LIE #1 : “Now she [Hillary Clinton] wants to allow them to come into our country pretty much unvetted because every law enforcement person that I’ve spoken to and that you’ve watched and that you read is saying it’s very hard if not impossible to check out people. There are just no papers.”
THE TRUTH: PolitiFact rated Donald Trump’s claim that there was “no system to vet” refugees “False.” “Trump said there is ‘no system to vet’ refugees from the Middle East. 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.” [PolitiFact,
6/13/16]
PolitiFact: “Refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any traveler category to the United States.” “Finally, we should note that refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any traveler category to the United States. So it ‘makes no operational sense’ for ISIS to take advantage of the refugee program, Anne Speckhard, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University, told us previously. ‘Given how easy it is to send a European extremist to the U.S. via Europe, why would an ISIS guy in Syria wait the three years it takes to get refugee status?’ Speckhard said.” [PolitiFact,
6/13/16]
LIE #2: “I spent my own money. I didn’t have people giving me millions of millions of dollars.”
THE TRUTH: More than half of Donald Trump’s campaign spending in 2015 was funded by donations. “Mr. Trump’s campaign spent just $12.4 million in 2015, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission, millions less than any of his leading rivals for the Republican nomination. More than half of Mr. Trump’s total spending was covered by checks from his supporters, who have thronged to his stump speeches and bought millions of dollars’ worth of ‘Make America Great Again’ hats and T-shirts.” [New York Times,
2/5/16]
LIE #3: “I will tell you, the LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community, they are so much in favor of what i’ve been saying over the last three or four days.”
THE TRUTH: “LGBT leaders to Trump: Don’t target Muslims in our name … LGBT community leaders have made a point to say the shooting should not be used to demonize the Muslim community, as they embraced an affinity between two groups that have faced persecution.” [San Francisco Chronicle,
6/14/16]
LIE #4: “We have all these [NATO] nations. And from what I understand they don’t they’re bills….Some aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying.”
THE TRUTH: Washington Post Fact Checker gave Donald Trump’s claim that other members of NATO pay “virtually nothing” compared to the United States a rating of “Three Pinocchios.” “To sum up, Trump is simply wrong on direct funding and is imprecise and possibly out of date on indirect funding. It’s certainly false to say that most of the other NATO members pay ‘virtually nothing.’ That results in a blended rating of between Two and Three Pinocchios. We tipped toward Three because he shouldn’t make such statements if his campaign is not prepared to explain them. Three Pinocchios” [Washington Post,
3/30/16]
Washington Post Fact Checker: “Despite Trump’s claim that the United States is spending ‘billions and billions’ on NATO, Defense Department budget documents show the annual direct contribution is under $500 million a year.” “Here’s the full breakdown for the 2016-2017 budget period. (NSIP, one of three elements listed, refers to the NATO Security Investment Program). In 2012, the Congressional Research Service produced a report that looked at direct funding in detail. Despite Trump’s claim that the United States is spending ‘billions and billions’ on NATO, Defense Department budget documents show the annual direct contribution is under $500 million a year. By this metric, Trump’s claims of the U.S. paying a disproportionate share, or ‘a lion’s share,’ are wildly exaggerated. The U.S. pays the most, but not significantly more than the next country — and the formula for calculating the different shares is reasonable.” [Washington Post,
3/30/16]
LIE #5 “Last week on the front page of the Wall Street Journal—headline: NATO to set up terrorism group. Exactly what I said… Believe me folks if I didn’t bring it up you would never have it.”
THE TRUTH: NATO official: The terrorism initiative was under consideration for “some time” before Donald Trump’s comments. “‘I’ve said NATO needs to change its focus and stop terrorism. We have to focus on terrorism. And we have to stop terrorism. Since I’ve raised that criticism, and it’s OK, I’ve gotten no credit for it, but it’s OK, NATO has announced a new initiative … four days ago focused on just that.’ A NATO official told POLITICO last week that its plan to create the new position of assistant secretary general for intelligence had been under consideration for ‘some time’ and had ‘no connection to any national election campaign.’” [Politico,
6/13/16]
LIE #6: TRUMP CLAIMS HE NEVER WANTED JAPAN TO ACQUIRE NUCLEAR WEAPONS “Hillary Clinton goes around saying Donald Trump wants Japan to go nuclear. I don’t want Japan to go nuclear folks.”
THE TRUTH: PolitiFact gave Donald Trump’s claim that he didn’t say he wanted “Japan to get nuclear weapons” a rating of “Mostly False.” “Trump said Clinton has spoken ‘such lies about my foreign policy. They said I want Japan to nuke, that I want Japan to get nuclear weapons. Give me a break.’ Trump didn’t literally say he wants Japan to go nuclear. But he came just about as close as someone can without saying those specific words — certainly enough to undermine his flip dismissal, ‘Give me a break.’ On more than one occasion, Trump publicly said that Japan, and the United States, might be better off if Japan had nuclear weapons, and he declined multiple attempts by interviewers to backtrack from that view. We rate Trump’s statement Mostly False.” [PolitiFact,
6/2/16]
LIE #7: “South Korea. I love South Korea. We have 28,000 soldier ont he line between North and South. They pay us peanuts…. They pay us peanuts compared to the cost.”
THE TRUTH: PolitiFact rated Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S. got “practically nothing compared to the cost of” keeping military forces in South Korea as “Mostly False.” “Trump said, ‘We get practically nothing compared to the cost of’ keeping U.S. military forces in South Korea. Currently, South Korea pays well over $800 million annually to support the United States’ troop presence, an amount that doesn’t qualify as ‘practically nothing.’ And while Trump makes it sound like the United States’ willingness to pay the rest of the freight amounts to a gift to South Korea, he overlooks that the United States actually benefits significantly on a strategic level from the arrangement. We rate the claim Mostly False.” [PolitiFact,
1/10/16]
PolitiFact rated Donald Trump’s claim that South Korea did not compensate the U.S. for its military presence in the country as “False.” “‘If you look at North Korea, South Korea, we’re protecting South Korea,’ Trump said. ‘They’re making a fortune. Let’s call it hundreds of billions of dollars of profit on us. We have 25,000 soldiers over there protecting them. They don’t pay us. Why don’t they pay us?’ […] South Korea has signed an agreement to cover labor, logistical and construction costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. That may or may not be a big enough payment, but Trump is wrong to suggest that South Korea bears no financial burden at all. We rate his statement False.” [PolitiFact,
4/1/11]
LIE #8: “For years I was saying don’t get into Iraq. From the beginning by the way.”
THE TRUTH: PolitiFact gave Donald Trump’s claim that he “was totally against the war in Iraq, saying for many years that it would destabilize the Middle East” a rating of “False.” “Trump said, ‘I was totally against the war in Iraq, saying for many years that it would destabilize the Middle East.’ 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.” [PolitiFact,
4/27/16]
PolitiFact rated Donald Trump’s claim that he “said it loud and clear” that the Iraq war would destabilize the Middle East “False.” “On the Iraq war, Trump said, ‘I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.’ ‘ Maybe Trump felt this way privately, but he made no publicly reported comments in the lead-up to the Iraq War that reflect this sentiment. He certainly did not say it ‘loud and clear.’ We could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion, and he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. He only started publicly denouncing the war after it started. Because he far overstated how loudly he declared his position on the Iraq War, we’re cranking the rating on this statement up to False.” [PolitiFact,
2/14/16]
LIE #9: “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the 2nd Amendment and we’re going to protect it.”
THE TRUTH: Politifact rated Donald Trump’s claim that “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment” “False.” “Trump said, ‘Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment.’ 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.” [Politifact,
5/11/16]
