As he accepted the Republican nomination for president of the United States on Thursday, former President Donald Trump laid out his vision for running the country. He painted a dire picture of the state of America and outlined a series of actions he planned to take. But his remarks were marred by a myriad of false and misleading information that distorted facts about immigration, the American economy and his past accomplishments.
Here are the facts.
IMMIGRATION
ASSET: “The greatest invasion in history is happening right here in our country. Terrorists are coming from every corner of the world, not just South America, but Africa, Asia, the Middle East. They’re coming from everywhere, and this administration is doing nothing to stop them. They’re coming from prisons, they’re coming from mental institutions, they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re being carried out by terrorists on levels that have never been seen before.”
FACTS: Trump devoted much of his speech to discussing immigration and the massive influx of migrants into the United States, repeating several false and misleading claims, including that it has caused a spike in crime. He cited recent high-profile and heinous crimes allegedly committed by people in the United States illegally as evidence.
But the assumption that violent crime is increasing nationwide because of the influx of migrants is not supported by the facts. FBI statistics do not distinguish crimes by the immigration status of the perpetrator, and there is no evidence of an increase in crimes committed by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities with the largest influx of migrants, such as New York. In fact, national statistics show that violent crime is declining.
Studies have shown that people living in the United States illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested for violent, drug, and property crimes. A 2020 study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that felony arrest rates were “significantly lower” among people living in the United States illegally than among legal immigrants or natural-born citizens.
There is also no evidence that other countries send their murderers, drug traffickers and other criminals to the United States.
ECONOMY
ASSET: “We had the best economy in the history of the world.”
FACTS: That’s far from true. The pandemic triggered a massive recession during his presidency. The government borrowed $3.1 trillion in 2020 to stabilize the economy, and Trump left the White House with fewer jobs than when he arrived.
But even excluding the problems caused by the pandemic, economic growth has averaged 2.67% during Trump’s first three years, which is pretty solid. But it’s a far cry from the 4% it averaged during Bill Clinton’s two terms, from 1993 to 2001, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, growth has been stronger so far under Biden than under Trump.
Before the pandemic, the unemployment rate had fallen to 3.5% under Trump, but the labor force participation rate among people aged 25 to 54 (the core of the American labor force) was higher under Clinton. The participation rate was also higher under Biden than under Trump.
AFGHANISTAN
TRUMP, on American troops in Afghanistan: “We also left behind military equipment worth $85 billion.”
FACTS: Those figures are significantly inflated, according to reports from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees U.S. taxpayer dollars spent on the conflict.
The $85 billion figure is similar to that of a July 30 SIGAR quarterly report, which noted that the United States has invested about $83 billion to build, train and equip Afghan security forces since 2001.
Yet that funding included troop pay, training, operations and infrastructure, as well as equipment and transportation over two decades, according to SIGAR reports and Dan Grazier, a defense policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.
“We’ve spent well over $80 billion on aid to the Afghan security forces,” Grazier told the AP in August 2021. “But it’s not just equipment costs.”
In fact, only about $18 billion of that was spent on equipping Afghan forces between 2002 and 2018, according to a June 2019 SIGAR report.
Another estimate, from a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, found that about 29 percent of the funding spent on Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 went to equipment and transportation. Transportation funding included equipment as well as contracted pilots and planes to ferry officials to meetings.
If that percentage were to hold over the entire two-decade period, it would mean that the United States would have spent about $24 billion on equipment and transportation for Afghan forces since 2001.
But even if that were true, much of the military’s equipment would be obsolete after years of use, Grazier said. Moreover, U.S. troops have already scrapped unneeded equipment and, ahead of the withdrawal, decommissioned dozens of Humvees and aircraft so they could no longer be used, according to Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command.
Although no one knows the exact value of the U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment obtained by the Taliban, defense officials have confirmed that it is significant.
