FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims made by Trump in California
In a press conference from his Los Angeles-area golf club, former President Donald Trump revisited several topics from Tuesday night’s debate, repeating several false and misleading claims on issues including crime, the economy and immigration.
Here’s are the facts:
Trump again falsely claims crime skyrocketed under the Biden administration
CLAIM: New numbers show that crime has skyrocketed under the Biden administration.
THE FACTS: Violent crime surged during the pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year — the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records.
But FBI data released in June shows that the overall violent crime rate declined 15% in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year. One expert has cautioned, however, that those figures are preliminary and may overstate the actual reduction in crime.
On Friday, Trump cited numbers he said were from the “bureau of justice statistics” to claim crime was up. This appears to be a reference to the National Crime Victimization Survey recently released by the Justice Department, which shows that the number of times people were victims of violent crime increased by about 40% from 2020 to 2023. The report notes, however, that while the rate of violent victimizations in 2023 was higher than it was in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from the rate in 2019, when Trump was president.
That survey aims to capture both crimes reported to police and crimes that are not reported to police and is conducted annually through interviews with about 150,000 households. It doesn’t include murders or crimes against people under the age of 12.
No basis for claims that violent crime has spiked as a result of the influx of migrants
CLAIM: Thousands of people are being killed by “illegal migrants” in the U.S.
THE FACTS: This is not supported by evidence. FBI statistics do not separate crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. In fact, national statistics show violent crime is on the way down.
Inflation has not reached record levels
CLAIM: Prices have gone up “like no one’s ever seen before.”
THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. Inflation did soar in 2021-22, though it rose by much more in 1980 when inflation topped 14%. It peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.
Economists largely blame the inflation spike on the pandemic’s disruptions to global supply chains, which reduced the supply of semiconductors, cars and other goods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also pushed up gas and food prices. And Biden’s stimulus checks and other spending contributed by turbocharging spending coming out of the pandemic.
Inflation has now fallen to 2.5%, not far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Prices are still about 19% higher than they were before the pandemic, but the Census Bureau reported Tuesday that household incomes have risen by a similar amount, leaving inflation-adjusted incomes at roughly the same level as they were in 2019.
Trump raises false claims to suggest voting systems are fraudulent
CLAIM: The voting system isn’t honest. Millions and millions of ballots are sent out “all over the place. Some people get two, three, four or five.”
THE FACTS: Election officials have procedures in place to ensure that only one mail ballot is issued to each eligible voter. When a voter requests a mail ballot, election officials will verify that person’s eligibility by checking voter registration records -- looking to match the voter’s information to what’s on file and, in some cases, checking that the voter’s signature matches as well.
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When a ballot is sent out by an election office, that ballot is assigned to that specific voter. If someone else tries to use that ballot, the voter’s information will not match the office’s records for that ballot and it will be rejected. Election officials constantly update their voter lists to ensure they are accurate, removing dead people, those who have moved out of state or are not eligible.
In some cases, ballots are canceled -- if a voter makes a mistake and requests a new ballot or decides to vote in person instead of using a mail ballot. In those cases, the original ballot is marked in such a way that if that original ballot were to show up at the election office it would be flagged and rejected.
At one point in his remarks, Trump singled out California, where all voters receive a ballot in the mail. He suggested he would win if votes were counted honestly. He has made this claim before and it is a reach. Just 23% of California voters are registered as Republican while 46% are registered as Democrats. He lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in California by 4.2 million votes, and he lost the state to Biden in 2020 by 5.1 million votes.
Trump misrepresents a revision of U.S. job numbers
CLAIM: A whistleblower forced the government’s recent downward revision of job gains by 818,000.
THE FACTS: That’s false. The preliminary revision occurred as part of a normal annual process and was released on a previously disclosed date. Every year the Labor Department issues a revision of the number of jobs added during a 12-month period from April through March in the previous year.
The adjustment is made because the government’s initial job counts are based on surveys of businesses. The revision is then based on actual job counts from unemployment insurance files that are compiled later. The revision is compiled by career government employees with little involvement by politically appointed officials.
The Biden administration is not secretly flying hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country
CLAIM: Harris and the Biden administration are secretly flying in hundreds of thousands of “illegal immigrants.”
THE FACTS: Migrants are not secretly being flown into the U.S. by the government. Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at a specified airport, paying their own way. Biden exercised his “parole” authority, which, under a 1952 law, allows him to admit people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
___ Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Chris Rugaber, Christina Almeida Cassidy and Elliot Spagat contributed to this story.
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AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
