washington
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump started his 2024 presidential campaign when his presidency ends in 2021: There are plenty of inaccuracies.
Like many of Trump’s speeches as president, his Florida announcement Tuesday was filled with false and misleading claims on a variety of subjects — from his record to his Democratic opponents to the economy, the environment and foreign policy.
Here’s a fact check on some of the things he said at Mar-a-Lago. This article will be updated with additional statements.
Trump claimed late Tuesday that the United States left $85 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan after it withdraws in 2021.
“In perhaps the most embarrassing moment in our nation’s history, we lost our lives, left Americans behind, and handed over $85 billion of the best military equipment anywhere in the world,” Trump said in a statement. His Mar-a-Lago resort spoke out.
facts first: Trump’s numbers are fake.While it is true that a significant amount of military equipment provided by the US to Afghan government forces was lost to the Taliban after the US withdrawal, the Department of Defense estimates the value of this equipment about $7.1 billion – Between 2005 and 2021, approximately $18.6 billion worth of equipment was provided to the Afghan Army. Some of the equipment left behind was rendered unusable before the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Trump’s claim that $85 billion worth of equipment was left behind is unfounded. As other fact-checkers have previously explained, this is a rounded figure (nearly $83 billion) and is the total amount of funds Congress appropriated to support Afghan security forces during the war. Only a portion of this funding goes to equipment.
Trump claimed that his administration “filled up” the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but it has now been “virtually depleted” by the Biden administration.
Facts first: Both parts of Trump’s claim are false. He did not fill up the reserves, and the reserves were not “wasted”.
Despite Trump’s repeated boasting of allegedly filling the reserves, he will actually leave office in early 2021 with fewer barrels of crude than when he took office in 2017. And it’s not all because of him — the law requires mandatory sales of some crude from oil for budget reasons, and Democrats in Congress have blocked the funds needed to implement Trump’s 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels of oil and The reserve is filled to maximum capacity – but despite this, it is not filled.
As CNN’s Matt Egan and Phil Mattingly reported in mid-October, U.S. stockpiles remain the largest in the world, even after Joe The stockpile is at a 38-year low after President Joe Biden released most of it to help keep prices down. After Russia invaded Ukraine (and, coincidentally or not, before the midterm elections). The reserve held more than 396 million barrels of crude as of the week ended Nov. 4.
Trump also bragged about his tariffs on China, claiming that “no president has ever sought or accepted $1 from China for our country until I came along.”
Facts first: If we repeatedly write, it is wrong Before Trump, no president had made any money from tariffs on Chinese goods. In fact, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org Report In 2019, the U.S. “generated an average of $12.3 billion in tariffs annually from 2007 to 2016,” according to the U.S. International Trade Commission Data Network.
Moreover, it is U.S. importers, not Chinese exporters, who actually pay the tariffs — and during the Trump presidency, study after study has found that Americans are bearing the cost of the tariffs.
Claiming that the unnamed people were not talking about the threat of nuclear weapons because they were obsessed with environmental issues, Trump said, “They said it could affect us in 300 years.” He added: “They said, In the next 200 to 300 years, the oceans will rise by 1/8 inch. But don’t worry about nuclear weapons that can destroy an entire country with one blow.”
Facts first: Trump’s claim is wrong – even if you ignore the absurd argument that people aren’t paying attention to the nuclear threat because they are paying attention to the environment. Sea levels are expected to rise much faster than Trump has said.NOSA Say On its website, “Sea level is projected to rise by an average of 10-12 inches (0.25-0.30 m) along U.S. coastlines over the next 30 years (2020-2050), which would be as much as measured in the past 100 years ( 1920-2020).”
Although Trump did not use the word “climate change” in this statement, he strongly suggested that climate change may only affect us in 300 years. That’s very inaccurate; it’s affecting America today. “Increasing temperatures; changing precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and less predictable extreme weather conditions resulting from climate change are exacerbating existing risks and creating new ones for U.S. interests,” the Department of Defense said in a 2021 report. security challenges.”
Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had told him that China was tough on drug dealers and that there was no “drug problem.” Trump then repeated the claim himself, saying: “If you get caught dealing drugs in China, you’re going to get a quick trial right away and eventually, you’re going to be executed. It’s a horrible thing, but they don’t have a drug problem .”
Facts first: Trump’s claims are incorrect, as are similar claims he has made as president. “Yes, China has a drug problem,” said Joe Amon, director of global health at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. The report says that by the end of 2021, there will be “1.49 million registered drug users across the country”; in the past, Chinese officials have admitted that the number of registered drug users is far lower than the actual number of drug users.
While Trump attributed the harsh punishment to what he said was China’s success in tackling the drug problem, Beijing also touted its efforts in rehabilitation, education and fighting poverty.
Trump, who has complained that he is under criminal investigation for taking presidential papers to his Florida home and resort, repeated debunked claims about former President Barack Obama’s handling of presidential papers.
“Obama took a lot away,” Trump said.
Facts first: That’s wrong — as the National Archives and Records Administration noted when Trump previously made the claim in August. Despite Trump’s claim that Obama brought millions of records to Chicago, NARA explained in a public statement that it itself brought the records to a facility run by NARA in the Chicago area — near Obama’s presidential library The location of the museum. It said that under federal law, “former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores his administration’s presidential records.”
NARA also refuted recent claims by Trump that multiple other presidents allegedly brought documents to their own states; in those cases, it was also NARA, not the previous president, who moved the documents. Nara’s standard is to build a temporary facility near where the former president’s permanent library ended up.
Trump has used misleading numbers when discussing gas prices, as he has done on other occasions during Biden’s tenure. “We’re at $1.87 a gallon on gas and now it’s $5, 6, 7 or 8, and it’s going to get really bad,” he said.
Facts first: This is misleading. While the price of a gallon of regular gasoline did briefly drop to $1.87 (and lower) At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, on Trump’s last day in office, Jan. 20, 2021, the national average price for regular gasoline was well above that – according to CNN $2,393 per gallon, according to CNN.although some secluded Gas stations where prices are always well above the national average, which was $3,759 per AAA on Tuesday data, not $5, $6, $7, or $8.as usual the highest priced california has a Average $5,423.
Trump claimed late Tuesday that his administration, unlike the Obama administration, had persuaded countries such as Guatemala and Honduras to take back gang members who had come to the United States.
“The worst gang was the MS-13. Under the Barack Hussein Obama administration, they couldn’t take them out. Because the country they came from wouldn’t accept them,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago.
Facts first: Traditionally, Guatemala and Honduras would not have taken back their citizens during the Obama administration, which is not true, although some individual exceptions.
In 2016, just before Trump became president, neither Guatemala nor Honduras were on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant” or uncooperative in accepting the return of their nationals.
For fiscal year 2016, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind Mexico, in terms of nationalities of people deported from the United States. You can read a longer fact check for 2019 here.
Trump claimed on Tuesday that a missile “possibly sent by Russia” landed 50 miles away from Poland. “People are getting really crazy and crazy, and they’re not happy,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago.
Facts first: This statement is wrong. Poland said a Russian-made missile fell into its territory on Tuesday, killing two Polish citizens, while the explosion occurred about four miles west of the Ukrainian border.
In addition, it is unclear where the missile was launched from and why it landed in Poland.
Trump has made false claims about one of his signature policies, the wall on the border with Mexico.
“We built the wall, and now we’re going to add to it. Now, we built the wall — we finished the wall — and then we said let’s do more, and we did more. We did more Much. If we did, we’d have an election. When they came in, they had three weeks to finish adding to the wall, which would have been great, but they said no, no, we won’t do that ,”He says.
Facts first: it is not even close to real Trump “finished” the border wall.
According to an official “state of the border wall” report by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, written two days after Trump left office, some 458 miles of wall have been completed under Trump — but no land has been identified for its construction. About 280 miles of the wall are complete. Of the 280 barriers, about 74 miles of barriers “are in the pre-construction phase and have not been awarded where no barriers currently exist,” and 206 miles are “currently under construction,” the report provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez said. Sign contracts to replace dilapidated and outdated designs and where barriers did not exist before.”