Category: Fact Check

In his acceptance speech after being elected speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., criticized President Joe Biden’s stewardship of the economy.

He offered a series of statistics to make his case in the Oct. 25 speech, touching on credit card debt, mortgage rates and inflation.

“Prices have increased over 17% in the last two years,” Johnson said.

Johnson has a point that prices have increased over two years, but not by 17%. He also ignored that wages have also increased, though not as much as prices.

For the two-year period between September 2021 and September 2023, the standard inflation metric, the consumer price index, rose by 12%.

That’s high by historical standards, which over a two-year period would be between 4% and 6%, but short of the 17% Johnson cited.

Meanwhile, the consumer price index on its own does not paint a complete picture of how prices affect American spending.

Average hourly earnings of all private employees, a standard metric of worker pay, rose by 9.4%.

The bad news is this means worker pay lost ground against inflation. The somewhat less bad news is that the average worker didn’t lose 12% in purchasing power, as a look at the inflation statistic by itself would indicate, but something more like 2.6%. And that’s over two years, meaning that over the course of a year, the average earner would be falling behind by about 1.3%.

Johnson’s office sent PolitiFact data showing that consumer prices have increased 17% since the beginning of Joe Biden’s term in January 2021. However, Johnson said “two years,” not two years and nine months.

All in all, not great news for the typical worker, but not quite as impactful as the 17% figure Johnson cited in his speech.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True.

After House Republicans unanimously voted for Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as the new speaker, Democratic politicians pounced on them for choosing someone who defied democratic norms after the 2020 presidential election.

Johnson aligned himself with Donald Trump and congressional Republicans who sought to overturn legitimate results ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Johnson’s efforts went beyond tweets and votes, the Democrats said after the Oct. 25 speaker vote.

The Biden-Harris campaign called Johnson “a leading 2020 election denier.” U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., called Johnson “the chief architect” of the effort to overturn election results.

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said on the House floor, “Republicans have put their names behind someone who has been called the most important architect of the Electoral College objections,” borrowing a phrase from a New York Times analysis of Johnson’s role.

U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., responded with defiance, hollering, “Damn right!” 

Republicans booed ABC News reporter Rachel Scott for asking Johnson about his efforts to overturn the election. One lawmaker told Scott to “shut up.” Johnson grinned, shook his head and said, “Next question.”

Calling Johnson the “chief architect” may be a stretch. Johnson was not among those charged in the federal or Fulton County, Georgia, election subversion cases, and he barely got a mention in the final Jan. 6 committee report. Johnson, a lawyer for decades, was not the public face of Trump’s battle in the courts and in public, unlike lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

However, Johnson played a key role in the effort to get lawmakers to sign onto trying to overturn the election in the courts and to vote against congressional certification. 

Johnson’s term as speaker runs through at least early January 2025 — meaning he will preside over the House as it votes to formally accept the results of the 2024 election.

Johnson urged House Republicans to join Texas lawsuit

Johnson aligned himself with Trump’s response to the election results early on.

On Nov. 7, the day that media outlets projected Biden’s win, Johnson tweeted, “I have just called President Trump to say this: ‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’”

Two days later, he posted another message of support, tweeting, “President Trump called me last night and I was encouraged to hear his continued resolve to ensure that every LEGAL vote gets properly counted and that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted. Fair elections are worth fighting for!” 

From there his efforts took a legal turn.

​​In December 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block four battleground states from voting in the Electoral College. Those four states voted for Biden.

Johnson also sent an email to Republican colleagues asking them to join an amicus — or “friend of the court” — brief in support of Paxton’s lawsuit, CNN reported. The email said Trump was “anxiously awaiting the final list” to see who would sign the brief. 

His recruitment was successful. The majority of the conference, 126 Republicans, signed the brief. Johnson tweeted Dec. 10, 2020, that he was “proud to lead” the effort.

Days later, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Paxton’s lawsuit, concluding Texas should have no say in other states’ elections.

Johnson fueled falsehoods about voting machines, Georgia ballots

As Johnson fought to continue the legal battles over the election, he spread voting machine conspiracies. 

In a radio show interview Nov. 17, 2020, Johnson said he was not going to concede that Biden won because Trump and others “know intuitively that there was a lot amiss about this Election Day.”

Johnson brought up “allegations about the voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software” by Dominion Voting Systems. 

In the same radio show interview, Johnson said an election software system “came from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.” We debunked similar conspiracy theories that Chavez’s family owned Dominion Voting Systems. 

Dominion was founded in 2003 in Toronto, Canada. In 2018, the company was acquired by Staple Street Capital, a private equity firm based in New York. Dominion sued Fox News for defamation after airing falsehoods about their equipment, leading to an $787.5 million  settlement.

Johnson said there was “a lot of merit” to voting machine conspiracy theories, “and when the president says the election was ‘rigged’ that is what he was talking about; the fix was in.”

Johnson called for exhausting “all the legal remedies.” The Trump side went on to lose about 60 lawsuits. 

Johnson supported Trump’s complaints about Georgia. State Attorney Fani Willis indicted Trump and 18 defendants for their efforts to overturn the state’s result for Biden.

“In Georgia, it really was rigged, it was set up for the Biden team to win,” he said in the same radio show interview, in part citing the increase of absentee ballots cast by Democrats compared with 2016.

Statements that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen or illegitimate are ridiculous, earning PolitiFact’s Pants on Fire rating. A conspiracy to rig an election would require thousands of people conspiring across multiple jurisdictions in many states to commit felonies. There’s no evidence it happened.

State officials in other battlegrounds including Georgia, Nevada and Arizona have said the election was secure.

Johnson objected to certifying the vote

The Electoral College made Biden’s victory official on Dec. 14, 2020. Johnson wasn’t deterred.

He was one of 37 Republicans who announced Jan. 6, before Congress convened, that “we will vote to sustain objections to slates of electors submitted by states we believe clearly violated the Constitution in the presidential election of 2020.” 

The New York Times found that Johnson gave his Republican colleagues a path to objecting to certification based on how some state officials loosened restrictions on voting due to the pandemic. It was a more lawyerly argument that separated their objections from the boisterous “stop the steal” rallies.

The lawmakers wrote that they shared concerns by voters that “the election of 2020 became riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities.” That was the opposite of public statements by federal and state officials, who said the election was secure.

As the process of accepting the votes was under way on Jan. 6, rioters brought the congressional session to a halt. When lawmakers returned after the Capitol was cleared, Johnson stuck to his promise and voted along with the majority of his Republican House colleagues to object to Biden’s wins in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Johnson also condemned the Capitol attack, calling it “heinous violence”. Even though he opposed the subsequent effort to impeach Trump, Johnson acknowledged in a Jan. 13, 2021, statement that Biden was the president-elect.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird and staff writer Samantha Putterman contributed to this article.

RELATED:  All of our fact-checks about elections

RELATED: Our fact-checks of House Speaker Mike Johnson

NASHUA, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who as a venture capitalist has had business ties to China in the past, has made policy concerns about China a focus of his campaign.

In an Oct. 13 address to the First in the Nation Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire,  Ramaswamy warned the U.S. against relying on China for key resources. He said the U.S. needed to build up its “semiconductor independence” because chips are vital for a whole host of consumer products. He also cited a need to reduce dependence on pharmaceutical ingredients from China.

He urged the U.S. to declare “pharmaceutical independence,” saying that “95% of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals are coming from our enemy in China.”

However, the 95% figure is greatly exaggerated. Available data puts the share at no bigger than 20%, and possibly even lower.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health in Washington, D.C., at the New York.-based Council on Foreign Relations, told PolitiFact that the 95% figure “is clearly an overestimate or misquote.”

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy addresses the First in the Nation summit in Nashua, N.H., on Oct. 13, 2023. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

His figure for Chinese pharmaceuticals matches one that appeared in a 2019 Politico article about China “weaponizing” drug exports that was produced in partnership with the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based, English-language newspaper.

In 2018, according to the article, “China accounted for 95% of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 91% of U.S. imports of hydrocortisone, 70% of U.S. imports of acetaminophen, 40% to 45% of U.S. imports of penicillin and 40% of U.S. imports of heparin, according to Commerce Department data.”

The 95% figure applied to ibuprofen, not all drugs. Beyond that, the 95% figure for ibuprofen has come under scrutiny since the article appeared. Drug dependence on China became a talking point in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, when some in the U.S. worried whether Americans would suffer shortages of medicines sourced from overseas producers.

Early in the pandemic, the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank, cited U.S. Census Bureau data showing that China accounted for 18% of U.S. imports of active pharmaceutical ingredients in 2019, and just 1% of U.S. imports of finished pharmaceutical products the same year.

Meanwhile, the health care consulting firm Avalere found a more modest role for China in a 2020 report. 

According to Avalere, 54% of active pharmaceutical ingredients in the U.S. in 2019 were produced in the U.S. Another 19% came from Ireland, and just 6% came from China, with smaller shares for Singapore, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and several other countries.

“No single foreign country dominates the overall supply of (active pharmaceutical ingredients) for the U.S. market,” the study concluded. (Avalere disclosed that Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drugmakers’ trade group, helped fund the study.)

A third study involved calculations by Niels Graham, a trade policy specialist with the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. He found that although China does account for 75% of the U.S. supply of vitamins B6, B12, B1 and C and nearly 70% of its vitamin E supply, Chinese producers account for a much smaller share of other key ingredients.

These include 11.7% of U.S. imports of pain relievers, fever reducers, anti-inflammatory medicines, or combinations of those categories; 10.5% of cold and cough medicines; and 12.5% of laxatives. The shares were even smaller for a variety of prescription drugs, such as immunosuppressives, cardiovascular medicines, and certain types of antibiotics.

“Over the past decade, the U.S. has gotten, on average, around 17% of its (active pharmaceutical ingredient) imports from China,” Graham wrote. “While still considerable, this number is far short of the often cited but erroneous statistic.”

These low shares calculate imports from China as a percentage of all U.S. imports, without taking into account what the U.S. produces. By Graham’s calculations, the U.S. is not only producing significant amounts of pharmaceutical ingredients for itself but is exporting a growing amount to China. 

U.S. pharmaceutical exports to China increased by nearly 400% from 2016 to 2022, he found. That’s a slower rate than the roughly 600% growth in China’s pharmaceutical exports to the U.S., but still a substantial increase.

Our ruling

Ramaswamy said “95% of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals” in the U.S. come from China.

This aligns with a percentage for ibuprofen imports from China that was cited in a 2019 news story. However, the percentages for other medicines listed in the article all have smaller percentages sourced from China.

Regardless, these percentages sharply conflict with at least three other analyses that show China’s share of U.S. pharmaceutical ingredient imports ranging from about 20% down to the low single digits.

We rate the statement False.

During a rally in New Hampshire, former President Donald Trump touted his administration’s policies on Iran, saying they weakened the country’s government.

At the Oct. 23 rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Trump cited efforts during his presidency to starve Iran’s hard-line religious government of foreign currency, in hopes of hampering the country’s support for militant groups.

“When I came into office, Iran had $70 billion in foreign exchange reserves,” Trump said. “It was loaded up with money that’s from Obama. His piggy bank was full and it was also full of terrorists. By the time I left they had nothing. They were broke. They were broke.”

Trump’s numbers are off. But his description of the plummeting trend line holds up — the plunge was about 60% more dramatic than the figures he used. 

The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

In 2018, the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, which was premised on Iran curtailing its nuclear efforts in exchange for a loosening of economic sanctions. The U.S. exit from the deal meant that those sanctions snapped back into place.

“Scores of international companies announced that they would end or suspend their operations in Iran even before U.S. sanctions were formally re-imposed,” according to the International Crisis Group, an organization that advocates for conflict avoidance. The sanctions, some of them old and some newly crafted, began to be enforced in 2018. 

When foreign entities purchase Iranian goods, they typically pay either in U.S. dollars, their own currency, or another widely used currency such as euros. So, making it harder for Iran to conduct business with other countries meant that its supply of foreign currency dwindled, as existing Iranian stashes of foreign currency weren’t replaced when spent on overseas goods.

This can have a serious impact on a nation’s economy. It can make it harder to import needed goods, which could dampen economic output and increase inflation and unemployment. The country’s own currency usually loses value against other currencies, as well.

Official data shows that foreign currency reserves in Iran’s central bank climbed steadily from about $2 billion to about $128 billion from 2000 to 2015, including a period of intense negotiation between the U.S., Iran and other countries over the nuclear deal. The level of foreign reserves remained high through the early part of Trump’s tenure, but after the sanctions hit, Iran’s foreign holdings fell precipitously, declining to about $15 billion in 2019. 

That’s not “zero.” Iran had more than $70 billion in reserves when Trump took office, but the fall was dramatic. In absolute dollars, Trump’s figures understated the scale of the decline; he said it was $70 billion, but it was actually about 60% bigger: $113 billion.

“The policy that the Trump administration pursued led to a significant decline in the readily available official reserves of Iran,” or the foreign currency to which Tehran has full access, said Saeed Ghasseminejad, a senior advisor on Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

The sanctions policies pursued by the Trump administration were “a key reason for Iran’s decreased exports and imports, massive inflation, and significant depreciation of the rial,” its currency, Ghasseminejad said.

Iran’s foreign currency reserves have since risen to about $24 billion, but that remains well below their pre-Trump level.

The Trump-era sanctions did not lead to the ouster of Iran’s government, and it continues to play an international role at odds with U.S. foreign policy. But on the metric of foreign reserves, Trump was close to accurate. 

Our ruling

Trump said, “When I came into office, Iran had $70 billion in foreign exchange reserves. … By the time I left, (it was) nothing. They were broke.”

His numbers are off. Iran’s reserves were larger than he said and they did not fall to zero. But he’s on point about the trend line: Iran’s foreign currency reserves fell from $128 billion in 2015 to $15 billion in 2019, a plunge nearly 60% bigger in absolute dollars than Trump said. 

This decline is widely believed to be a consequence of the tightened U.S. sanctions under Trump, and it has not reversed to any significant degree since.

The statement is partially accurate. We rate it Half True.

A liberal group says former President Donald Trump has promised more than two dozen “insane” actions if he reclaims the White House, including rounding up all homeless people, pardoning Jan. 6 defendants and ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours.

MeidasTouch Network, a liberal news website, shared an Oct. 21 Instagram reel that highlights its earlier article headlined, “27 Insane Things Trump Said He Will Do in a 2nd Term.” The article was written by MeidasTouch’s editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, a Florida-based former prosecutor and former Republican whose account on X has more than 825,000 followers.

MeidasTouch compiled the promises largely from 2023 video clips, including Trump campaign’s “Agenda 47” — a series of short clips that detail initiatives Trump plans to implement if he wins the presidency in 2024. 

Many of Trump’s promises would face practical or legal challenges.

We analyzed the 27 items and found that Trump did say something close to what the article claimed, although in some cases MeidasTouch Network ignored nuances in Trump’s framing.

Former President Donald Trump smiles before his speech at the California Republican Party Convention Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP)

1. “Will arrest all homeless people across the country for ‘urban camping,’ round them up and then ‘relocate them’ to ‘tent cities’ where they can be ‘rehabilitated.’”

This is close to what Trump said, but it ignores some of his framing.

Trump said, “We’ll ban urban camping wherever possible.” But he also said that relocation and rehabilitation would be optional for the people arrested. They would “be given the option to receive treatment and services if they’re willing to be rehabilitated,” he said. Trump promised that the rehabilitation would come with the assistance of “doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and drug rehab specialists.”

2. “Require every federal employee to take a new patriotism exam and they will be terminated if they refuse to take them or fail to pass.”

This is essentially what Trump said.

In a video responding to federal investigations over retaining documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and trying to overturn the 2020 election, Trump said, “I will require every federal employee to pass a new civil service test demonstrating an understanding of our constitutional-limited government. This will include command of due process rights, equal protection, free speech, religious liberty, federalism, the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure – I know all about that at Mar-a-Lago, don’t I — and all other constitutional limits on federal power.” 

He didn’t say he would “terminate” or “fire” employees who fail the test or refuse to take it, but he said passing the test would be a requirement, so that would not be much of a leap.

3. “Will build 10 new Trump ‘freedom cities’ around the country, which will be free of any government regulations.”

MeidasTouch’s description is more expansive than Trump’s proposal. Trump proposed lifting regulations — presumably federal ones, which are the only ones he as president would have influence over — that pertain to manufacturing.

Trump said, “We will create an ultra-streamlined federal regulatory framework, specifically for ‘freedom cities,’ allowing them to be true frontiers for the return of U.S. manufacturing, the rebirth of economic opportunity, and safe and affordable living.”

Regardless, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin said, such cities “cannot be completely free of state regulation, as Congress cannot override all state regulations of every kind.”

4. “He will appoint federal judges in the mold of Clarence Thomas.” 

This closely matches what Trump said in a video, although he said “adopt” rather than “appoint”: “My administration will again adopt rock-solid constitutional conservatives to the federal bench, justices and judges, but in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas.” Trump made similar comments about appointing judges aligned with Scalia and Thomas when he was in office.

5. “He will have (the Justice Department) subpoena local DAs and their staff and remove them from office if he determines that they are failing to do their job to his satisfaction.” 

This is close to what Trump said, except that he didn’t target all district attorneys. 

In a campaign video titled “Firing the Radical Marxist Prosecutors Destroying America,” Trump vowed to investigate what he called “Soros prosecutors” — a reference to district attorneys who benefited from campaign backing or funding linked to liberal billionaire George Soros. The video was published after Trump was indicted in a case involving hush money paid to adult entertainment actress Stormy Daniels. Trump has accused the prosecutor in that case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, of being tied to Soros. The Color of Change PAC, a racial justice group, received money from Soros, and the PAC supported Bragg.

In the video, Trump promised to overhaul the Justice Department and FBI, and to “launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local District Attorneys,” specifically citing those in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

6. He will “fire staff and disband college accreditation boards since they ‘have become dominated by marxist maniacs and lunatics.’”

This reflects what Trump said. In a video that outlined his higher education policy goals, Trump promised to “reclaim” colleges and universities from the “radical left” by replacing college accreditation boards and imposing new standards.

These new standards, Trump said, would include “defending the American tradition and Western civilization”; removing diversity, equity and inclusion staff; protecting free speech; and requiring that colleges offer “accelerated and low-cost degrees.” Trump said he would also implement college entrance and exit exams “to prove that students are actually learning.”

Accreditors and other experts told Inside Higher Ed that Trump’s plan would interfere with the federal accountability system and long-standing principles in higher education and, since it would require congressional backing, stands little chance of being carried out. 

7. “He will seize university endowments and also fine them millions of dollars if he determines the schools are Marxist and/or discriminating against white people.”

In the same announcement, which he titled “Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions,” Trump vowed to direct the Justice Department to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools “that continue to engage in racial discrimination” and said he would advance a measure to fine schools that continue these policies up to the entire amount of their endowment.

University endowments are funds that colleges and universities receive from organizational and individual donors. Any attempt by the government to expropriate private funds would almost certainly tee up a major fight in court.

Outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a farewell tribute at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall in Fort Myer, Va., on Sept. 29, 2023. (AP)

8. He would have the Justice Department “investigate and prosecute General Milley for treason.”

Trump didn’t use the word “treason” to refer to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley in a Truth Social post, but he implied it. 

Trump criticized Milley for calling his Chinese counterpart to reassure China after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying it was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” The comment was widely seen as an accusation of treason because it is a crime eligible for the death penalty.

However, treason is only a crime during wartime. “It’s pretty obvious Milley has not committed treason, and any such prosecution would be dismissed by a court, possibly even with sanctions” against the attorneys pursuing it, George Mason’s Somin said.

9. “He will end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours by threatening to withhold US aid to Ukraine if Zelensky doesn’t agree to a deal with Russia.”

Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. However his strategy for accomplishing it isn’t as clear as MeidasTouch suggests.

“If I were president, and I say this, I will end that war in one day, it will take 24 hours,” Trump said in an interview with GBNews, the clip cited by MeidasTouch. “I know Zelensky well, I know Putin well.”

Trump added, “a lot of it has to do with the money. I would get that deal done within 24 hours.” 

In an interview on Fox News, Trump more clearly hinted that part of his strategy would involve what the U.S. gives to Ukraine. Host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump, “You said you could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. How would you do that?”

“I would tell Zelenskyy, ‘No more,’” Trump replied. “‘You got to make a deal.’ I would tell Putin, ‘If you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot. We’re going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to.’ I will have the deal done in one day. One day.”

10. “Require that schools hold elections each year where principals will be elected by parents who will choose whoever they want to run the school each year.

This is close to what Trump said. 

In a speech at an annual summit for Moms for Liberty — a conservative parents-rights group — Trump said he would fight for the “direct election” of school principals by parents. He didn’t say these elections would occur each year, and said parents could do this if they aren’t satisfied with their children’s current principal.

“If you have a bad principal who is not getting the job done, the parent will, under the Trump administration, be allowed to vote to fire that principal to select someone who will do a great job,” he said.

Typically, public school principals are appointed by superintendents and approved by local school boards or selected by charter school boards. Because K-12 education is largely directed at the state and local level, it’s unclear how the federal government would enact this idea, and whether it could withstand legal scrutiny.

11. He proposed that “any person convicted of selling drugs will get the death penalty.”

That’s essentially what Trump said. 

“We’re going to ask that everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said.

This would be a huge expansion of crimes eligible for capital punishment. Currently, only such crimes as murder, treason, genocide, or the killing or kidnapping of a member of Congress, the President, or a Supreme Court justice would qualify based on Supreme Court precedent.

In 2019, some 210,000 people were arrested for the sale or manufacture of drugs, according to Pew Research Center data. That compares to 34 state and federal death penalty convictions handed down that year, a number that has since fallen to 21 in 2022.

Another practical concern: Large, interstate operations can be prosecuted federally, but states and localities handle most drug cases. This would put the vast majority of drug cases beyond the purview of a Trump administration.

Jericho Steve, of Pennsylvania, a supporter of the January 6th defendants and former President Donald Trump, protests outside federal court on Aug. 30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (AP)

12. “Pardon convicted J6 inmates convicted of seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers, with an apology from the U.S. government.”

Trump has repeatedly said he would pardon defendants charged with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In September 2022, two months before he announced his campaign, Trump told conservative radio show host Wendy Bell that he had met with some of the Jan. 6 defendants. “I will look very very favorably about full pardons” if he wins the campaign, Trump said. He added, “I mean full pardons, with an apology to many.” Trump didn’t single out specific charges he would pardon.

This is one promise he could carry out: If Trump becomes president, he would have the power to pardon. However, those would be federal pardons, meaning some defendants might still be liable for state charges.

13. Have the Justice Department “investigate Comcast, NBC and MSNBC for treason and remove them from the public airwaves.”

Trump did call for investigating those outlets, but his comments about any specific punishment were vague.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote “Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason.’ Their endless coverage of the now fully debunked SCAM known as Russia, Russia, Russia, and much else, is one big Campaign Contribution to the Radical Left Democrat Party. I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”

Trump did not clearly state that he would try to deplatform the outlets, but he appeared to challenge their existence, stating: “Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

14. “Pardoned felon Michael Flynn will be appointed to a top position in his Administration.” 

This is not as clear as MeidasTouch suggested in the clip it cited from a January 2022 Republican Party event in Lee County, Florida. Trump introduced Flynn and said, “Stay in good health, Michael. Get ready. Only 18 more months!”

In July 2020, Trump said he would welcome Flynn back to the White House. 

Flynn was appointed as Trump’s first national security adviser but left after less than a month in February 2017. Flynn resigned from his position, saying he’d given “incomplete information” to White House officials about contacts he’d had with senior Russian officials weeks before Trump took office that may have addressed lifting sanctions on Russia that had been imposed by then-President Barack Obama. 

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian ambassador, but he was pardoned by Trump and then a federal judge dismissed the case.

15. “He will end all DEI programs in government agencies by executive order, including the military.”

This is something Trump promised in March. 

Trump railed against “equity” initiatives under the Biden administration and said he would instruct the Justice Department to investigate organizations that practice and carry out such efforts.

This is something Trump tried to do in his first term as president when he issued a September 2020 executive order restricting the federal government and its contractors from offering diversity training that he labeled “divisive” and “un-American.” A federal judge blocked the order, and then Biden reversed it in 2021. Trump pledges to reinstate it.

Activists march past the White House to protest the Trump administration’s approach to illegal border crossings and separation of children from immigrant parents on June 20, 2018. (AP)

16. “He will bring back the architect of the child separation policy at the border” and “Tom Homan (will) run ICE.”

Tom Homan was a former police officer who served as Trump’s acting director of ICE starting in January 2017 and part of 2018. He oversaw the early stages of the child separation policy for migrants, which became controversial and was later reversed by Trump.

Homan said Trump will bring him back, but we did not find that Trump said that in the video Meidas cited.

Homan said at an event in 2022 that Trump told him, “You and I will fix this in 2024.” Homan said, “I will make you this promise if he comes back, I come back and it’s not going to be nice.” He added, I shook his hand at Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago. If he comes back, I come back. And we will fix this sh–.”

At a recent rally in New Hampshire, Trump said  “Tom Homan was incredible, right?” 

We sent a message to Homan through his consulting website to ask about his remarks, and we also asked the Trump campaign in an email if Trump plans to bring Homan back. We did not get a reply. 

17. “He would terminate the Constitution if he determined that fraud occurred during an election.” 

Trump did say this, although he later sought to walk it back.

In a Dec. 3, 2022, Truth Social post, Trump alleged election fraud in 2020 and wrote that “massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Two days after his post, Trump sought to walk back his words about the Constitution, writing in a new post, “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution” and called it “disinformation and lies.”

Despite Trump’s follow-up post, he said plainly in his initial statement the alleged fraud “allows for the termination” of constitutional rules. We rated Trump’s notion that he could terminate the Constitution Pants on Fire. 

President Donald Trump walks with Wendy Sartory Link, Supervisor of Elections Palm Beach County, after casting his ballot for the presidential election on Oct. 24, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)

18. “Eliminate all early and absentee voting in America.” 

Trump has been inconsistent about whether he wants to allow early voting or mail ballots.

Trump told Real America’s Voice radio show, “We should have one-day voting, we should have paper ballots, and we should have voter ID.” But two days earlier, Trump recorded a message for the Republican National Committee’s 2024 early voting campaign called “Bank Your vote.”

“Go to bankyourvote.com to sign up and commit to voting early. … We’re going to win, and we’re going to make America great again,” Trump said. 

Legally, the idea that a president could shut down early voting is dubious. Those are decisions generally set by state legislators.

19. “Create a commission to investigate his long-standing theory that vaccines cause autism.”

Trump has repeatedly made comments that could leave voters with the impression that he is tying vaccines to autism — and he has said he would create a commission to investigate what is causing autism. However, in our review of Trump’s speeches, we found Trump was not as blunt as MeidasTouch asserts.

Even before he ran for president a decade ago, Trump linked autism to vaccines — a claim that has been debunked.

During a 2023 speech at the conservative Turning Point Action conference, Trump said he would not give “one penny” to any school that has a “vaccine mandate.” 

Immediately following that comment, Trump said, “I will also continue my long record of standing up to Big Pharma by creating a special presidential commission to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in childhood diseases, autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility and other chronic health problems.” 

Although the comment about vaccines was followed by a comment about investigating what causes autism, Trump stopped short of directly linking vaccines and autism; he urged further investigation.

20. “End birthright citizenship by executive order.” 

Trump did make this promise. 

Birthright citizenship is the automatic granting of citizen status to anyone born on United States soil. In a video, Trump said that “as part of my plan to secure the border on day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship. It’s things like this that bring millions of people to our country.” 

However, legal experts say that anything short of a constitutional amendment seeking to end birthright citizenship would prompt a major court battle.

Trump broke his 2016 campaign promise to end birthright citizenship.

21. He would “fire 40,000 career civil servants on day one and replace them with ‘patriots’ loyal to him.”

This aligns with Trump’s past actions and reporting by the online news outlet Axios.

Shortly before the 2020 election, Trump signed an executive order called “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service.” It established a new employment category for federal employees. Biden rescinded it when he took office.

Under the order, tens of thousands of civil servants who have an influence over policy would become “Schedule F” employees without civil service protections. An initial estimate by the Trump administration estimated that it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers out of more than 2 million total. That would be more than 10 times larger than the current number of politically appointed federal positions, which is more than 4,000. 

22. “Set up a commission to study whether genetically engineered marijuana is the cause of mass shootings.”

Trump didn’t directly say that genetically engineered marijuana caused mass shootings, nor did he specify that a commission should study it. But he did suggest a possible link when he spoke at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action’s leadership forum in April. 

While discussing school safety and arming teachers, Trump said, “We need to drastically change our approach to mental health” and vowed to ask the Food and Drug Administration to convene an independent outside panel to investigate whether “transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence.” Then he moved on to marijuana: “Furthermore, we have to look at whether common psychiatric drugs as well as genetically engineered cannabis and other narcotics are causing psychotic breaks.”

23. “Abolish the Department of Education.” 

He did make this promise, and it’s similar to pledges made by other Republican presidential candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

In a policy video, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the States.”

However, eliminating the department would have to go through Congress, so Trump couldn’t do it on his own. 

24. “Reinstitute a ban on transgender people serving in the military.”

During his July 15 Turning Point Action speech, Trump vowed to reinstate his transgender military ban. “I will restore the Trump ban on transgender in the military. I had it stopped, totally stopped, and then they approved it,” he said. 

Biden reversed the ban in January 2021, days after he took office.

25. “He will ‘bring back God’ into the public school system.”

He said this.

In a recorded message played at Iowa’s annual Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, Trump said he would “bring back God to our schools and our public squares.”

“On Day 1,” he continued, “we will begin to find the radical zealots and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education and we will have them escorted from the building.”

26. “Impose a new 10% tariff (tax) on all goods imported into the US.”

This is basically what Trump said in an interview with Fox Business News.

Trump suggested an “automatic” 10% tariff on goods imported from all countries. The only wiggle room might be that Trump said it would be imposed “when companies come in and dump their products in the United States.” “Dumping” has a specific definition in international trade, referring to instances in which a foreign company sells a product in the U.S. below its home-country price or lower than its cost of production.

However, a later comment by Trump in the interview — that “I do like the 10% for everybody” — would support a more informal definition of the word.

Biden’s White House said the 10% levy would amount to a “sweeping tariff tax on the middle class,” increasing inflation to spike and hamper economic growth, Bloomberg reported. 

27. “Reinstitute a travel ban on people from Muslim countries.”

Trump has repeatedly made this promise.

“When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger than before and much stronger than before,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign event in July. “We don’t want people blowing up our shopping centers. We don’t want people blowing up our cities, and we don’t want people stealing our farms. So it’s not gonna happen.”

In the statements we analyzed, Trump didn’t specify “Muslim.” But he said he is renewing his 2016 promise, which was a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The Supreme Court upheld the third version of Trump’s ban, but it was not a “total” ban on Muslims entering the U.S., so we rated this a Promise Broken. 

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.

RELATED: Trump broke about half of his campaign promises

A recent X post appears to quote writer Bari Weiss endorsing former President Donald Trump’s work while he was in office. But the post quotes a recent article co-authored by Weiss out of context. The post says:   

“Journalist Bari Weiss, a Jewish liberal who quit the New York Times over its anti-Semitism, writes: 

‘As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.’ 

‘So much of the work that happened in that [Trump] administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what is so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message.’ 

‘When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?’ 

‘If it’s clear that the last two weeks have been a wake-up call, the next question is: Why?’ 

‘Part of the answer is the sheer depravity of Hamas’s terrorism. That depravity has made the justification and celebration of their acts by those who police pronouns that much starker. The contradictions and moral bankruptcy of a worldview that spends years worrying about microaggressions and tone policing, but can’t decide what side it is on after the beheading of babies, aren’t exactly difficult to spot.’ 

‘To put it another way: when Black Lives Matter organizations are lionizing Islamist terrorists by posting a paraglider logo, you’d be a fool not to reassess things.’ 

‘The events of the last week have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power.

‘And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.’

All of those lines come from an Oct. 23 story by Weiss and Oliver Wiseman in The Free Press, a media company founded by Weiss.

“A political reawakening?” the headline says. “A mass emergence from the woke slumber.”

But most of the text quoted in the X post comes from Weiss and Wiseman citing other people. Only the lines put in bold by PolitiFact were written by Weiss and Wiseman. 

They write that venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, said: “As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.” 

They also attribute this line in the X post to him: “So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what is so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?”

The last quote in the X post, meanwhile, is attributed in Weiss and Wiseman’s article to writer and podcast host Konstantin Kisin.

Weiss said she voted for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. She’s also voted Republican, for Sen. Mitt Romney over then-President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2019, she said that some of Trump’s policies were “very good for the state of Israel” and that she was in “full-throated support of them.” She also said that Trump was “bad for the Jews” while being good for Israel.

But the claim that she said what the Trump administration did “was pretty incredible in hindsight” is False.

 

A video spreading on social media appears to show Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg promoting a new book called “Vegan Wars” on the BBC. 

“War is always bad, specifically for the planet,” Thunberg appears to say in the segment. “If we want to continue fighting battles like environmentally conscious humans we must make the change to sustainable tanks and weaponry. There are so many new concepts for battery-powered fighter jets that can carry many more missiles — biodegradable missiles of course. Something literally everybody can do to stop this nonsense is, for example, block the roads to gardens and farms so the plants don’t get overrun by these heavy, heavy tanks. Hand grenades — very important. If you use hand grenades, please use vegan grenades. No animals should have to give their life for all this mayhem and chaos.” 

An Oct. 23 Instagram post sharing the video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

But this video has been altered. It appears to have originated on the German website Snicklink’s social channels, where the videos are clearly labeled as satire and also feature Snicklink’s logo.

The original BBC footage, from November 2022, shows Thunberg promoting her tome, “The Climate Book”, and talking about climate anxiety. 

We rate claims that the video of Thunberg supposedly talking about vegan war is authentic False.