Fact-Checking Biden’s and Trump’s Policy Claims Before the Debate

[Pelican Press 0]

Fact-Checking Biden’s and Trump’s Policy Claims Before the Debate

President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump will face off Thursday night for the first time in four years, giving each ample opportunity to fling accusations about the other’s positions. Some will hew close to the facts, but there will most likely be ample exaggeration or statements lacking adequate nuance.

The two candidates have not been shy in their critiques and attacks on each other on the campaign trail.

The presumptive nominees have sparred over immigration policy and the state of the economy. Mr. Trump has portrayed the country, hyperbolically, under Mr. Biden as lawless. Mr. Biden has sometimes omitted context while describing Mr. Trump’s views on ********* rights and the Affordable Care Act.

Here’s a fact check of some of their recent claims on domestic issues.

Mr. Trump misrepresented ********* laws and ****** levels across the country.

What Was Said

“It’s hard to believe they have some states passing legislation where you can ******** the baby after birth.”

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False. No state has passed a law allowing the ********** of a baby after it is born, which is infanticide.

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to *********, about 20 states have enacted protections enshrining the right in state constitutions and shielding those seeking or providing abortions in the state from restrictions in other states. None of these new laws allow for “executing” the baby after birth.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, cited broad support among the Democratic Party, including from Mr. Biden, for a bill that guaranteed ********* rights nationwide. Opponents said the bill

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to abortions, including ones that occurred later in pregnancy. The bill does not decriminalize infanticide.

Abortions later in pregnancy in general are very rare: In 2021, less than 1 percent of abortions happened after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the

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. In even more exceedingly rare cases where the fetus has abnormalities and a low likelihood of survival and labor is induced, the family may ask doctors to provide comfort care, rather than resuscitation, according to guidance from the

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.

What Was Said

“The level of ****** in the cities, in these big cities, is out of control. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

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False. Violent ****** and property ****** are near the

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, despite public perception to the contrary. And while there was an increase in ****** during the pandemic, including the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency, violent ****** was higher in 2020 under Mr. Trump than under Mr. Biden so far.

The violent ****** rate was 380.7 per 100,000 people in 2022,

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That was a lower rate than in all but three years — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — since 1985. Preliminary analysis from the F.B.I. suggested that violent ******

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, with an even greater drop of

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with more than one million people.

The property ****** rate was 1,954.4 per 100,000 people in 2022. That was 6.6 percent higher than the rate in 2021 and the first time in more than 20 years that the property ****** rate had increased — but it was still the second-lowest rate since 1985. Property ****** decreased 15.1 percent in the first quarter of 2024 from the same ******* in 2023, according to the F.B.I.’s preliminary analysis.

The Council on ********* Justice, a think tank in Washington, has analyzed raw weekly ****** reports from 38 cities to try to develop more updated statistics than in the official F.B.I. reports. It

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that homicides, assaults and carjackings fell, but shoplifting and motor vehicle theft increased in 2023.

Ms. Leavitt pointed to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’

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which showed an increase in violent and property ****** from 2021 to 2022. But the ****** rates in 2022 still remain below ****** rates from the 1990s and 2000s.

Mr. Biden overstated Mr. Trump’s views on ********* and the Affordable Care Act.

What Was Said

“Listen to what he said in Time magazine article. He said states — quote — ‘States should monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate the ********* bans.’ Monitor women’s pregnancies? Prosecute them?”

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“He said there has to be ‘punishment’ for women exercising their reproductive freedom.”

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This is exaggerated. Mr. Biden is overstating Mr. Trump’s remarks in the first instance and omitting that he retracted his statement in the second.

In April

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with Time magazine, Mr. Trump repeatedly said ********* restrictions should be left to the states. He did not endorse or oppose possible efforts by states to prosecute violations of ********* bans. Asked whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute violators, Mr. Trump didn’t say that they should. He said that “they might do that” and that “the states are going to say.” His views are “totally irrelevant,” he added, because the states make those decisions.

The Biden campaign argued that Mr. Trump’s statements amounted to approval.

Mr. Biden also evoked comments Mr. Trump made in

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on MSNBC when a host repeatedly pressed him on his views about punishments for women who get abortions in states where the procedure is banned.

“The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment,” Mr. Trump eventually replied.

The host, Chris Matthews, asked, “For the woman?”

“Yeah, there has to be some form,” Mr. Trump responded.

Hours later, Mr. Trump walked back his remarks in a

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. If ********* were ******** in a state or nationally, he said, then “the doctor or any other person performing this ******** act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

The next day, Mr. Trump suggested that he misspoke and said he was talking about the ********* *******’s views.

In the years since those comments, Mr. Trump has not again endorsed punishments for women. Asked by Time magazine this April whether he was comfortable with states punishing women who access abortions after a ban, Mr. Trump said that “the states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

James Singer, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign, pointed to Mr. Trump’s praise for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a federal right to ********* and that “the ********* bans he unleashed are punishing women nationwide.”

Ms. Leavitt from the Trump campaign called Mr. Biden’s claims a “desperate attempt to scare voters” and reiterated that Mr. Trump believes that states, and voters in those states, should decide ********* laws.

What Was Said

“He still wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.”

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This needs context. Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but ******* to do so. Though Mr. Trump continues to criticize the health care law as an expensive “disaster,” he has recently suggested he might improve it rather than repeal the law altogether.

The Biden campaign pointed to earlier statements from Mr. Trump. In November, he said that he wants to “

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” the Affordable Care Act and that the *********** Party “

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” in their efforts to seek an alternative.

But

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, Mr. Trump promised “much better health care at a lower price for you, and that will be either working on Obamacare or doing something new.”

In March, he renewed the vow,

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, “I’m not running to terminate the ACA.” He added that he was running to make the health care law “much, much, much better for far less money.”

Mr. Trump has not released any details on what this would entail. His current proposals for health care are vague, and he has repeatedly broken promises to reveal a plan.

On his campaign website, he

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to “stop all Covid mandates and restore medical freedom, end surprise medical billing, increase fairness through price transparency, and further reduce the cost of prescription drugs and health insurance premiums.” He also promised to protect “patients with pre-existing conditions.”

Both candidates sought credit for a $35 price cap on insulin.

What Was Said

“Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it.”
— Mr. Trump in

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This is exaggerated. The Trump administration started a Medicare pilot program in 2020 under which insurers could offer plans that capped the price of insulin at $35 a month. In 2022, Mr. Biden signed into law a provision that required the cost limit and expanded it to far more Medicare plans.

The Trump administration’s program was voluntary and applied only to Medicare prescription ***** coverage plans, known as Part D. KFF, a health care nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, estimated that about

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in 2022, covering about

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The Inflation Reduction Act, the climate change, health and tax law Mr. Biden signed in 2022, expanded the $35 cap to all Medicare Part D plans, covering about

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, and also added a $35 cap to co-pays under Medicare Part B, which provides medical coverage. The Department of Health and Human Services estimated that about

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stood to benefit from the law.

What Was Said

“We finally got to the point where, for example, those of you who know someone who has diabetes and needs — and need the insulin, it used to cost an average 400 bucks a month. It now costs $35 a month.”
— Mr. Biden at

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This is exaggerated. The Health Care Cost Institute, a research nonprofit,

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that per person spending on insulin doubled from 2012 to 2016, to $5,705 a year, or about $475 a month. But that is an estimate for all people with Type 1 diabetes, not just Medicare beneficiaries, and it does not include ***** rebates or coupons.

Patients’ out-of-pocket spending on insulin was $434 on average for all of 2019 — not per month — and $449 per year for Medicare enrollees,

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.

The agency estimated that on average, beneficiaries could save about $500 annually under the Inflation Reduction Act’s expanded price cap — a substantial reduction, but not the thousands of dollars Mr. Biden suggested.

Mr. Trump made outlandish claims about climate change and renewable energy.

What Was Said

“They ***** the birds. They ***** the whales. But on the ocean floor, surveys for their construction are causing tremendous problems with the fish and the whales and everything else.”
— Mr. Trump at

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This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has long been an ardent critic of wind turbines and insisted, hyperbolically, for

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that they are a top driver of avian deaths. Now, he has claimed with no evidence the turbines are ******** whales, too.

By one estimate, as many as

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each year flying into wind farms, but other things — inanimate and living — pose a far greater threat. Cats ***** as many as

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, fossil fuel power plants

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and collisions with buildings as many as

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.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and marine biologists have said they are unaware of any whale deaths caused by offshore wind turbines, surveys or construction.

“There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities,”

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Patrick Halpin, a professor of marine geospatial ecology at Duke University, reiterated that point. “There has been no evidence presented to date that indicates that offshore wind development on the U.S. Atlantic shelf is directly or indirectly contributing to increased whale mortalities,” he said.

An unusually large number of Atlantic humpback whales —

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— have ***** between Maine and Florida since 2016.

Ms. Leavitt, from the Trump campaign, noted that the first offshore wind farm in Rhode Island became operational in 2016.

But that is correlation and does not prove causation.

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that vessel strikes and ship movements in areas where whales forage — not offshore wind farms — are the main driver.

There are

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on the east coast, in Rhode Island, Virginia and New York. Permits have been approved for seven other projects, and construction largely began in 2023 or later. Whales have ***** in both states with wind farms undergoing construction as well as in states that do not have any projects under construction, such as New Jersey, North Carolina and Maine.

Mr. Trump’s claims that surveys assessing offshore feasibility are causing deaths is also unsupported.

The sonar used to map the ocean floor and sound emitting from turbines are not strong enough to damage whales, said Robert Kenney, a marine research scientist emeritus at the University of Rhode Island who has researched endangered whales for decades. Although construction noises can disturb whales, energy companies are required to mitigate the impact and mute the noise. Dr. Kenney has

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that noises from oil exploration can be much louder than wind farm surveys.

What Was Said

“They say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years, one-eighth of an inch, which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK?”

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False. Mr. Trump is vastly understating the impact of climate change. Sea levels have

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and by

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over the last three decades.

How exactly rising sea levels will impact coastlines and islands is difficult to predict. Still, scientists estimate that under a worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise by as much as

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— more than 3,100 times what Mr. Trump said.

Angelo Fichera contributed reporting.

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#FactChecking #Bidens #Trumps #Policy #Claims #Debate

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