By MELISSA GOLDIN Related Press
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet face-to-face for the primary time in a highly-anticipated debate Tuesday night time. The 2 presidential candidates describe the state of the nation in starkly completely different phrases. Trump typically paints a darkish image centered round points reminiscent of immigration and excessive inflation, whereas Harris focuses on optimism for the longer term, promising that “we’re not going again.”
The primary debate of the 2024 election in June — at which President Joe Biden’s disastrous efficiency finally forced him from the race — featured a number of false and deceptive claims from each candidates and it’s probably that Tuesday’s match-up will embrace a lot of the identical.
Right here’s a have a look at some earlier false and deceptive claims as Trump and Harris meet to debate.
Abortion stays a high situation
The unprecedented Supreme Court docket ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade more than two years ago has made abortion a key situation within the 2024 election. On account of the ruling, abortion is now banned in any respect levels of being pregnant, with restricted exceptions, in 14 Republican-controlled states. It’s barred after in regards to the first six weeks, which is earlier than many know they’re pregnant, in three different states.
Trump typically tries to painting Democrats as radical on abortion. He has falsely claimed on a number of events, together with the debate in June, that some states enable ladies to get an abortion after their child is born. That is in not true. Infanticide is criminalized in each state, and no state has passed a law that permits killing a child after delivery.
Throughout her speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Harris stated Trump would “enact a nationwide abortion ban with or with out Congress.” Trump stated in an Aug. 22 look on ”Fox & Mates”: “I might by no means. There is not going to be a federal ban. That is now again within the states the place it belongs.” Nevertheless, as just lately as March he urged he’d help a nationwide ban on abortion around 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Blame for the Afghanistan withdrawal
Trump has repeatedly tried to hyperlink Harris to the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which noticed the Taliban take over the nation once more earlier than the final American troops even flew out of the Kabul airport in August 2021.
Most assessments have concluded that Trump and Biden share blame for the disastrous finish to America’s longest struggle. The principle U.S. authorities watchdog for the struggle points to Trump’s 2020 take care of the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces and navy contractors as “the only most necessary issue” within the collapse of U.S.-allied Afghan safety forces and the Taliban takeover.
Biden’s April 2021 announcement that he would proceed with the withdrawal set in movement by Trump was the second-biggest issue, the watchdog stated. Harris has stated she was the last person in the room when Biden made his determination, however neither watchdog opinions nor a more than 18-month investigation by Home Republicans have recognized any occasion the place the vp had a big impression on decision-making.
A suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport through the withdrawal killed 13 service members and greater than 170 Afghans.
Differing views on the economic system
Voters rank the economic system and inflation as main issues going into the election, with each Trump and Harris making a case for the way they’re higher for the nation’s pockets.
Democrats, together with Harris, have claimed that Trump’s proposal to impose a tariff of 10% to twenty% on all imports — and as much as 60% on imports from China — would price the typical household $3,900 a 12 months. Most economists do anticipate it will increase costs on many items. The $3,900 determine comes from the Heart for American Progress, a progressive advocacy group. Nevertheless, Trump has stated the tariff income may very well be used to chop different taxes, which would scale back the general price of the coverage.
Considered one of Harris’ main coverage proposals would offer $25,000 in down fee help to sure first-time homebuyers and tax incentives to builders of starter houses. Specialists say these guarantees may find yourself working at cross-purposes, as assist with down fee help would nearly definitely enhance demand when estimates of the U.S. housing scarcity already vary from 3 million to 7 million houses.
Trump constantly touts the economic system underneath his administration as one of the best within the nation’s historical past, highlighting excessive ranges of inflation underneath Biden.
But it surely’s inaccurate to assert that the economic system was at its greatest underneath Trump. First, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large recession throughout his presidency. If points attributable to the pandemic are eliminated, financial development averaged 2.67% throughout Trump’s first three years. That’s fairly stable, however nowhere close to the 4% common underneath Invoice Clinton from 1993 to 2001, in line with the Bureau of Financial Evaluation.
And whereas inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 after rising steadily within the first 17 months of Biden’s presidency from a low of 0.1% in Might 2020, it’s now seeing a downward pattern. The most recent data exhibits that as of July it had fallen to 2.9%, with year-over-year inflation at its lowest stage in additional than three years.
Power, inflation and a flip-flop on fracking
Trump has lengthy promised to “drill, child, drill,” as a way to ramp up oil manufacturing and produce down inflation. However oil manufacturing within the U.S. hit an all-time high underneath Biden’s administration and inflation is already on the best way down. Furthermore, gas prices are declining across the U.S. The typical price of standard gasoline was $3.27 on Monday, down considerably from a excessive of $5.01 in June 2022, in line with the American Vehicle Affiliation.
Trump just lately claimed that each one coal-fired energy crops will probably be compelled to shut within the subsequent few years because of a rule issued in April by the Environmental Safety Company. However that’s false. Coal-fired energy crops will probably be compelled to seize 90% of smokestack emissions by 2032 or shut down. Vegetation already closing are doing so largely due to financial causes — they can not compete with pure gasoline, photo voltaic and wind.
Harris’ shifting views on fracking have been put underneath the microscope in current weeks. The vp stated at a Democratic presidential city corridor in 2019, throughout her short-lived 2020 presidential marketing campaign, that she opposed fracking. However her present marketing campaign clarified that she no longer supports a ban on the apply.
Throughout her first sit-down interview since she introduced her 2024 candidacy, Harris stated she made her place to not ban fracking “clear on the controversy stage in 2020” when she faced off with then-Vice President Mike Pence. A assessment of the controversy discovered she stated, “Joe Biden is not going to finish fracking.”
Violent crime charges underneath Trump and Biden-Harris
Democrats have pointed to excessive violent crime charges underneath Trump as the previous president — who was convicted on 34 charges in a scheme to illegally affect the 2016 election — requires regulation and order, claiming that violent crime has flourished through the Biden administration.
Violent crime decreased all through most of Trump’s presidency, according to FBI data that makes use of data supplied by regulation enforcement businesses. Nevertheless, it spiked in 2020 as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. It has trended downward since 2020 throughout the U.S., nearing pre-pandemic ranges in 2022. Preliminary FBI data for 2023 exhibits that violent crime total was down one other 6% that 12 months.
The Division of Justice’s most up-to-date National Crime Victimization Survey, then again, discovered that violent crime each reported and never reported to police rose from 2021 to 2022 by 42.4% for folks age 12 or older. In contrast to the FBI statistics, which cowl victims of all ages, the survey uses self-reported data and doesn’t embrace murders.
Continued assaults on border safety
Trump is predicted to as soon as once more assault Harris on border safety. He claimed in a press conference last month that 20 million folks, maybe extra, have come throughout the U.S.-Mexico border through the present administration. However that quantity is unsubstantiated at greatest.
U.S. Customs and Border Safety reported 7.1 million arrests for unlawful crossings from Mexico from January 2021 by way of June 2024. That’s arrests, not folks. Below pandemic-era asylum restrictions, many individuals crossed greater than as soon as till they succeeded as a result of there have been no authorized penalties for getting turned again. So the variety of folks is decrease than the variety of arrests.
Together with the variety of instances migrants have been stopped at official land crossings, in addition to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have been admitted to the nation underneath presidential authority, the variety of encounters rises to eight.7 million. CBP doesn’t publish its estimates of people that eluded seize.
Allegations that unlawful immigration has induced a spike in violent crime are additionally unfounded. A lot of heinous and high-profile crimes involving folks within the U.S. illegally have been within the information in current months, however there’s nothing to help the declare that it’s widespread. FBI statistics don’t separate out crimes by the immigration standing of the assailant, and there’s no proof of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, both alongside the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the best inflow of migrants, like New York.
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