'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' FactChecking Harris’ and Trump’s Fox News Appearances

Both presidential candidates appeared on Fox News on Oct. 16 — former President Donald Trump in a town hall with women voters in Georgia and Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview with Bret Baier. 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' News fact-checked their remarks, and we found:

• Trump inflated the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and falsely claimed that as president “I made them [South Korea] pay” the cost of those troops and that because of President Joe Biden, “they don’t pay anymore.” Trump’s negotiations over cost-sharing stalled in 2020, and Biden has negotiated two deals that have increased South Korea’s contribution.
• Harris said that “under Donald Trump’s administration,” gender-affirming surgeries “were available to, on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system.” A Federal Bureau of Prisons memo indicated it would be legally obligated to pay for such surgeries, but no federal prisoners received gender-affirming surgery during Trump’s presidency.
• There’s no evidence that “the top people” at the Federal Emergency Management Agency “confiscated” Starlink satellite systems during Hurricane Helene recovery “because they didn’t want it to go there,” as Trump claimed. In fact, FEMA itself provided Starlink systems.
• Harris left the misleading impression that Trump would only “give tax cuts to billionaires and the biggest corporations.” His proposals would cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, but they would also benefit most other taxpayers.
• Trump grossly inflated the number of immigration court judges and falsely claimed: “No other country has judges at the border. If somebody walks in, they walk them out.” Many other countries accept refugees and allow them to stay in the country pending an asylum hearing in court, as is done in the U.S.
• Harris cited several economic analyses, claiming they said her plans would “strengthen” the economy, while Trump’s plans “would ignite inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year.” The analyses were favorable to Harris, but only one of the four projected a recession under Trump.
• Trump falsely claimed that “13,099 murderers were released into our country” under the Biden administration. That’s the number of noncitizens convicted of murder who were not being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the vast majority entered before Biden took office. Many are in prison.
• Harris said that as president, she will “follow the law” when it comes to allowing immigrants in the country illegally to apply for a driver’s license, to qualify for free tuition at universities or to be enrolled in free health care. But she has supported those positions in the past.
• Trump got several things wrong about the Haitian immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio, inflating the number of immigrants, falsely saying they were in the country illegally and claiming they were “dropped” in the city.
• Trump again referred to a chart that he says shows “the day I left office” had the “fewest number of people” illegally attempting to cross into the U.S. The arrow in the mislabeled chart actually points to April 2020, when apprehensions plummeted during the height of the pandemic.
• The former president left the false impression that he “finished off” the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or IS, in a matter of weeks.

Trump also repeated many claims he has made before. He falsely said “every legal scholar” wanted to end Roe v. Wade, greatly inflated the scope of illegal immigration at the southern border, falsely claimed Harris had been appointed the “border czar,” wrongly said the U.S. had “the greatest economy” ever during his term, misled about U.S. energy production, made false claims about inflation, and exaggerated the amount of border wall built during his administration.

'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Review Biden’s Numbers, 2024 Pre-Election Update

Our latest quarterly report on various statistical indicators comes less than three weeks before Election Day

Here’s how the U.S. has fared since President Joe Biden took office:

• The economy has added more than 15 million jobs. The number is now about 6 million higher than before the pandemic. Unemployment is 4.1%
• The unemployment rate dropped back and has stayed lower, longer than at any time during the previous administration.
• Inflation spiked, hitting its highest level in over 40 years, then easing greatly. Overall, consumer prices are up nearly 20%. Gasoline is up 33%.
• Average weekly earnings haven’t kept pace with prices. After adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings dropped 1.8%.
• After increasing the year before Biden took office, murders and violent crime have declined. The murder rate dropped 0.9 points, and the number dropped 14.5% from 2020 to 2023.
• All three major U.S. stock indexes have made significant gains this year. The S&P 500, which set a new high this week, is up nearly 54% under Biden.
• The percentage of Americans lacking health insurance declined. The drop was 0.6 percentage points, when measuring those who were uninsured for an entire year.
• The economy has been growing at a faster rate in recent years than initially thought, and continues to show unexpected resilience this year.
• Apprehensions at the southern border are up 201% for the 12 months ending in August, though they have dropped significantly since Biden implemented new border policies in June.
• More than 100,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. in fiscal year 2024 — the largest number in three decades.
• After-tax corporate profits continue to set records.
• The U.S. trade deficit during the most recent 12 months ending in August is about 27% higher than in 2020.
• The number of people receiving federal food assistance has declined only slightly.
• Federal debt has increased by 31%, and annual federal deficits rose in fiscal year 2024 for the second consecutive year.
• Even though inflation is easing and the economy is growing, consumer confidence remains stubbornly low.
• The U.S. is currently headed for a second consecutive year of record crude oil production.
• The U.S. is on pace for a fourth straight year in which estimated gun purchases declined.

Pence Hasn’t Endorsed Harris, Contrary to Edited Video on Social Media

In the days leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress met to count the electoral votes and certify the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes and send them back to the state legislatures to decide, according to the indictment against Trump filed in August 2023.

But on Jan. 7, Pence announced the certified results and declared then-Vice President Joe Biden the victor, as we’ve written.

Since then, Pence has distanced himself from Trump. When Pence announced his campaign for president in June 2023, he said, “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” referring to Trump.

During the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 23, 2023, however, Pence indicated that he would support Trump if the former president were chosen as the party’s nominee. Then in March, Pence announced in a Fox News interview that he would not endorse Trump for the 2024 election.

In August, Pence appeared at a forum for conservative leaders hosted by former Fox News commentator Erick Erickson, where he expanded on his decision, saying, “I cannot endorse President Trump’s continuing assertion that I should have set aside my oath to support and defend the Constitution and acted in a way that would’ve overturned the election in January 2021.”

'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Explain Trump’s Spin on Tax Cuts Raising Revenues

Former President Donald Trump is proposing to lower the federal corporate tax rate to 15%, insisting that when he lowered it to 21% starting in 2018, revenues received by the government actually went up due to economic growth it spurred. Economists say that’s not what happened.

They say that while cutting the rate from 35% to 21% did stimulate some growth, it did not cover the loss in tax revenue. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, claimed “the Trump tax cuts blew up our federal deficit.” That’s a subjective characterization, but most economists agree the tax cuts did add to the nation’s rising debt.

When the Trump-championed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect in 2018, economists saw an opportunity to test the theory that tax cuts pay for themselves due to economic growth.

Six years later, Trump says the results are in and that the U.S. took in more revenue after corporate tax cuts in the TCJA. Revenues actually went down in the first two years after the TCJA was enacted, and then the pandemic hit — which muddied analyses of the TCJA’s impact.

Revenues went up after 2020, though economists say revenues are not up as much as was expected in the absence of the TCJA when taking inflation into account. And the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the tax law is contributing to rising national debt, and would add hundreds of billions to the nation’s debt if all the individual income tax provisions set to expire at the end of 2025 are extended.

Post Misrepresents Impact of Voter Registrations Delivered to Maricopa County

Maricopa County — Arizona’s most populous county and the fourth most populous in the U.S. — was the target of misinformation after the 2020 election due to the pivotal swing state’s importance in deciding the winner of the presidential election, as we’ve written.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, accused county officials of running a “corrupted election” in 2020, and he continues to spread misinformation about Maricopa County.

In June, Trump falsely suggested that Senate candidate Kari Lake lost her 2022 race for governor because there was a plot to break the county’s “Republican [voting] machines.” Some printers did produce ballots that were too light for on-site tabulators, but those ballots could have been counted later. Lake’s court challenges failed and an independent review found no evidence of wrongdoing. 

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who also baselessly suggested that the Democrats plotted to suppress the Republican vote in Maricopa County in the 2022 election, is again claiming that liberals are trying to disrupt Maricopa County’s election process.

Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, posted on Threads that he heard reports that “a left-leaning group” dropped off 20,000 voter registration forms to Maricopa County on Oct. 7, the final day the state’s voter registrations were accepted.