Throughout a particular city corridor that aired Oct. 16, former President Donald Trump joined Fox Information host Harris Faulkner for a dialogue earlier than an all-female viewers. The discuss aimed to deal with problems with specific curiosity to girls forward of Election Day, Nov. 5.
With polls displaying Vice President Kamala Harris main amongst girls voters, Trump’s document on reproductive rights points is underneath specific scrutiny.
Fox aired the particular “The Faulkner Focus” episode a day after recording it in Cumming, Georgia, exterior Atlanta, on Oct. 15. That’s the identical day Georgia election officers said they noticed record-breaking first-day early voting figures with greater than 328,000 votes solid.
Fox Information was additionally anticipated to air at 6 p.m. ET interview with Harris on “Particular Report With Bret Baier.”
Trump usually distorted the info as he answered questions on baby care, abortion and the financial system.
Listed here are 12 fact-checkable moments.
Trump: “I’m the daddy of IVF.”
When one participant requested Trump about his stance on in vitro fertilization, Trump known as himself the “father of IVF.”
There may be hyperbole right here, in fact: The primary profitable IVF remedy befell in 1978, when a child named Louise Pleasure Brown was born in England; Trump had no connection to that.
His public help for IVF largely started throughout the 2024 marketing campaign amid Democratic criticism that Republicans wish to limit or remove the follow.
In February, the conservative Alabama Supreme Court docket ruled that frozen embryos ought to be thought-about kids, prompting some clinics within the state to pause IVF therapies. After backlash, Alabama lawmakers passed legislation to defend IVF suppliers from civil or felony legal responsibility and clinics resumed remedy.
In April, Trump launched a video on his abortion place wherein he stated that he helps making it “simpler” for households to have infants.
“That features supporting the supply of fertility therapies, like IVF, in each state in America,” Trump stated.
Trump has additionally not too long ago proposed having the government cover IVF costs or requiring insurers to take action. He hasn’t stated how he would do that.
Trump: “Each authorized scholar, the nice ones,” together with Democrats and Republicans, wished abortion to be despatched again to the states.
False. Earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade determination in June 2022, quite a few authorized students wrote briefs urging the Supreme Court docket to uphold it.
Some authorized students who favor abortion rights have criticized Roe’s authorized underpinnings, saying that completely different constitutional arguments, primarily based on equal safety, would have supplied a stronger case. However authorized consultants, together with some who held this view, stated these students wouldn’t have advocated for overturning Roe on this foundation.
Requested about how he would scale back excessive baby care prices, Trump stated his daughter Ivanka Trump urged him to “do tax credit for girls, for the kid tax credit. … Then, I did it.”
Trump in 2016 pledged to “rewrite the tax code to permit working mother and father to deduct from their revenue taxes baby care bills for as much as 4 kids and aged dependents.” He didn’t hold that promise.
A 2017 congressional tax invoice that handed underneath Trump elevated the per-child credit score, nevertheless it didn’t considerably overhaul present baby care provisions within the tax code. Households received further baby tax credit, a few of which had been refundable for households that didn’t earn sufficient to pay taxes.
The credit score for every baby youthful than 17 doubled from $1,000 to $2,000, plus $500 for nonchild dependents. The credit had been partially offset by one other provision of Trump’s tax invoice — the disappearance of the private and dependent exemption. The kid credit score additionally wasn’t focused solely towards mother and father who wanted to pay for baby care.
In 2021, the Biden administration authorised the American Rescue Plan Act, which expanded the kid tax credit score that 12 months to $3,600 per baby youthful than 6, and $3,000 per baby ages 6 to 17.
Trump stated it’s “true” that the Biden administration views conservative girls as home terrorists.
An viewers member instructed Trump, “I wish to thanks for coming right into a room full of ladies that the present administration would think about home terrorists.”
Trump agreed, saying, “That’s true, by the best way.”
The federal authorities has no blanket designation of “home terrorist” for politically conservative girls.
Trump could have been referring to an argument over federal regulation enforcement’s response to variations of opinion over curriculum being voiced at college board conferences. However we rated False a declare that “mother and father that go to high school board conferences” and query the curriculum are being “flagged by the Division of Justice and the FBI for attending a gathering.
In October 2021, Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland wrote a memo directing the FBI and federal prosecutors to carry conferences nationwide on felony threats in opposition to faculty personnel. However that memo centered on monitoring felony conduct, not mother and father’ views about faculty curriculum. Inner FBI steerage confirmed a “risk tag” was created to trace threats in opposition to faculty officers, to not flag mother and father completely for voicing views on curriculum.
The comment may be referring to the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle’s labeling of conservative mother and father’ rights teams, together with Mothers for Liberty, as “extremist.” The middle issued an annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022 that included that designation.
Nevertheless, the middle is a nonprofit group unaffiliated with the federal authorities, and its determination to label some socially conservative organizations as extremist or hate teams has been criticized each by conservatives and by some liberals.
Trump: “When Elon (Musk) had the Starlinks” they “had been confiscated by FEMA, by principally the highest folks, as a result of they didn’t need it to go there.”
Starlink, a satellite tv for pc web supplier, is a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s business spaceflight firm, SpaceX. Starlink distributed user terminal devices to assist folks hook up with the web in hurricane-hit areas after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Social media posts falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Administration Company and the Federal Aviation Administration had been “blocking” deliveries of Starlink gadgets and different provides to hurricane-affected areas. Others falsely stated FEMA was confiscating donations and provides.
North Carolina Emergency Administration instructed PolitiFact in a press release that the State Emergency Response Group knew of no delayed catastrophe aid flights. The assertion additionally stated the FAA was coordinating with state and native officers to make sure secure flights in congested airspace. The FAA can briefly limit flights to maintain airspace secure throughout hurricane response.
FEMA delivers provides and donations to states; the states and state-designated teams distribute the provides, together with volunteer businesses focusing on managing donated objects.
Trump: The federal authorities is “providing (hurricane victims) like a little bit pittance.”
Trump seemed to be referring to FEMA’s Serious Needs Assistance program, which supplies $750 covers important objects equivalent to “meals, water, child formulation, breastfeeding provides, remedy and different emergency provides.”
However that cost is meant as a fast, emergency cost and storm victims can apply for additional assist. The federal authorities is also offering hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to victims to assist with residence restore and short-term housing.
In January 2024, FEMA announced changes to catastrophe aid to make it simpler for victims to get assist. One measure, which took impact in March, included giving wider entry to a direct $750 per individual impacted by excessive climate, which might embody storms, hurricanes, fires and tornadoes.
Trump: “Once I took over, we had been No. 3 and No. 4 in power by way of manufacturing. Once I left, we had been No. 1, by far.”
Trump misleads for power general, however he has some extent on oil.
In 2017, when Trump took workplace, China ranked No. 1 on the earth in complete power manufacturing, with america second, Russia third and Saudi Arabia fourth. In 2020, his final 12 months in workplace, the identical 4 nations ranked the identical. And the identical 4 nations had been in the identical order in 2022, the latest 12 months for which information is offered. When Trump took workplace in 2017, U.S. power manufacturing was 82% of China’s. That fell to 79% in 2020.
Trump is extra correct on oil production. In 2017, U.S. manufacturing trailed Russia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. vaulted to first in 2018 and has remained in that slot since.
The U.S.’ edge over Russia and China has widened underneath the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump: “I had rates of interest at 2%. They went to 10% (underneath President Joe Biden).”
That is exaggerated on each ends.
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached a low of two.65% shortly earlier than Trump left workplace, however charges had fallen amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier than the pandemic hit in early 2020, mortgage charges had been about 3.5%. For Trump’s total time period prepandemic, the typical charge was 4.12%, and the height charge underneath Trump was 4.94% in November 2018.
Trump has some extent that mortgage charges are increased underneath Biden, as a result of the Federal Reserve has raised charges to stem inflation. However they by no means went as excessive as 10%.
The height charge underneath Biden was 7.79% in October 2023. It has since dropped to six.32%.
Trump: In Springfield, Ohio, there are “32,000 folks coming right into a 50,000 neighborhood. They’re taking on the varsity.”
Trump’s numbers are inflated, primarily based on statements by city officials.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue stated in September that town added 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants previously 4 years. Most immigrants in Springfield are Haitian, however not all.
In July, Metropolis Supervisor Bryan Heck cited the next variety of 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians arriving in Springfield during the last 4 years in a neighborhood of just below 60,000. Many of the immigrants who not too long ago settled in Springfield are allowed to briefly dwell and work within the nation legally.
The number of Haitian children in the Springfield schools has grown, however these kids haven’t displaced different college students.
Trump: Vice President Kamala Harris “was made the border czar.”
We’ve rated claims that Harris oversaw U.S. efforts to restrict unlawful immigration because the “border czar” Mostly False.
In March 2021, Biden assigned Harris to work alongside officers in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to deal with the problems driving folks to depart these nations and are available to america. These points embody financial insecurity, corruption, human rights and violence. Border safety and administration is the Homeland Safety secretary’s accountability.
In June 2021, Harris visited El Paso, Texas, with Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They outlined their duties to reporters. Harris stated she was addressing “the basis causes of migration, predominantly out of Central America,” and Mayorkas stated, “It’s my accountability because the Secretary of Homeland Safety to deal with the safety and administration of our border.”
Trump: “I gave you the biggest tax cuts within the historical past of our nation.”
When it was handed, Trump’s tax minimize was, in inflation-adjusted {dollars}, the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a share of gross home product, it ranked seventh. (GDP is the whole financial worth of the products and companies a nation produces.)
Trump: “13,099 murderers had been launched into our nation.”
In a letter, Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated there have been 13,099 noncitizens convicted of murder who are usually not in immigration detention. However the information represents individuals who entered the nation previously 40 years; there is no such thing as a proof that each one 13,099 folks entered underneath the Biden-Harris administration.
Many individuals are usually not in immigration detention as a result of they’re in regulation enforcement custody serving sentences. Immigration regulation typically requires the folks convicted of aggravated felonies, equivalent to murder, to be detained as soon as they’ve served their sentences. However a Supreme Court docket ruling, not the Biden-Harris administration, stated folks can’t be held indefinitely in immigration detention. So, folks from nations that don’t settle for deportation flights should be launched.
PolitiFact workers author Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this report.
This reality test was initially published by PolitiFact, which is a part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this reality test here.
