Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met Sunday for their second presidential debate, and CNN’s Reality Check Team spent the evening analyzing their claims.
The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the debate and selected key statements from both candidates, rating them true; mostly true; true, but misleading; false; or it’s complicated.
Obamacare
Reality Check: Trump on Obamacare premiums
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump cited Obamacare as one of the top problems he wants to address if he is elected president.
“When I watch the deals being made and watch what’s happening with horrible things like Obamacare, where your health insurance and health care are going up by numbers that are astronomical. By 68%, 59% and 71%,” Trump said.
It’s true that some insurers are raising some of their plans’ premiums by that much, but that’s not the typical increase.
Insurers have requested a rate hike of 9%, on average, for the benchmark silver plan for 2017, up from 2% for this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The vast majority of Obamacare enrollees, however, don’t see those massive hikes. Some 85% of them receive federal subsidies that can lower their premium to less than 10% of their income.
Verdict: True, but misleading.
Reality Check: Clinton on 90% insured rate
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Clinton praised Obamacare as providing health insurance for 20 million people who didn’t have it before.
“Right now, we are at 90% health insurance coverage. That’s the highest we have ever been,” she said.
Clinton is right that the largest share of Americans now have health insurance. It’s actually even more than 90%. The uninsured rate was 8.6% in the first three months of this year, according to the National Health Interview Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That means a record 91.4% of Americans were insured.
Verdict: True.
Reality Check: Canadians traveling for health care
By Debra Goldschmidt, CNN
In response to a question on Obamacare, Trump said, “If you ever noticed Canadians, when they need a big operation, when something happens, they come into the United States, in many cases because their system is so slow it’s catastrophic in certain ways.”
According to a 2015 report by the conservative Canadian think tank Frasier Institute, “In 2014, more than 52,000 Canadians received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada.”
The 52,000 is an increase of about 10,000 from the previous year. The report last year said one reason for patients traveling abroad is the long wait times in Canada, which were reported to be nearly 10 weeks for treatments deemed medically necessary.
The report itself says it does not have exact numbers but assumes it underestimates. That said, 52,000 Canadians is a miniscule percentage of the more than 35 million Canadians who receive benefits.
While the report doesn’t say how many patients travel to the US for medical treatment, we rate Trump’s claim as true, but misleading.
Reality Check: Clinton wants single-payer system?
By Debra Goldschmidt, CNN
Trump said Clinton “wants to go to single-payer, which means the government basically rules everything.” He went on to say, “Hillary Clinton has been after this for years. Obamacare was the first step.”
In July, Clinton said she supported a public option, which is a government health plan as a choice alongside private health insurance options. This is different than a single-payer system, which is a singular, government-run system without other options to chose from.
The goal of adding a public option would be to stabilize Obamacare, which has seen several large insurers downsize their presence and premiums rise as insurers try to deal with sicker-than-expected enrollees. Obamacare had created non-profit cooperative insurers to give consumers more choice, but most of those carriers have failed.
Last month, in response to a question posed by the New England Journal of Medicine on how she would improve on quality and access to care, Clinton said she wants to build on the progress of Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, something she has said before.
Clinton wrote, “We must work to expand Medicaid coverage in the 19 states that have left 3 million Americans without health insurance because their states refused to expand Medicaid and enroll people eligible for coverage. We need to improve and strengthen the ACA through enhanced tax credits to make coverage affordable, implementation of strong measures to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, increased competition between insurers, and an aggressive campaign to increase outreach and enrollment. And finally, we need to ensure the availability of a public option choice in every state, and let Americans over 55 buy in to Medicare.”
The medical journal asked the same question to Trump but he has yet to respond. He has said Obamacare should be repealed.
We rate Trump’s claim that Clinton wants a single-payer system as false.
‘Birther’ claim
Reality Check: Trump claims 2008 Clinton campaign source of Obama photo in Somali garb
By Theodore Schleifer, CNN
Trump told Clinton that “your campaign” was responsible for circulating photos during the 2008 primaries depicting Barack Obama dressed in traditional Somali garb, a famous flare-up during the Democratic primary eight years ago.
Well, sort of.
The photo first appeared on Drudge Report, the conservative aggregator, and was attributed at the time to sources within the Clinton campaign, though no names were offered. The Obama campaign pounced on the report, blasting it as “divisive politics” and “part of a disturbing pattern.”
The Clinton campaign at the time did not immediately dispute that it was responsible — its first statement did not address the substance of the allegation.
“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry. We will not be distracted,” her aides said at the time.
The campaign said later that it had not been sanctioned by the campaign – but was not definitive about where it originated.
“We have over 700 people on this campaign and I’m not in a position to know what each one of them may or may not have done,” campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said at the time.
Previous questions about the Clintons’ race-based attacks on Obama have been blamed on volunteers, who might not have been “sanctioned” by the campaign. Clinton’s campaign brass pointed the finger at a “volunteer coordinator” in Iowa who shared the photo, which was part of what Trump said was an effort to discredit Obama’s heritage and legitimacy. The volunteer was clearly backing Clinton and organizing on her behalf in the first-in-the-nation primary state. But it’s not certain whether the volunteer was drawing a paycheck from her campaign and therefore an official Clinton actor.
“I don’t recall whether they were an actual paid staffer,” former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle told CNN earlier this year. “But they did forward an email that promoted the conspiracy.”
Verdict: It’s complicated.
Clinton’s emails
Reality Check: Trump on Clinton emails
By Ryan Browne, CNN National Security Producer
Trump returned to a common theme, slamming Clinton for her use of personal email during her tenure as secretary of state.
“You think it was fine to delete 35,000 emails? I don’t think so. She said that 33,000 emails had to do with her daughter’s wedding, number one, and a yoga class.”
He added, “for you to say that there was nothing wrong with you deleting 39,000 emails, again, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Clinton handed 30,000 emails over to the State Department and said she deleted another 32,000 personal messages.
So the number was actually 32,000, not 39,000, 35,000 or 33,000, as Trump charged.
Of the 32,000 emails the FBI was able to find, more than 17,000 of them and determined that a “substantial number” were duplicates of emails that had already been turned over to the State Department.
The State Department has reviewed about 15,000 of the emails and determined that more than 9,400 were purely personal and will not be released and that another 5,600 are probably work-related and will be made public in the weeks before the election.
But he is partially right about the description Hillary gave for the emails that were deleted, thousands of which have been found to be work related.
Back in March 2015, when the server’s existence was first revealed, Clinton downplayed the email as being “about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.”
Trump’s three numbers are all inaccurate and the State Department confirmed that the majority were personal. Therefore, we rate Trump’s claims about the numbers as false. But true that Clinton downplayed emails that turned out to be work-related.
Reality Check: Can Trump appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton?
By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer
“If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception,” Trump told Clinton. “There has never been anything like it, and we are going to have a special prosecutor. I go out and speak and the people of this country are furious.”
But would Trump be constitutionally empowered to take such an action if he were elected the 45th president of the United States?
Under Title 6 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the attorney general does have the authority to appoint a special prosecutor, according to Stephen Vladeck, a law professor with the University of Texas School of Law.
Such action can be taken when the attorney general determines that a criminal investigation is warranted and that an investigation by the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest or “other extraordinary circumstance” and that “under the circumstances it would be in the public interest to appoint and outside special counsel.”
But the prosecutor would need to bring charges and that might a difficult proposition in the current climate, in the face of the comments by FBI Director James Comey earlier this year at the conclusion of the FBI investigation into whether or not Clinton broke the law in her use of a private email server.
In July, Comey said that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her use of a private email server in which classified material was was sent over in small amounts. But Comey also said “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” when he announced that the FBI would not recommend the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Clinton over the matter.
“I just don’t see a scenario where, if the director of the FBI doesn’t believe criminal charges can or should be brought, a subsequent Justice Department would bring them anyway,” Vladeck said of the political situation after Comey’s comments. But in practical terms regarding the legality of Trump’s promise, the only constraints are the ones set out in the federal regulations.
And would Trump be able to “instruct” his attorney general to undertake such an investigation?
Vladeck points out that the attorney general is supposed to be at least somewhat independent, but at the end of the day, the President can fire him or her for no reason. So in reality, the President could demand that the AG appoint a special prosecutor or else be fired.
That is essentially what led to the “Saturday Night Massacre” during the Nixon administration when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox during the investigation of Watergate. But that incident ended up being a significant factor in turning the public tide against Nixon in the scandal that eventually brought down his presidency.
Verdict: True.
Reality Check: Clinton on Russia and hacking
By Justin Gamble and Kate Grise, CNN
Clinton said Russia was behind the hacking of systems related to the Democratic Party and then releasing thousands of emails in an attempt to influence the presidential election to favor Trump.
“Our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election and WikiLeaks is part of that as are other sites where the Russians hack information,” she said.
“We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election,” Clinton continued. “And believe me, they’re not doing it to get me elected. They’re doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump”
Trump was not so convinced that the Russians were behind the hacks.
“Anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians. She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking,” he said. “Maybe there is no hacking, but they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia is because they think they are trying to tarnish me with Russia.”
The intelligence community had been debating whether they should “name and shame” the Russians for the cyberattacks because of some concerns about the strength of the evidence and fears that it would be seen as a political statement to help Clinton’s election.
However, on Friday, the Obama administration said it was “confident” Russia was behind recent hackings of the Democratic National Committee emails and the sites of other Democratic Party-linked organizations over the summer.
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement.
The statement went on to say that the hackings and then publishing of these emails are “intended to interfere with the US election process.”
Russia has denied all involvement in hacking attacks on US servers and organizations, saying the accusations are “nonsense.”
While there has been speculation that the hacking benefits Trump as it has targeted Democrats and Clinton, the intelligence community has not reached that conclusion.
So on Trump’s claim that it is not known if there is any hacking, we rate the claim false. On Clinton’s opinion that the hack is meant to benefit Trump may be her hunch, but not the conclusion of investigators. We rate that false as well.
Bill Clinton
Reality Check: Bill Clinton’s law license, Paula Jones settlement
By Sonam Vashi, CNN
Trump went after Clinton’s husband tonight.
“But what President Clinton did, he was impeached, he lost his license to practice law, he had to pay an $850,000 fine to one of the women — Paula Jones, who’s also here tonight.”
The day before he left the Oval Office in 2001, Bill Clinton agreed to a suspension of his Arkansas license to practice law for five years, after giving misleading testimony during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The suspensions, and his payment of a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas bar association, was in exchange for the end of the seven-year Whitewater probe. The suspension of Clinton’s license closed the disbarment proceedings in Arkansas. Clinton is still listed as suspended on the Arkansas judiciary government website, although it’s been 10 years since the end of his suspension.
That same year, after the suspension of his Arkansas license, the Supreme Court disbarred Clinton from practicing law before it, a routine decision that happens if lawyers have been suspended or disbarred elsewhere. The action was mainly a symbolic one, since Clinton had never argued in a Supreme Court case, and Clinton was given 40 days to fight against the disbarment. Instead, Clinton resigned from the bar of the Supreme Court — again, a symbolic gesture.
Trump is also correct on the $850,000 figure. Paula Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who accused Clinton of making “persistent and continuous” sexual advances toward her while he was governor. She filed a federal lawsuit in 1994, and Clinton settled the lawsuit in 1998, paying out $850,000 to Jones and her lawyers.
Clinton wasn’t disbarred in Arkansas, but he did lose his license for a time. Trump’s claims are true.
Reality Check: Clinton on African-Americans’ incomes rising under Bill Clinton
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Hillary Clinton praised the prosperity America enjoyed during the administration of her husband, Bill. In addition to saying millions of jobs were created and everyone’s income rose, she specifically cited how African-Americans benefited.
“African-American incomes went up 33%,” she said.
The typical African-American household’s income rose to $40,830 in 2000, up 31.5% from 1992, just before Clinton took office, according to Census Bureau data.
That’s an even more robust increase than Americans as a whole. Overall, the typical American household saw its income climb to $57,790, up 13.9% from 1992.
While Clinton was slightly off on the numbers, our verdict: True.
Iraq
Reality Check: Trump would not have had US in Iraq
By Eve Bower, CNN
Trump again claimed that he would not have supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Specifically, he said, had he been president, he “would not have had our people in Iraq,” and Captain Humayun Khan would still be alive.
Khan was killed in combat in Iraq in 2004, and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Khan’s parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, gained national prominence after speaking critically of Trump at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
In reality, Trump was on the record as being supportive of the Iraq War as early as a month before Congress voted to authorize military force in Iraq in 2002, as well as soon after the invasion. He didn’t express his outright opposition to the war until more than a year later, in an August 2004 interview.
We rate Trump’s continued insistence that he would not have led America into war in Iraq as false.
Taxes
Reality check: Trump says Clinton would raise taxes on everyone
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney
Trump claimed Clinton would be “raising everybody’s taxes massively.”
Clinton has proposed raising taxes on the highest-earning Americans, but not anyone making less than $250,000.
Independent analyses of her plan find that her proposed tax hikes would squarely hit the most well off.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center noted that “nearly all of the tax increases would fall on the top 1 percent; the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers would see little or no change in their taxes.” The Tax Policy Center will soon publish an updated analysis of her tax plan to incorporate new tax proposals she made over the summer.
Verdict: False.
Reality Check: Clinton says Trump would raise taxes on middle-class families
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney
Clinton said that despite claims that he would cut taxes for everyone, Trump actually “would end up raising taxes on … millions of middle-class families.”
Clinton was referring to a study that estimated his proposals would raise the tax burden on millions of low- and middle-income parents.
A leading Democratic tax policy expert conducted the study, but the conservative Tax Foundation said it replicated many of her numbers and found her conclusions “reasonable.”
The study estimated that roughly 20% of households with minor children and more than half of single parents could end up paying more in taxes than they do today. These groups include about 25 million adults and 15 million children.
What explains the tax impact? While Trump would increase the standard deduction and add new child care tax breaks, he would also raise the lowest tax bracket to 12% from 10%, eliminate the head of household status and repeal some personal exemptions.
Many single parents could find that tradeoff leaves them with a higher tax bill, the study found.
Verdict: True.
Terrorism
Reality Check: Trump says Assad, Russia and Iran are ‘killing ISIS’
By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer
Trump said the following about the fight against ISIS.
“I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up because of our weak foreign policy”
But is Trump right that those three countries are “killing” ISIS amid the bloody civil war convulsing the country?
Backed up by Russian military power, the Assad regime has targeted what it commonly refers to as “terrorists” but that has primarily meant various groups who are specifically acting to depose the Assad government. Some of those groups include groups the United States also sees as being capable to assist the primary aim of the US-led coalition which is to dislodge ISIS from its base in Syria and Iraq.
Russia insists it has been targeting ISIS forces since it entered into military action inside Syria in support of the efforts of the Assad regime, but US officials have said the majority of Russian airstrikes have been against US-backed rebels battling Assad’s forces, as opposed to ISIS. That was one of the reasons US efforts to establish a mechanism where Russia and the United States might cooperate to increase the pressure on ISIS fell part.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran had been “helpful” in targeting ISIS on their own inside portions of Iraq, but there has been little evidence of Iranian forces targeting ISIS inside Syria in support of the Assad regime. Iranian forces in Iraq did play a key role in some of the critical battles that dislodged ISIS from Tikrit and Baiji, and other portions of northern Anbar province where ISIS had a large presence.
Syrian forces backed up by the Russian military have also been accused of targeting civilians inside Syria and launching attacks that have indiscriminately killed thousands of Syrian civilians throughout the course of Syria’s civil war — most recently in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
Because there has been no visible effort by Assad regime forces to go after ISIS, and with the Russian military not using overwhelming force to go after ISIS in Syria, but to focus on going after groups that opposes Assad, we rate Trump’s claim false.
In Iraq especially, US officials and others have noted Iran’s role in targeting ISIS as one of the reasons the group has lost ground there, but the picture of Iran’s role against ISIS in Syria is not as clear. We would rate his comment as true, but misleading.
Reality Check: Trump suggests Muslim-Americans don’t cooperate with law enforcement
By Amy Gallagher and Emma Lacey-Bordeaux, CNN
A voter asked what the candidates would do to help Muslim-Americans who are being “labeled as a threat” and are targets of Islamophobia.
Trump side-stepped her question by calling on the Muslim community to do more to report terrorism.
“We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on,” said Trump. “As an example in San Bernardino, many people saw the bombs all over the apartment of the two people that killed and wounded many, many people. … Muslims have to report the problems when they see them.”
We have checked the claim about witnesses to the bombs in the San Bernardino shooters’ apartment before and have found that there is no evidence that anyone saw the bombs and did not report them. There is also no evidence that Muslims in the terrorists’ community had information and withheld it.
On Trump’s larger point,the Muslim community has actually been more effective than law enforcement at uncovering potential terror attacks in America since 9/11.
Charles Kurzman, professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill conducted a study in 2013 to examine the relationship between Muslim-Americans and terrorism on American soil. He found that “Since 9/11, 54 Muslim-American terrorism suspects and perpetrators were brought to the attention of law enforcement by members of the Muslim-American community out of 188 individuals where the initial tip was made public. Another 52 individuals were discovered through US government investigations.”
We rate Trump’s suggestion that Muslim-Americans don’t cooperate with law enforcement false.
Reality Check: Trump on radical Islamic terrorism
By Travis Caldwell, CNN
In a response to rising Islamophobia in America, Trump suggested that the terrorist attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino, as well as the events of 9/11, were a direct result of “radical Islamic terrorism” and stated Clinton and President Barack Obama won’t use the phrase.
First, a breakdown of the events Trump mentions.
The attacks on September 11, 2001, were coordinated and carried out by al Qaeda, an Islamic extremist terror network. According to law enforcement officials, the San Bernardino shooters may have been self-radicalized, following a warped and extremist version of Islam. The terror group ISIS claimed credit for the San Bernardino shootings, but it has yet to be determined if the shooters and members of ISIS made contact or received instruction.
The Orlando shooter cited himself as an “Islamic soldier” during his talks with police negotiators, but like the San Bernardino attacks, officials believe the shooter acted as a “lone wolf” and was radicalized by online sources.
At face value, the attackers noted by Trump were indeed beholden to a radicalized ideology.
Verdict: True.
Trump also criticized Clinton and Obama for their failure to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Clinton, however, told CNN’s “New Day” in June that she did not object to the phrase when used properly, saying, “From my perspective, it matters what we do more than what we say. … And it mattered we got (Osama) bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said we — whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”
Obama spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper last month on his particular reluctance to use the phrase, saying, “The truth of the matter is that this is an issue that has been sort of manufactured, because there is no doubt, and I’ve said repeatedly, that where we see terrorist organizations like al Qaeda or ISIL, they have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse, for basically barbarism and death.”
Clinton doesn’t object to the phrase so we rate Trump’s claim as false. Obama may call the issue a distraction, but he refuses to use the term. That claim is true.
Clinton’s fortune
Reality Check: No, Hillary Clinton did not use her office to make $250 million
By Theodore Schleifer, CNN
Trump was curious why Clinton had not devoted any of her personal fortune to his campaign, like he has to his. But his charge included a curious datapoint.
“She made $250 million by being in office. She used the power of her office to make a lot of money,” Trump claimed.
The main way the Clintons made money: private speeches. The speaking fees — and what Clinton said to financial audiences behind closed doors — emerged as a major campaign issue during the Democratic primary, with her rival Bernie Sanders repeatedly calling for the release of the transcripts. And the money she made was another sign of what critics said was a disconnect between the life of the secretary of state and the life of the average American.
But that number’s not right. Clinton delivered 92 paid speeches between April 2013, when she was a private citizen, through March 2015, right before she launched her presidential campaign. But those remarks only yielded $21.6 million — an average speaking fee of $235,000, according to a CNN analysis of her payments.
Trump may have been misspeaking and meaning to reference a different number: $150 million, which is the amount that both Clintons collected during their time after office. When you include Bill Clinton’s 637 paid speaking engagements from February 2001 to May 2015, the total Clinton fees rises to $154 million split over 729 speeches.
And if you throw in other sources of income, the two Clintons’ intake does indeed arrive to the $250 million ballpark. Forbes reported that Bill and Hillary Clinton earned $230 million between 2001 and 2014 through advising and consulting gigs, book deals and speaking fees.
But a majority of that money came from Bill Clinton, who has had a much lengthier tenure outside of public office.
As for how much she has contributed to her campaign, Clinton has made $1.2 million in in-kind contributions to her campaign.
So we rate the $250 million total, ascribed purely to Hillary Clinton, to be false.
Jobs
Reality Check: Trump says Clinton ‘failed’ to bring jobs to upstate N.Y.
By Patrick Gillespie, CNNMoney
Trump criticized Clinton’s record as a senator representing New York, saying: “Hillary was going to bring back jobs to upstate New York and she failed.”
As a senator, Clinton promised to bring 200,000 jobs to upstate New York. She did not.
Upstate New York consists of 49 counties, according to the New York Federal Reserve. It does not include New York City and its surrounding suburban counties.
Clinton became a senator in January 2001 and her last full month in office was December 2008.
During that time, employment in the metro area of Syracuse increased by 5,029 workers. However, the unemployment rate in Syracuse was 4.8% at the start of 2001 and, like much of the nation, rose in 2008 to 6.7%, Labor Department figures show.
Ithaca also had jobs gains but a rise in the unemployment rate.
In Binghamton’s metro area, employment declined by 3,600 workers during Clinton’s term. In Rochester, employment declined by 5,600 workers.
In a December 2007 report, the New York Federal Reserve found private sector job growth in upstate New York declined 0.2% on average per year between 2000 and 2005. Job growth did pick up in 2006 and 2007.
The region did lose 85,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2006. However, that was in line with the national trend. While Clinton was a senator, the US economy lost about 4.2 million manufacturing jobs due to improved technology and trade. The New York Fed noted in its report that the manufacturing job losses in upstate New York “appear unlikely to be reversed.”
The manufacturing job losses also weren’t entirely offset by job gains in lower-paying industries such as health care, education and hospitality, the report found.
Verdict: Mostly true.
Trade
Reality Check: Trump on $800 billion trade deficit
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump once again blasted America’s trade deals and once again gave the wrong figure for the nation’s trade gap.
“Last year, we had almost $800 billion trade deficit. In other words, trading with other countries. We had an $800 billion deficit. It’s hard to believe. Inconceivable,” Trump said.
The nation had a nearly $763 billion deficit in the trading of goods in 2015, according to Census Bureau figures.
But America is shifting to a service economy and exports $262 billion more in services than we import.
That brings our overall trade deficit down to $500 billion for 2015.
Verdict: False.
Trump’s insults
Reality Check: Clinton on the people Trump has insulted
By Kate Grise, CNN
Clinton said Trump has insulted many different groups.
“We have seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to 10. We’ve seen him embarrass women on TV and Twitter. We saw him after the first debate spend nearly a week denigrating a former Miss Universe on the harshest most personal terms. So, yes. This is who Donald Trump is. It’s not only women and this video that raises questions about his fitness to be our president. Because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims and so many others,” Clinton said.
Let’s break down some of Clinton’s points.
“We have seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to 10,” Clinton began.
In a 2005 interview with Howard Stern, Trump said, “I view a person who’s flat-chested as very hard to be a 10.”
He then proceeded to rank a list of celebrity women on a scale from one to 10 as Stern provides him with their names.
Stern suggested Trump should start a “Donald Trump evaluation show” to give weekly ratings on women.
“You know that would be a very good show for Sirius I think,” Trump agrees. “You do that for hours and hours. It would get tremendous ratings.”
We rate Clinton’s claim as true.
“We saw him after the debate spend nearly a week denigrating a former Miss Universe on the harshest most personal terms,” Clinton said.
In the days after the first presidential debate last month, Trump repeatedly defended his statements about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
“She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem, we had a real problem, not only with that but her attitude, and we had a real problem with her,” Trump said on Fox News.
Trump went after Machado on Twitter as well — “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”
We rate Clinton’s claim as true.
“He has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilites, POWs, and Muslims and so many others,” Clinton said.
Trump on immigrants: “But you have people coming in and I’m not just saying Mexicans. I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union” last year.
During the first presidential debate, Trump said, “We have gangs roaming the street. And in many cases, they’re illegally here, illegal immigrants, and they have guns. And they shoot people. And we have to be very strong. And we have to be very vigilant.”
Trump on African-Americans: “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?”
Trump on Latinos: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” Trump said in his presidential announcement speech in June last year.
Trump on people with disabilities: At a rally last November, Trump mocked a disabled reporter by impersonating him.
Trump said that he did not know the reporter, so therefore he could not have been mocking him.
Trump on POWs: “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said of Sen. John McCain who was a prisoner of war during the Vietman War. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Trump on Muslims: Trump has called for surveillance of mosques, religious tests for immigrants that would prevent Muslims from entering the country and compiling a national database of Muslims living in the United States.
We rate Clinton’s litany of claims as true.
