More and more news sources are fact-checking major policy addresses. Obviously, Donald Trump's acceptance speech meets that criteria and a simple Google search will yield a number of fact-checking sources. Historically one of the better ones for thoroughness and documentation, in my estimation, has been the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org. Here is there conclusion:
In accepting his party’s nomination for president, Donald Trump said “here, at our convention, there will be no lies.” But we found plenty of instances where Trump twisted facts or made false claims.
You can read their full analysis here.
The Associated Press, which both local "newspapers" use as their primary source for non-local information, also fact-checks after major speeches. Here is their analysis of Trump's speech. Both locals sometimes carry the AP fact-check but this morning's Intelligencer did not -- my hunch is that it is because Trump did not do well in the eyes of the AP fact-checkers. I would share with you two of the AP's conclusions because our locals have made similar arguments.
Like Trump, our "newspapers" regularly complain that our taxes are too high:
TRUMP: “America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.”
THE FACTS: Trump continues to repeat this inaccuracy. The U.S. tax burden is actually the fourth lowest among the 34 developed and large emerging-market economies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Taxes made up 26 percent of the total U.S. economy in 2014, according to the OECD. That’s far below Sweden’s tax burden of 42.7 percent, Britain’s 32.6 percent or Germany’s 36.1 percent. Only three OECD members had a lower figure than the U.S.: Chile, South Korea and Mexico.
And then there is the Second Amendment. Two weeks ago (July 8) the Intelligencer argued, without a single piece of evidence, that Clinton wants to "scrap" that amendment. (See here.) Last night, Trump made the same argument:
TRUMP: “My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.”
THE FACTS: Hillary Clinton has not proposed any revocation of the constitutionally protected right to bear arms. She does support a ban on certain military-style weapons, similar to the law President Bill Clinton signed in the 1990s. That ban expired after 10 years and was not renewed. Clinton also backs an expansion of existing criminal background checks to apply to weapons sales at gun shows. The checks now apply mainly to sales by federally licensed gun dealers.
It will be interesting to see if the local's bring out the fact-checkers next week for Clinton's speech.
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