Donald Trump on Wednesday gave a major speech attacking presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and CNN’s Reality Check Team put the billionaire’s statements and assertions to the test.
The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the speech and selected key statements, rating them true; mostly true; true, but misleading; false; or it’s complicated.
Reality Check: Trump criticizes leaders for offshoring, but Trump brands also did it
By John Newsome, CNN
Trump criticized politicians and business leaders, arguing that they created policies that allowed and encouraged the offshoring of American jobs to America’s competitors.
“We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism — focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class — to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move wealth and workers to foreign countries, all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy itself,” Trump said.
A CNN investigation shows that Trump and his businesses offshored jobs to a number of countries, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, and even China.
Trump cut a deal with the global apparel giant PVH to manufacture his clothes in 2004, the company told CNN. And ever since, the Donald J. Trump Collection has been produced by factories in Central America and Asia, then shipped to the U.S. for sale in stores and online.
CNN purchased several of Trump’s clothing items in 2016, whose tags indicated they were manufactured throughout Asia.
We rate Trump’s claim that policies allowed and encouraged offshoring as accurate, but Trump left out his own role in that process with his businesses. For that reason, we rate his claim as true, but misleading.
Reality Check: Trump started off with a ‘small loan’
By Jeremy Diamond and Sonam Vashi, CNN
“I started off in Brooklyn, New York, not so long ago, with a small loan and built a business that today is worth well over $10 billion,” Trump said.
We reported on this claim last October.
That small loan from Trump’s father was worth $1 million, probably given before Trump entered the Manhattan real estate market in the early 1970s.
If Trump’s father made the loan in 1968, the year his son graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, that $1 million would be worth $6.8 million in today’s dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.
Trump has built up a multi-billion-dollar net worth, expanding his father’s lucrative real estate business to new heights. But while much of Trump’s success is a credit to his work, he was born into a successful, wealthy family, inheriting part of his father’s more than $200 million net worth.
Trump’s narrative of self-making his entire fortune doesn’t quite hold up either — The Washington Post Fact Checker found that he profited from loans, loan guarantees, his father’s connections and trusts to help create his empire.
Trump has boasted over and over that his net worth is $10 billion, but it’s unclear how true that really is. Last year, Forbes rated his net worth as $4.5 billion — less than half of what Trump claims. We’ve only gotten a glimpse of Trump’s financial details, especially as Trump has refused to release his tax returns (because he’s being audited, he claims), but we know he’s worth at least a billion.
Given that for almost all Americans, $1 million is hardly a small loan, especially back in 1968, we rate his claim that he started his business with a “small loan” as false.
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton’s landing in Bosnia
By Laura Koran, CNN National Security Producer
Near the top of his speech, Trump raised an incident from 1996, when Clinton was first lady and traveled to Bosnia in the aftermath of the Bosnian War.
“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton told a crowd at George Washington University in 2008 when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination against then-Sen. Barack Obama. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
Trump called that account “phony” in his speech Wednesday, adding, “The attack turned out to be young girls handing her flowers … a total self-serving lie.”
Clinton acknowledged that she “misspoke” shortly after she told the story, responding to accusations by Obama campaign officials that she exaggerated the story.
In fact, news footage of Clinton’s arrival showed her walking calmly from her Air Force plane with her then-teenage daughter Chelsea, stopping to talk with several people at the airport, including an 8-year-old Bosnian girl.
Verdict: True.
Reality Check: Clinton allowed China to steal intellectual property
By Tal Kopan, CNN
Trump hit Clinton on China on a number of points. He alleged that she was responsible for the theft of “billions and billions of dollars in our intellectual property, and China has taken it. And it’s a crime which is continuously going on, and it’s going on right now.”
His prepared remarks were even more direct: “She let China steal hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property — a crime which is continuing to this day.”
While it is true that China has stolen intellectual property from United States entities for years, he offered no explanation for his assertion that Clinton let it go on.
China has waged a steady campaign to take trade secrets and intellectual properties from American companies both through traditional espionage and cyberespionage. The Justice Department has gone after Chinese individuals on both accounts, charging five Chinese military officials in 2014 for hacking American companies and stealing intellectual property, a case that took years to build, and have charged other individuals with infiltrating companies as employees to steal information for China.
In 2012, former National Security Agency director and Cyber Command chief Keith Alexander called Chinese hacking “the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” a line that has often been repeated by top officials.
President Barack Obama himself has called out this behavior, pressing Chinese President Xi Jinping in face-to-face talks in 2013 in California on the topic of cybersecurity and continuing the pressure today.
In a report this week, cybersecurity firm FireEye found that successful Chinese hacking against U.S. companies has decreased since the two countries signed an agreement in September to not engage in cybertheft of intellectual property — but found that it still continues at a substantial level.
The State Department is not responsible for stopping Chinese hacking. The Treasury Department ultimately decides on sanctions, the Justice Department brings legal actions, and the White House and State Department work together to apply diplomatic and public pressure. Clinton engaged in this process as secretary of state, issuing a statement after a hack of Google in 2010 that they suspected originated in China, saying, “We look to the Chinese government for an explanation.” And the Chinese behavior also started before the Obama administration and has vexed the U.S. government for years.
For these reasons, we rate Trump’s claim that Clinton let China steal intellectual property as false.
Reality Check: Trump claims Orlando shooter’s father is a Taliban supporter
By Tony Marco, CNN
“The father of the Orlando shooter was a Taliban supporter from Afghanistan, one of the most repressive anti-gay and anti-women regimes on Earth,” Trump said.
Seddique Mateen, the father of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, is from Afghanistan but is not a supporter of the Taliban. In fact, he says he is a longtime opponent. He strongly condemned the group in an interview with CNN.
CNN also carefully translated and analyzed numerous commentary videos Seddique Mateen posted on YouTube over the years and found no evidence of Taliban support — in fact, the opposite. (One particular quote has been mistranslated by some news organization as support for the Taliban. Close review by CNN’s translators makes it clear that the word “Talib” he used referenced support for young people, not the terror group.)
The elder Mateen lumps ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban all together as terrorists that are allowed to breathe and grow and must be eliminated. In his interview with CNN, he calls these groups “the enemy of humanity.”
Verdict: False.
Reality Check: Trump on trade deficit increasing 40% while Clinton was secretary of state
By Chris Isidore and Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump said Clinton should be “scorned” because the nation’s trade deficit with China soared 40% while she was secretary of state.
“Our trade deficit with China soared 40% during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state — a disgraceful performance for which she should not be congratulated, but rather scorned,” he said.
Actually, the trade deficit rose only 12% if you look between 2008 and 2012, which is the most accurate way to measure what happened under her tenure, which ran from early 2009 until early 2013, according to federal trade data.
However, if you cherry-pick the data from 2009 to 2012, the deficit jumped 34%. But that’s because the trade gap narrowed during the depths of the recession in 2009.
Either way, Trump’s assertion is exaggerated. Therefore, we rate it as false.
Reality Check: Trump on losing nearly 1/3 of manufacturing jobs since NAFTA and China admitted to World Trade Organization
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump lashed out at Clinton’s support of trade agreements that he said were “among the most destructive ever signed.”
Specifically, Trump cited the North American Free Trade Agreement, which then-President Bill Clinton signed in 1994, and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in late 2001, for which the former president smoothed the way.
“We’ve lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed,” Trump said.
The presumptive Republican candidate is exaggerating the figures a bit. The nation has lost 27% of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was signed in 1994. The sector, which employed 16.9 million people back then, now has 12.3 million workers.
But that masks the fact that the industry actually expanded it payrolls slightly under the remainder of Bill Clinton’s term.
The bleeding really began in the early 2000s and continued through and immediately after the Great Recession.
Manufacturers, however, have been adding jobs since early 2010. Employment is up 7.3% since then.
Yet it’s not clear how much free trade deals drove the decline in manufacturing employment. Corporate America was already shifting jobs to lower-wage countries, and technology already made it more costly for U.S. companies to produce goods here. Also, today’s factory jobs require more education and skills, leaving many less-educated Americans on the sidelines.
Trump also said that the nation will lose millions more jobs if Hillary Clinton is elected because she will adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which the former secretary of state had supported but now opposes. His comments here are misleading, too, because only Congress has the power to ratify trade agreements.
We therefore rate Trump’s statement as true, but misleading, because there were many other factors beyond trade that led to the decline in manufacturing employment after China entered the WTO.
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton speeches
By Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel, CNNMoney
Trump said Clinton made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests in less than two years after she left her job as secretary of state in early 2013.
“When she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests, and, in less than two years, secret speeches that she does not want to reveal, under any circumstances, to the public,” he said.
A CNN analysis showed that Clinton gave 92 speeches between 2013 and 2015. Her standard fee is $225,000, and she collected $21.6 million dollars in just under two years. Clinton made eight speeches to big banks, netting $1.8 million, according to the analysis.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, has said in April that Clinton won’t release transcripts from speeches given to Wall Street unless it becomes a political norm.
Verdict: True.
Reality Check: Trump claims Clinton accepted $58,000 in jewelry
By Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel, CNNMoney
Trump said, “Hillary Clinton accepted $58,000 in jewelry from the government of Brunei when she was secretary of state — plus millions more for her foundation.”
Clinton did receive 18-carat gold, sapphire and diamond earrings, a necklace and a bracelet worth $58,000, according to the State Department website. That gift was recorded in September 2012. The former secretary did accept the jewelry and justified it by saying that not doing so would’ve “would cause embarrassment to donor and U.S. government.” However, Clinton was not allowed to keep the jewelry. Under State Department rules, if a gift over $350 cannot be refused, it automatically becomes property of the U.S. government, and the recipient must report the gift and transfer it to the Office of the Chief of Protocol within 60 days.
As for donations from Brunei to the Clinton Foundation, that is true.
The government of Brunei donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its website.
Trump also said the “Sultan of Brunei has pushed oppressive Sharia law, including the punishment of death by stoning for being gay.
Brunei became the first East Asian nation to adopt Sharia law in 2014.
Our verdict on the jewelry: true, but misleading. Although she received the gift, she turned it over to the U.S. government as required by law.
Reality Check: Trump claims Clinton support for ‘regime change’ caused Syrian bloodshed
By Eve Bower, CNN
Trump fiercely criticized Clinton’s Middle East policy during her tenure as secretary of state, claiming her “support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen.”
It is true that the civil war in Syria has been one of the deadliest in modern history: according to a recent U.N. estimate, since the start of hostilities in early 2011, more than 400,000 Syrians have been killed.
But it is difficult to determine how much of Syria’s fate can be attributed to a Clinton proposal that was never adopted.
In April 2012, Clinton indeed advocated for the “overthrow” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a State Department document released by Wikileaks as part of her email archive. (The email was undated but references a statement made “last week” to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak about “the toppling down of Assad.” Barak made that statement on April 19, 2012, dating Clinton’s email in late April.)
In the leaked message, Clinton pressed for a multilateral intervention in Syria, writing, “Only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.” Specifically, she advised, “Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to organize, train and arm Syrian rebel forces.”
Clinton was not alone in calling for the end of Assad’s rule. Almost one year earlier, in August 2011, President Barack Obama had said “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” But crucially, at the time, Obama refused to pursue regime change, saying, “The United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria.” It appears that Obama persisted in his opposition. The New York Times, citing unnamed administration officials, said that in the summer of 2012, Clinton had been working on a plan with then-CIA Director David Petraeus to arm Syrian rebels but that Obama “rebuffed” their plan.
Because it is impossible to attribute the ongoing bloodshed of the Syrian civil war to the rejected policies of a secretary of state now out of office for more than three years, we rate Trump’s claim FALSE.
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton’s support for the Iraq War
By Kate Grise and Laura Koran, CNN
Trump also took shots at Clinton’s record on the war in Iraq. “It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the war in Iraq in the first place,” he said.
He added, “Though I was not in government service, I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started.”
Clinton did vote in favor of the Iraq War resolution in October 2002. Years later, Clinton said her vote was a mistake.
Verdict: True.
However, Trump’s claim that he was one of the first to criticize the Iraq War is less clear.
In an interview with Howard Stern on September 11, 2002, Trump said that he supported invading Iraq after Stern asked him if he was “for invading Iraq.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
The Washington Post seems to have the earliest quote from him criticizing the invasion. Trump told the paper at a 2003 Oscars after-party days after the invasion that “the war’s a mess.”
He was more vehement in an August 2004 Esquire Magazine interview, saying of the invasion, “I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country? C’mon.”
Trump has also tweeted the link to a July 2004 Reuters article titled, “Donald Trump Would ‘Fire’ Bush Over Iraq Invasion” to emphasize his opposition.
But these statements were made after the war began, mostly in 2004. There’s no indication he said anything along the lines of “Do not attack Iraq” before the invasion began, as he has previously claimed.
Verdict: It is true that Trump did criticize the war shortly after it began, but his claim that he criticized the war before it started is false, especially when considering his statement of support for the war to Stern before Congress voted for the invasion.
Reality Check: Trump on American taxes
By Kate Grise and Tami Luhby, CNN
“We are, by the way, the highest taxed nation in the world. Please remember that,” Trump said.
As CNN’s Reality Check team did when Trump made this claim in the past, we’ll look at each part of his claim that American individuals and businesses pay more taxes than any other country.
Do Americans really pay more individual taxes than citizens of any other country in the world?
Hardly.
America ranked 16th out of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development member countries for average rate of income tax and employees’ social security contributions. In America, that rate is 25.6%. In Belgium, the country with the highest average rate of income tax and employees’ social security contributions, citizens pay 42%. Germany, Denmark, Austria and Hungary round out the top five countries with the highest average rate of income tax and employees’ social security contributions.
OECD’s 34 member countries are advanced, industrialized nations, which makes their data valuable in comparing the United States to similar countries. China, Russia and India are not included in the OECD’s list because they are not member countries.
We can also look at total tax revenue as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product. This time, America ranks even lower: 27th out of 34 OECD member countries in 2014. America’s tax revenue is 26% of the country’s GDP. Denmark tops the list with its tax revenue being equal to 50% of the country’s GDP.
Looking at whether American citizens face the highest taxes, we rate Trump’s claim as false.
Turning to companies, it’s true that American businesses face the highest official corporate tax rate. The federal rate stands at 35%.
But that’s not what many companies actually pay. The Government Accountability Office found that large, profitable U.S. corporations paid an average effective federal tax rate of 12.6% in 2010 thanks to things such as tax credits, exemptions and offshore tax havens. In each year from 2006 to 2012, at least two-thirds of all active corporations had no federal income liability, according to the GAO.
U.S. corporate tax collection totaled 2.6% of GDP in 2014, according to the OECD. That was the 16th highest rate among the 34 nations.
So when it comes to American corporations, we rate Trump’s statement as true, but misleading. The United States has the highest official corporate tax rate, but that’s not what many companies actually pay.
Reality Check: Clinton and the Benghazi attacks
By Ryan Browne and Laura Koran, CNN
Trump slammed Clinton’s response to the September 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
Here is what Trump said: “Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds and hundreds of requests for security. They were desperate. They needed help. Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all. She started the war that put them in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die.”
During her testimony on Capitol Hill before the House Select Committee hearing on Benghazi last year, Clinton acknowledged that “a number of” requests were made but added, “I did not see them. I did not approve them. I did not deny them.”
During the same hearing, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, estimated that about 600 requests or concerns were raised with regard to Benghazi and Libya.
A State Department independent investigation into the attack chaired by former Amb. Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen found that senior officials in the State Department had “demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability … in their responses to security concerns posed by the Special Mission Benghazi.”
The investigatory board, though, did conclude that no employee “engaged in misconduct or willfully ignored his or her responsibilities.”
However, the report also notes that while most of the requests were not fully fulfilled, some measures and concerns were addressed, at least in part.
Because State Department officials were deemed responsible for not adequately responding to security concerns and because Clinton was secretary of state at the time — even though there is no evidence that Clinton was directly responsible for the inadequate response — Trump said it was “Clinton’s State Department” that ignored the requests not Clinton herself. However, because Trump overstates his claim and says “all” requests were refused and because he later implies that Clinton herself “denied him the security he asked for,” we rate this claim as false.
Trump also made the assertion that Clinton attributed the attack to an online video that was critical of Islam: “To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death,” Trump said.
Trump cites a family member of one of the victims as evidence that Clinton attributing the video as the cause of the incident.
That person was the mother of Sean Smith, who told Fox News, “She lied to my face.”
Some of the family members of the victims have indeed said that Clinton misled them on the cause of the attack, but did not mention the video.
Kate Quigley, sister of CIA operative Glen Doherty, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that in the wake of the attack Clinton had mentioned protests but not a video.
“She spoke to my family about how sad we should feel for the Libyan people because they are uneducated and that breeds fear, which breeds violence, and leads to a protest,” Quigley said, adding that Clinton chose to “perpetuate what she knew was untrue.”
While some administration officials, including then-ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, did not immediately call the attack a pre-planned terror operation, emphasizing the video and protests, it is less apparent that Clinton attributed the attack directly to the online video.
In a statement made immediately after the attack, Clinton mentioned the video but did not tie it directly to the attack, saying, “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
But in an email exchange from the night of the attack, Clinton told her daughter Chelsea — who was using the pseudonym “Diane Reynolds” — that the attack was launched by “an al Queda-like group.”
A few days later, on September 21, Clinton publicly labeled the attack an act of terrorism, saying, “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans.”
Because Clinton’s email exchange indicates terrorism’s role in Benghazi and because there is conflict between family members about whether a video was mentioned, there’s no way to determine conclusively the veracity of Trump’s claim. For that reason, we rate this it’s complicated.
Editor’s Note: This post has been updated after a review of the previous conclusion.
Reality Check: Trump claims Clinton ran the State Department like a personal hedge fund
By Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel, CNNMoney
According to Trump, Clinton ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund, doing favors for oppressive regimes and many others in exchange for cash.
To make this claim, Trump cited several examples from the book “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer. Among the accusations: Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.
While the deal to sell Uranium One to a Russian company was completed in 2010, there’s no hard evidence of a quid pro quo.
Even Schweizer admits there’s no smoking gun. According to The New York Times, although significant donors to the foundation stood to benefit from the transaction, which allowed a Russian company to buy the rights to one-fifth of U.S. uranium deposits, “Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown.” CNN several times has asked the Clinton Foundation to confirm whether the nine investors who benefited from the deal also contributed to the foundation, but the foundation has yet to respond.
But even if foundation donors profited from the sale of Uranium One, the State Department was one of several agencies that needed to sign off on the transaction.
The Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the Unites States, an interagency body that reviews deals that could result in a foreign entity owning a US business, reviewed and approved the sale. The committee includes representatives from nine agencies, including the State Department.
Verdict: False.
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton’s increase in refugees from Syria
By Kate Grise, CNN
“In fact, Hillary Clinton supports a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees coming into the United States, and that’s an increase over President Obama’s already very high number,” Trump said.
“Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth — with no way to screen who they are or what they believe,” he continued.
Clinton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on September 20 that she would like to see the United States accept more refugees than Obama’s plan to increase to 10,000 per fiscal year 2016.
“Look, we’re facing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II and I think the United States has to do more, and I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000 and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in,” Clinton said, implying that her figure, like Obama’s, was per fiscal year.
That would be a 550% increase in total refugees, so we rate that part of Trump’s claim as true.
However, Trump continued saying that there is no way to screen those immigrants.
There is a vetting system in place, which begins with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, according to the White House. This group collects identification documents, performs an initial assessment, and interviews applicants to confirm refugee status and the need for resettlement. They then refer strong candidates for resettlement to the United States.
The Resettlement Support Center compiles a file on each refugee and then the security checks begin. The National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the State Department are all involved in these security checks. Before arrival in the United States, refugees are interviewed, fingerprinted and given medical screenings, among other security checks. Finally, they arrive in the United States, go through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center and then must apply for a green card within a year of arrival, which triggers another set of security procedures.
While it is true that there is no screening system that is foolproof, to say that there is no way to screen refugees or that Clinton believes that they should not be vetted is false.
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton’s server being hacked
By Tal Kopan, CNN
Trump asserted that Clinton’s private email server was hacked when she was secretary of state.
“Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China,” he said. “I’m sure they have it, putting all of America and our citizens in danger.”
While it is true that Clinton used a privately-run server for email during her time as secretary of state, there has been no conclusive evidence that the server was compromised, nor any indication that foreign governments were involved in any attempts to do so.
Two law enforcement officials told CNN that security logs turned over from the server showed no apparent signs of hacking. They cautioned, though, that does not show definitive proof that no one ever got in, as skilled hackers may have been able to cover their tracks.
In a May inspector general report from the State Department, the IG cited instances where hacking attempts were suspected as part of evidence that officials were aware of her email practices. The IG said that in January 2011, a Clinton technical adviser notified her deputy chief of staff for operations that he shut down the server “because he believed ‘someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to.'” He shut the server again down later in the day because of another attack attempt. The next day, the deputy chief of staff emailed officials above him to not email Clinton “anything sensitive” and that he would explain “in person.”
In May 2011, Clinton’s staff discussed via email her receiving a suspicious link to her email, and she later that day replied to a message from the account of the undersecretary for political affairs with a suspicious website link in it, “Is this really from you?” The IG dinged Clinton and her staff for not reporting the incidents.
In none of the accounts, though, was there a record of the attempts being successful, nor indication of who was behind it.
The BBC also reported last year that there was other evidence of hacking attempts in the emails that were released by the State Department. Five so-called “phishing” emails were sent to Clinton’s email that contained malicious software disguised as speeding tickets. If someone had opened the malware, data would have been transmitted overseas, including one based in Russia. But again, there was no evidence the phishing attempts were ever opened.
There have also been boastful claims by a hacker that he broke into Clinton’s server — with no evidence to back it up. Recently convicted Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar, who pleaded guilty to hacking email accounts belonging to figures including former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal, made such a claim from prison in an interview with NBC News.
Verdict: Because there is no conclusive indication that Clinton’s email was ever breached, let alone proof that foreign governments were behind even such attempts, we rate Trump’s claim as false.
Reality Check: Trump says Clinton money for refugees could rebuild every inner city in America
By Sonam Vashi and John Newsome, CNN
Trump said, “Hillary also wants to spend hundreds of billions to resettle Middle Eastern refugees in the United States, on top of the current record level of immigration. For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America.”
First: how much do we spend on refugees, and how much more does Clinton want to spend?
In fiscal year 2015, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is under the Department of Health and Human Services, had about 1.6 billion to spend on services such as medical assistance, employment services, and English language training, among others.
More than half of the ORR’s budget, or about $950 million, goes to temporary custody and care of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children, who are almost all from Central America and Mexico.
In fiscal year 2015, the State Department spent about $3 billion on Migration and Refugee Assistance, and it spent $50 million on Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” last September, Clinton was asked if the current U.S. plan to increase the number of admitted Syrian refugees to 10,000 was enough. She replied, “I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000 and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in.”
There’s no clean or accurate way to estimate how much each refugee costs the U.S. For an overly simplistic estimate: if we look at the part of ORR’s budget that is not dedicated to the custody of Central American children (about $611 million in FY2015), the total number of refugees admitted (about 70,000), and then add in the 55,000 more Syrian refugees Clinton is proposing, the cost to the U.S. government might look something closer to $1.1 billion per year (about $500 million more than what ORR spends now), plus the $3 billion per year from the State Department.
That $4.1 billion doesn’t include resettlement services funded by the private sector; NGOs like the International Rescue Committee, which helps resettle refugees in the U.S., are heavily funded by private donations. It also doesn’t include the positive economic impact refugees have on their communities once resettled, according to studies.
Meanwhile, the amount of money required, both from public and private sources, to revitalize all of America’s inner-cities is so massive it is hard to quantify.
The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City organization, a Boston-based incubator and accelerator for inner-city growth, calls such an undertaking enormous.
“We cannot put a price tag on the vast long-term public and private investment required to revitalize America’s inner cities. We know that there are at least 328 inner cities in the United States with high levels of poverty and unemployment. They demand enormous public and private resources to deal with the profound challenge of economic inequality that plagues our cities,” the group’s CEO, Steve Grossman, tells CNN.
Given how massive the price tag would be to revitalize all of America’s inner cities, it’s clear that it would be much larger than the approximate $4.1 billion per year that the U.S. spends on refugees.
Verdict: False.
Reality Check: Trump on George Washington and protectionism
By Amy Gallagher, CNN
Trump said one of the first significant bills that former President George Washington signed was for the protection of American manufacturers. This is true. The Tariff of 1789 was one of the first major pieces of legislation to be signed into law and it placed a tariff on most imported goods in part to secure income for the new nation and in part to protect the fledgling manufacturing industry.
It is worth noting that there is some debate as to which was the primary purpose, protectionism or revenue, with most scholars believe the pressing need to pay off the debts of the Revolutionary War was the driving concern. While it was one of the first bills that Washington signed, it was not without some controversy at the time.
In particular, southern states objected to the tariffs that benefited northern manufacturers at the expense of southern agricultural interests. For example, a later tariff on British-manufactured cloth both reduced the demand for American cotton as a raw material and increased the cost of imported cloth, hitting southern cotton farmers twice. It was this tension between agriculture and manufacturing that kept tariffs low for many years.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that supports free trade, argues that protectionism is a failed policy and that the economic growth during the nation’s first decade was not because of but in spite of protectionist policies. The institute contends that most of the economic growth of the new nation came from western expansion, immigration, transportation, farming, mining and construction of infrastructure.
Verdict: True.