literally sleeping when the Benghazi attacks unfolded, as it was mid afternoon on a Tuesday in Washington. She worked late into the night, as is evidenced by an 11 p.m. email.

If we take Trump’s claim more broadly, that Clinton was inattentive throughout the hours in which the attacks occurred, none of the many congressional investigations into Benghazi have made that assertion.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

77) Says Hillary Clinton’s immigration platform would "create totally open borders." (stated on June 22, 2016 )

This is a huge distortion of Clinton’s proposals.

Clinton has praised work already done to secure the border, and she said she supported a 2013 bill that would have invested billions more in border security while creating a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Her plan calls for protecting the border and targeting deportation to criminals and security threats. Her plan would make it easier for many undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation, but that’s not the same as ending all enforcement.

We rate this claim False.

78)Says Hillary Clinton "filibustered legislation to reform" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.(stated on June 21, 2016)

In an attempt to assign responsibility for the financial crisis to Clinton, Trump’s campaign accused her of filibustering legislation that would have changed how two government-backed mortgage giants were regulated.

Republican leadership chose not to bring the bill before the whole Senate after it passed out of committee. It is possible that they thought Democratic senators would filibuster, but based on the evidence available, we found no evidence that Clinton herself took any action in relation to the bill.

We rate this claim False.

79)"As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group." (stated on June 21, 2016)

Actually, the State Department under Clinton never made any direct transfers to Laureate Education. Trump’s source conflates Laureate with a separate charitable organization that received funds from a separate government agency. The International Youth Foundation is a respected nonprofit that has received money from the government since the Bush years, before Clinton joined the State Department.

We rate this claim False.

80)"Just look at what the FBI director said about her (Hillary Clinton) — her misconduct is a disgrace and embarrassment to our country." (stated on July 11, 2016)

The Trump campaign indicated Comey said it during his news conference. He didn't. He said her actions were careless, but he didn’t call them a disgrace or an embarrassment or the equivalent.

It's possible that Trump was trying to convey two different thoughts, urging people to look up the FBI director's comments and the "disgrace and embarrassment" comment was supposed to be his own characterization.

But that's not how it comes across, both when spoken and in the transcript.

With that in mind, we rate it False.

81)Says as GOP was picking a convention city, "I recommended Ohio." (stated on July 18, 2016)

The Trump campaign hasn’t published any evidence of an early recommendation, nor could we find any in a Nexis search. Plus, a member of the site selection committee has no recollection of Trump having voiced a preference.

The selection of Cleveland was conducted by the party in 2014, when it wasn’t known who would ultimately win the nomination. We rate Trump’s statement False.

82)"Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies. She is responsible for ISIS." (stated on July 17, 2016)

There were several factors that contributed to the growing power of ISIS, but it’s misleading to pin the responsibility solely on Clinton. For starters, the roots of ISIS trace back to 2004, when Bush was president and before Clinton was Obama’s secretary of state.

She did vote to authorize force in Iraq in 2002 while a senator, but that was advocated by the Bush administration and the vast majority of senators. The intervention in Libya, which she supported, did give ISIS an opening, but Trump is overstating her role by saying she is responsible for ISIS.

This claim is inaccurate. We rate it False.

83)"An analysis showed that Bernie Sanders would have won the Democratic nomination if it were not for the Super Delegates." (stated on July 24, 2016)

This does not check out. Sanders would have still lost without superdelegates in the mix, because Clinton won a majority of the popular vote and pledged delegates.

On the contrary, the only way for Sanders to have won is he would have been able to persuade more superdelegates to switch their votes from Clinton to him.

We rate Trump’s claim False.

84)"Youth unemployment is through the roof." (stated on July 27, 2016)

Individual young people he speaks to may be worried about unemployment, but Trump is wrong to say that youth unemployment is exceptionally high. It is, at worst, average, in historical and international terms. We reached out to the Trump campaign, but they did not respond.

This does not mean the job market works well for every young person, or that every statistical measure of the job market is positive. But his statement, in regards to unemployment, is still False.

85)Says he saw videotape "of the people taking the money off the plane" to pay ransom to Iran for hostages. (stated on August 3, 2016)

Trump said he had seen videotape "of the people taking the money off the plane" to pay ransom to Iran for hostages. He and his campaign now acknowledge that they were referring to a different video -- of the hostages themselves being freed -- that did not include any transfer of money from a plane. We rate the claim False.

86)"The Obama-Clinton war on coal has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs." (stated on August 8, 2016)

While the number matches one projection of how many potential jobs could be lost from the blockage of coal-fired plants, there’s a difference between actual jobs lost and potential future jobs lost. And the number cited -- an impossible-to-confirm projection based on broadly construed calculations released by a pro-coal group -- should be taken with a big grain of salt.

Trump also ignores that market forces, not just environmental regulations, have driven many of the job losses in the coal sector, and he also ignores that Michigan Republican officials and utilities themselves -- not just the Obama administration -- have pushed the switch away from coal. We rate the claim False.

87)"I had previously said that NATO was obsolete because it failed to deal adequately with terrorism. Since my comments, they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats." (stated on August 15, 2016)

The change he’s apparently referring to -- the creation of a new senior post and division for coordinating intelligence sharing -- is just the most recent incremental change in how the alliance handles counter-terrorism, a topic it has addressed, in big ways and small, for more than 30 years. There is no evidence that the change was made in response to Trump’s complaints about the alliance. Experts said such changes typically require a longer gestation period so that all member nations can get on board. We rate Trump’s statement False.

88)Says Hillary Clinton is "proposing to print instant work permits for millions of illegal immigrants to come in and take everybody's jobs, including low-income African-Americans." (stated on August 16, 2016)

Clinton would "staple" green cards to the diplomas of foreign students in the United States who complete master’s or doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering or math, extending their stay so that they could work in the U.S., particularly in high-tech jobs, after graduation rather than returning home.

The green cards would be available to students who are already legally in the United States. And given their level of education and expertise, they would not be taking jobs of low-income Americans. Nor is the program aimed at millions of students.

We rate the statement False.

89)Says Hillary Clinton "wants to raise taxes on African-American owned businesses to as much as nearly 50 percent more than they're paying now." (stated on August 25, 2016 )

Putting aside the irrelevance of the comment about African-Americans, the campaign never specified exactly how Clinton’s tax plan would do that to anyone. Clinton has proposed some tax increases on higher earners, but barring an extremely unusual case, nothing she has proposed approaches boosting taxes by almost 50 percent.

We rate the statement False.

90)As governor, Tim Kaine "oversaw a huge increase in illegal immigration, a tremendous increase." (stated on August 20, 2016)

But figures from the Pew Hispanic Center show that the size of the illegal immigrant population essentially was flat during Kaine’s term as governor. It’s certainly not the "huge" and "tremendous" increase that Trump makes it out to be.

We rate his claim False.

91)"The Mexican government forces many bad people into our country." (stated on July 8, 2015)

Setting aside the question of whether Mexicans who have come to the United States are "bad" or not, there is no evidence of any Mexican policy that pushes people out of Mexico and into the United States. As has been the case for decades, a combination of economic and family factors accounts for most of the migration from Mexico to the United States. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

92)The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is "30 million, it could be 34 million." (stated on July 24, 2015)

The Department of Homeland Security says the number of illegal immigrants was about 11.4 million as of January 2012. Other independent groups that research illegal immigration put the number between 11 and 12 million. We found no compelling evidence that the number could as high as Trump said.

Trump has provided no proof that the number of illegal immigrants is triple the widespread consensus. We rate this claim Pants on Fire.

93)The unemployment rate may be as high as "42 percent." (stated on September 28, 2015)

Trump keeps repeating that the unemployment rate may be as high as 42 percent. But getting a percentage that high requires believing that being a high school, college or graduate student, a senior citizen, a stay-at-home parent, a job-training participant, or having a disability is no excuse for not holding down a job, or for working less than 40 hours in a week. The highest alternative unemployment-rate measure we could come up with that had any credibility was 16.4 percent, and even that exaggerated figure is only about one-third of the way to Trump’s 42 percent. We rate his claim Pants on Fire.

94)Says Bernie Sanders is going to "tax you people at 90 percent." (stated on October 14, 2015 )

Sanders hasn’t released an official tax plan, either for billionaires or for anyone else. But based on his previous comments and proposals, the tax policies Sanders is advocating are targeted at corporations and affluent Americans.

Sanders has dismissed the notion that he wants to set marginal tax rates for billionaires at 90 percent. But even if he did end up doing that, that rate wouldn’t affect "you people" — that is, the rank and file Americans who attended Trump’s rally.

We rate Trump’s claim Pants on Fire.

95)"I never said that" Marco Rubio was Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator. (stated on October 28, 2015)

In the debate, Trump said he "never said that" Marco Rubio was Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator. But he may want to check his own website, which says exactly that. Pants on Fire!

96)The CNBC debate was supposed to be three hours, and he "renegotiated it down to two hours." (stated on October 28, 2015)

Trump played a role -- but not the sole role -- in negotiating the debate program down to two hours, but the plans were for it to last around two hours and 15 minutes -- not three hours or more.

We rate Trump’s statement Mostly False.

97) On the VA: "Over 300,000 veterans have died waiting for care." (stated on October 31, 2015)

Trump offered the most dire possible interpretation of a scathing report on VA record-keeping and went well beyond what the inspector general was able to conclude.

The report found that 307,173 dead people were listed last year on a VA database as having pending status with the agency. But shabby records make a detailed dissection of that number impossible. Investigators said that some of those people were not veterans; not all of them were seeking health care or necessarily any VA service; and some of them died before 1998, when the database began.

No doubt, the VA is ripe for criticism. But Trump’s statement takes liberty with the facts, and we rate it Mostly False.

98) "We’re losing now over $500 billion a year in terms of imbalance with China." (stated on November 10, 2015)

Last month, Trump said almost $400 billion during a speech in Iowa. He should have stuck to that figure.

The 2014 trade deficit totaled $343 billion, and it’s expected to be larger in 2015 but not more than $500 billion.

Trump’s claim rates Mostly False.

99)Says 25 percent of U.S. Muslims "agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad." (stated on December 7, 2015)

Trump is referring to a poll conducted by the Center for Security Policy. However, polling experts raise numerous questions about the validity of the poll’s results, including its "opt-in" methodology and the dubiously large percentages of respondents who said they were unaware of ISIS or al-Qaida. Moreover, an official with the Center for Security Policy cautioned against generalizing the poll results to the entire Muslim-American community.

Another survey, which experts consider credible, found levels about half as high as what the Center for Security Policy poll found.

We rate Trump’s claim Mostly False.

100) In 2000, "I wrote about Osama bin Laden, ‘We’ve got to take him out.’" (stated on December 2, 2015)

Trump’s book did not contain those words or their clear likeness. Bin Laden’s name appears once in the book, when the author was criticizing the Clinton administration for having an unfocused national security policy. He complained that the U.S. kept shifting its military focus between Iraq, bin Laden’s organization and Kosovo without strong results.

The book says that if bin Laden was "public enemy number one" in 1998, then the U.S. should have spent more than one day that year on a retaliatory bombing mission against his camps that bin Laden escaped. But Trump, never known for mincing words, did not call for future efforts to exterminate bin Laden or strike against al-Qaida.

So we rate Trump’s hyperbolic statement Mostly False.

...to be continue