Fact-checking the ABC News presidential debate
CNN
By CNN Staff
(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are facing off for the first time Tuesday during ABC’s presidential debate.
CNN’s Facts First team is evaluating the candidate’s claims here. This story will be updated throughout the event.
Harris on Trump’s tariff plan
Former Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s policies would result in a “Trump sales tax” that would raise prices for middle class families by about $4,000 a year.
Facts First: The claim is reasonable enough, but it’s worth explaining that Harris is referring to Trump’s proposal to implement new tariffs if he returns to the White House.
Trump has called for adding a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports from all countries, as well as another tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports.
Together, a 20% across-the-board tariff with a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods would amount to about a $3,900 annual tax increase for a middle-income family, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund a liberal think tank.
If the 20% tariff was just 10%, as Trump sometimes suggests, the total impact for middle-class families could be $2,500 a year, according to CAP.
Separate studies estimate that the impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs would also raise prices for families, but by a lower amount. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated the new duties would cost the average middle-class household about $1,700 annually. And the Tax Policy Center said the impact could be $1,350 a year for middle-income households.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Trump on inflation during his presidency
Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that there was virtually no inflation during his administration.
“I had no inflation, virtually no inflation,” Trump said.
Facts First: This is false. Cumulative inflation over the course of Trump’s presidency was about 7.8%.
Inflation was low at the end of Trump’s term, having plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The year-over-year inflation rate was about 1.4% in January 2021, the month Trump left office.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby
Trump claims migrants are arriving to US from prisons and mental institutions
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a claim that migrants are arriving to the US after fleeing prisons and mental institutions.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump claimed.
Trump makes this claim often, and he’s often alleged that jails and mental institutions are being emptied out deliberately to somehow dump people upon the US.
Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim.
Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN last year they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.
Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – a 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart News about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents that Venezuela had done this. But that vague and unverified claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated.
And a second article that Cheung cited at the time, about Mexico’s president having freed 2,685 prisoners, was not about migration at all; that article simply explained that the president had freed them “as part of an effort to free those who have not committed serious crimes or were being held unjustly.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer
Trump on the number of undocumented immigrants under Biden
Former President Donald Trump claimed during Tuesday night’s debate that “21 million people” are crossing the border monthly into the United States under President Joe Biden.
Facts First: This number is false. The total number of “encounters” at the northern and southern borders from February 2021 through July 2024, at both legal ports of entry and in between those ports, was roughly 10 million, far less than Trump’s “21 million” figure.
An “encounter” does not mean a person was let into the country; some people encountered are promptly sent away. Even if you added the estimated number of “gotaways” (people who evaded the Border Patrol to enter illegally), which House Republicans have said is more than 1.7 million during the Biden-Harris administration, “the totals would still be vastly smaller than 15, 16 or 18 million,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email in June, when Trump made similar claims.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn
Harris claims Trump would sign a federal abortion ban
When contrasting her stance on abortion from that of former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that Trump would sign a national abortion ban if he’s elected and that under Project 2025, which she alleged was authored by Trump, abortions and miscarriages would be monitored.
“But understand if Donald Trump were to be elected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion — a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages,” Harris said.
Facts First: Harris is making a prediction that we cannot definitively fact check, but Trump himself has not, during this campaign, endorsed these policies she said he would implement as president.
Trump has repeatedly ducked direct questions about his support for a federal ban, and polls show that a majority of Americans are not in favor of a federal abortion ban.
Additionally, there is no evidence that Trump was personally involved in writing the Project 2025 policy document. Noah Weinrich, a spokesperson for Project 2025, said in a message to CNN when a similar claim was made during the Democratic National Convention last month: “Project 2025 is not affiliated with any candidate, and no candidate was involved with the drafting of the Mandate for Leadership, which was published by Heritage in April 2023.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer
Harris on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling
Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Trump would “essentially be immune from any misconduct” undertaken by him while in the White House.
“Let’s talk about extreme and understand the context in which this election in 2024 is taking place. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” she said.
Facts First: This needs context. In their decision in July in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought in his federal election subversion case. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office.
“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority.
From CNN’s Devan Cole
Trump repeats false claim about migrants eating people’s pets
Former President Donald Trump repeated a false claim at Tuesday’s debate that has been promoted by numerous prominent Republicans in the past week, including Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. Trump claimed that Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, are stealing people’s pet dogs and cats and eating them.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Facts First: This is false. The City of Springfield and the local police have said they have seen no evidence for the claim – which appeared to originate from a Facebook post in which someone purporting to be a local resident passed along what they said was a story about their neighbor’s daughter’s friend.
In a statement to CNN on Monday, a spokesperson for the City of Springfield said “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
The Springfield News-Sun reported that “the Springfield Police Division said Monday morning they have received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.”
Vance acknowledged on social media on Tuesday that it is “possible” that the “rumors” he has heard from local residents “will turn out to be false,” though he also encouraged people to “keep the cat memes flowing.”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Michael Williams
Trump on who pays for tariffs
Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday the United States took in billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs.
Facts First: Trump’s claim about how tariffs work is false. A US tariff is paid by importing businesses in the United States – not other countries – when a foreign-made good arrives at the American border.
Here’s how tariffs work: When the United States puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff usually comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer.
Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, have found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.
It’s true that the US Treasury has collected more than $242 billion from the tariffs Trump imposed on imported solar panels, steel and aluminum, and Chinese-made goods – but those duties were paid by US importers, not the country of China.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
Harris on her stance on fracking
During Tuesday night’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I made it that very clear in 2020 – I will not ban fracking,” though she had said, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Facts First: This is misleading. Harris did not make her position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence; Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate.
Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president. Harris said in the 2020 vice presidential debate: “Joe Biden will not end fracking”; “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Thursday, neither of these 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Ella Nilsen
Trump falsely claims US experienced highest inflation ever under Biden
Former President Donald Trump said the US experienced “the highest inflation” ever under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Facts First: Trump’s claim that inflation was at its highest under the Biden-Harris administration is false. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit 9.1% in June 2022. That wasn’t the highest ever recorded. Rather, it was the highest inflation rate in nearly forty years. For instance, in 1980, inflation hit nearly 15%, according to CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the earliest inflation data the BLS maintains indicates that inflation was even higher in 1917, when it was trending at nearly 18%.
From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald
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