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Tag: Candidate Biography

  • What to know about Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate

    What to know about Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate

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    Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, capping a historically compressed vice presidential search.

    Walz rocketed up the list of finalists on the strength of his folksy relatability, gubernatorial experience and congressional record representing a conservative-leaning district.

    “I am proud to announce that I’ve asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate,” Harris posted on  X Aug. 6. “As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his. It’s great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work.”

    Walz rose to the rank of command sergeant major over 24 years in the U.S. Army National Guard and worked as a teacher and football coach. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by ousting a Republican incumbent in a heavily rural district in 2006. Walz was elected governor in 2018 and was reelected in 2022.

    “He’s a smart choice if they deploy him in two specific ways,” said Blois Olson, a political analyst for WCCO radio in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “Send him to rural areas to counter the polarization and the idea that only Republicans can win there. And have him keep the deep left base satisfied, which could be an issue with a very moody voting bloc.”

    Olson said Walz’s rural experience and regular-guy vibes might be able to shave 2 to 4 percentage points off GOP electoral performance in rural Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states considered crucial to a Democratic victory in November.

    “The most recent Survey USA poll taken last month for KSTP-TV had Walz’ job approval at a healthy 56%,” said Steve Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota. “That said, Minnesota is quite a polarized state, and Republicans in the state despise him. He initially campaigned as a moderate in 2018 but has governed as a progressive.”

    Walz was one of several potential vice presidential options floated since President Joe Biden announced he’d cede the nomination and endorsed Harris. Other frequently cited names were Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

    Now that he is Harris’ running mate, we are on the lookout for claims by and about Walz to fact-check — just as we are for Harris and former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio. Readers can email us suggestions to [email protected].

    Republicans have already begun to question Walz’s handling of the rioting following the murder of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. Walz clashed with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over how to handle the unrest, but he sent the Minnesota National Guard to aid local law enforcement. 

    Who is Tim Walz?

    Walz grew up in Nebraska but moved with his wife, Gwen to Minnesota in 1996 to teach high school geography and coach football; his teams won two state championships.

    He was 42 when he ran for Congress, a decision sparked by a 2004 incident at an appearance by President George W. Bush. “Walz took two students to the event, where Bush campaign staffers demanded to know whether he supported the president and barred the students from entering after discovering one had a sticker for Democratic candidate John Kerry,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. “Walz suggested it might be bad PR for the Bush campaign to bar an Army veteran, and he and the students were allowed in. Walz said the experience sparked his interest in politics, first as a volunteer for the Kerry campaign and then as a congressional candidate.”

    Walz’s ideological profile is nuanced. The other highest-profile finalist for Harris’ running mate, Shapiro, was pegged as somewhat more moderate and bipartisan than Walz. An Emerson College poll released in July found Shapiro with 49% approval overall in his state, including a strong 46% approval from independents and 22% from Republicans.

    When he was elected to Congress, Walz represented a district that had sent Republicans to Washington for 102 of the previous 114 years, according to the Almanac of American Politics. Representing that constituency, Walz was able to win the National Rifle Association’s endorsement and he voted for the Keystone XL pipeline — two positions that have become highly unusual in today’s Democratic Party.

    During his first gubernatorial term, Walz worked with legislative Republicans, which produced some bipartisan achievements, including $275 million for roads and bridges, additional funds for opioid treatment and prevention, and a middle-income tax cut.

    In 2022, Walz won a second term by a 52% to 45% margin. Democrats also flipped the state Senate, providing him with unified Democratic control in the Legislature. This enabled Walz to enact a progressive wish list of policies, including classifying abortion as a “fundamental right,” a requirement that utilities produce carbon-free energy by 2040, paid family leave and legalizing recreational marijuana. He also signed an executive order safeguarding access to gender-affirming health care for transgender residents.

    After Harris’ announcement, the Trump campaign attacked Walz’s legislative record in a campaign email: “Kamala Harris just doubled-down on her radical vision for America by tapping another left-wing extremist as her VP nominee.”

    Olson noted that Walz “only has one veto in six years. He doesn’t say ‘no’ to the left, after being a moderate. That’s a reason he’s now beloved by the left.”

    Democrats have controlled the Minnesota state Legislature’s lower chamber during Walz’ entire tenure. However, Republicans controlled the state Senate for his first four years in office.

    Walz’s meteoric three-week rise on the national scene stemmed after calling Trump, Vance and other Republicans in their circle “weird.”

    In a July 23 interview on MSNBC, Walz predicted that Harris would win older, white voters because she was talking about substance, including schools, jobs and environmental policy.

    “These are weird people on the other side,” Walz said. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room. That’s what it comes down to. And don’t, you know, get sugarcoating this. These are weird ideas.” 

    Days later on MSNBC, Walz reiterated the point: “You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom. Freedom to be in your bedroom. Freedom to be in your exam room. Freedom to tell your kids what they can read. That stuff is weird. They come across weird. They seem obsessed with this.”

    Other Democrats, including the Harris campaign, amplified the “weird” message, quickly making Walz a star in online Democratic circles. 

    Walz also attracted notice for being a self-styled fix-it guy who has helped pull a car out of a ditch and given advice about how to save money on car repairs. He staged a bill signing for free breakfast and lunch for students surrounded by cheering children.

    Schier said he expects Walz to be a compatible ticket-mate who won’t upstage the presidential nominee. “Walz will be a loyal companion to Harris,” Schier said.

    One thing Walz does not bring to the table is a critical state for the Democratic ticket. In 2024, election analysts universally rate Minnesota as leaning or likely Democratic. By contrast, Shapiro’s state of Pennsylvania is not only one of a handful of battleground states but also the one with the biggest haul of electoral votes, at 19. Another finalist, Kelly, represents another battleground state with nine electoral votes, Arizona.

    Fact-checking Walz

    We have not put Walz on our Truth-O-Meter. However, days after Floyd’s murder, we wrote a story about how a false claim about out-of-state protestors was spread by Minnesota officials, including Walz, and then national politicians, including Trump.

    At a May 2020 news conference, Walz said he understood that the catalyst for the protests was “Minnesotans’ inability to deal with inequalities, inequities and quite honestly the racism that has persisted.” But there was an issue with “everybody from everywhere else.” 

    “We’re going to start releasing who some of these people are, and they’ll be able to start tracing that history of where they’re at, and what they’re doing on the ‘dark web’ and how they’re organizing,” Walz said. “I think our best estimate right now that I heard is about 20% that are Minnesotans and about 80% are outside.”

    The statistic soon fell apart.

    Within hours, local TV station KARE reported that Minneapolis-based police tallies of those arrested for rioting, unlawful assembly, and burglary-related crimes from May 29 to May 30 showed that 86% of those arrested listed Minnesota as their address. Twelve out of 18 people arrested in St. Paul were from Minnesota.

    Confronted with these numbers, the officials walked back their comments that evening or did not repeat them. In a news conference, Walz did not repeat his earlier 80% assertion. KARE-TV wrote that Walz said the estimate was based in part on law enforcement intelligence information and that the state would monitor developments. 

    Send fact-check ideas to [email protected]. 

    RELATED: All of our fact-checks of Vice President Kamala Harris

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  • Yes, Kamala Harris backed the Green New Deal from day one

    Yes, Kamala Harris backed the Green New Deal from day one

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    Vice President Kamala Harris has attracted heightened attention, including from critics and the media, amid continued bipartisan questions about President Joe Biden’s fitness for office after his roundly criticized debate performance June 27.

    On July 7, during “Fox News Sunday,” host Shannon Bream asked Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., about former President Donald Trump possibly running against Harris, rather than Biden, in November. Donalds expressed confidence that Trump would find material to use against Harris in the campaign.

    Donalds told Bream that Harris had “co-sponsored, fully sponsored this radical Green New Deal, which will cost the American people $100 trillion.”

    We previously rated False the notion that the Green New Deal, a proposal backed by some Democrats when it was unveiled in 2019, would cost $100 trillion.

    We contacted Donalds’ office for evidence but received no reply.

    However, we confirmed through public documentation that Harris did co-sponsor Senate legislation backing the Green New Deal and, to date, still supports the measure’s principles.

    What was the Green New Deal?

    Legislation proposing a Green New Deal was introduced Feb. 7, 2019, in both the House and the Senate, following months of discussion among progressive lawmakers and activists. 

    As we noted then, these resolutions addressed ways to curb climate change and protect the environment, including achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, building smart power grids, and upgrading existing buildings to maximize energy efficiency. 

    Beyond the environment, the proposal addressed topics including racial justice, labor union policy and higher education. The resolutions were aspirational in nature, without specific details and with no new taxes or revenue streams to fund the shift, other than an expression of confidence that these changes will pay for themselves. 

    The Green New Deal never gained universal support even among Democratic lawmakers, and in the Democratic-controlled House, party leaders never brought it to a vote. Meanwhile, as a resolution, the legislation would not have had the force of law even if both chambers had passed it, which they didn’t.

    Even so, the proposal’s mere existence became a frequent talking point for Republicans, who warned that it would empower big government to infringe on Americans’ liberty and would cost taxpayers too much money.

    What Harris said about the Green New Deal

    Despite the Republican opposition, the proposal remained popular within the Democratic base, including with people who were poised to vote in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary. A significant number of Democrats who were running for president supported it, including Harris. 

    The future vice president, who had formally announced her presidential bid just weeks before the resolution was introduced, was joined on the list of original Senate co-sponsors by several other 2020 presidential candidates, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. (Co-sponsorship means full support for a piece of legislation, alongside multiple other members.)

    In a Medium post published the day the Senate introduced its resolution, Harris wrote that she was “proud” to have signed on as an original Senate co-sponsor. 

    “For too long, we have been governed by lawmakers who are beholden to big oil and big coal,” Harris wrote. “They have refused to act on climate change. So it’s on us to speak the truth, rooted in science fact, not science fiction.”

    Harris closed by writing, “We do not fight this fight for our generation alone — but for generations to come. Thank you for taking direct action today.”

    On Sept. 4, 2019, Harris went further during a climate-focused town hall aired by CNN. Harris said she would support abolishing the filibuster — the parliamentary maneuver that forces most legislative business to secure at least 60 votes out of the Senate’s 100, rather than a simple majority — “to pass a Green New Deal.”

    What Harris says today

    When asked to elaborate on Harris’ support for the Green New Deal, the White House said that as vice president, Harris had made a tangible contribution on economic policy distinct from her earlier support for the Green New Deal. She cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which included key investments aimed at curbing climate change, including provisions on electricity, transportation, energy efficiency, manufacturing, agriculture and land conservation.

    “The Biden-Harris administration’s transformational investments accelerate our trajectory towards meeting our climate goals, bolster the United States’ leadership on climate and clean energy globally, and work to build a future where all Americans have access to clean air and water and are better protected from extreme weather,” the White House said in a statement to PolitiFact.

    Amid calls for the president to step aside ahead of the November election, said Marcia Godwin, a public administration professor at the University of La Verne, in Harris’ home state of California, said, “Republicans would love nothing more than to be able to paint Harris as a California liberal and create confusion about her viability as a consensus replacement pick.”

    Godwin added that both sides of the ideological spectrum “have incentives to point out Harris’ support of Green New Deal legislation. Harris had difficulty getting traction on her own presidential campaign by being seen as too moderate, with her prosecutorial background. Progressives would look for signs that she would largely support their agenda.”

    Our ruling

    Rep. Byron Donalds said Harris “co-sponsored, fully sponsored” the Green New Deal.

    Donalds is right: When the Senate introduced its version of the Green New Deal in February 2019, Harris was one of 11 Democrats who were original co-sponsors. 

    In a Medium post published when the resolution was introduced, Harris wrote that she was “proud” to have signed on as an original Senate co-sponsor. 

    We rate Donalds’ statement True.

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  • Joe Biden’s False repeat about civil rights arrest

    Joe Biden’s False repeat about civil rights arrest

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    President Joe Biden has a track-record of spinning tall tales about his past, including some that PolitiFact has rated False or Pants on Fire. 

    In an April 26 interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” Biden told the talk radio star that he got arrested decades ago while protesting in defense of civil rights.

    Biden said his mother encouraged him to accept Barack Obama’s invitation to be his 2008 running mate by reminding him of the stance Biden took while young when a civil rights flare-up happened in the suburban Delaware community of Lynnfield, near where Biden’s family lived at the time.

    Biden said that his mother said: “‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood? There was a Black family moving in and there was people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there and you went down, remember that? And you came and got arrested standing on the porch with a Black family? And they brought you back, the police?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I remember that.’”

    Biden said his mother used the moment to point out that all these years later Biden had the chance to help Obama become the first Black U.S. president.

    We have heard this story before. 

    In January 2022, while speaking at an Atlanta campus shared by two historically black colleges, Biden invoked civil rights battles and said, “It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.”

    When we reached out to the White House in 2022 to clarify what arrest he was referring to, Biden’s team pointed us to excerpts from three speeches Biden has given involving a 1950s incident in Delaware in which people gathered to protest the sale of a home to a Black couple.

    Police were called to the home as hundreds of people protested outside. There were a few arrests, but there is no record of Biden being arrested. We rated Biden’s statement False. 

    It was not the first time Biden shared a falsehood about his arrest history. In 2020, Biden said he was arrested in South Africa in the 1970s, a statement we rated Pants on Fire. Biden was stopped at an airport when he was traveling with African American colleagues but we did not find he was arrested, and Biden later walked back that part of his story. 

    Following the Stern interview, we emailed Biden spokespeople to ask if they had additional evidence to provide about Biden being arrested in Delaware in the 1950s. We did not receive a response.

    Some people were arrested in protests near Biden’s childhood home

    Newspaper articles confirm there were protests at two homes near where Biden was living in Delaware in 1959. The larger protest, in Collins Park, was at the home of a Black couple. The second protest, in suburban Carrcroft, was at the home of the real estate broker who had sold that couple their home. Biden’s family home in Lynnfield was about nine miles from the Collins Park home and a short walk away from the Carrcroft home, according to Google Maps. 

    The News-Journal, a Wilmington newspaper, reported on Feb. 25, 1959, that seven people were arrested following the Collins Park protest — three men for disturbing the peace and four teenagers for possessing fireworks.

    A March 2, 1959, Associated Press article said that a 17-year-old — described as the son of a “Harold Figgett” — was arrested for juvenile delinquency and was among four people arrested that Saturday. (Biden would have been 16 at the time.) It also mentioned seven earlier arrests. No arrests were made at the Carrcroft protest, the AP reported.

    Biden has told different versions of the U.S. arrest story

    Biden has not always used the term “arrest” when telling this story. He has sometimes said police brought him home. Other details vary from telling to telling, including his age at the time.

    At the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan on Oct. 16, 2018, Biden recounted a story similar to what he told Stern.

    “She said, ‘Joey, remember at 15 years old and that real estate agent sold a house to the Black couple in Lynnfield.’ … This was in suburban sprawl, the neighboring neighborhood. ‘I told you not to go down there because of the protests, and you went down and you got arrested because you were standing on the porch with the Black couple?’ I said, ‘Yeah, mom. I remember that.’”

    At the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on Feb. 16, 2020, Biden again used the word “arrested.” The Washington Post Fact Checker found that Biden said his mother said, “Joey, remember when they desegregated the neighborhood called Lynnfield? You were 13, I told you not to go there, all those people were protesting, and you got arrested standing on the porch with the Black family?’”

    At the University of Utah on Dec. 13, 2018, Biden said his mother said, “’Remember I told you not to go down, and the police brought you back because you were standing on the front porch with the Black couple?’”

    During an Oct. 28, 2020, Zoom interview with Oprah Winfrey, he used similar language in quoting his mother, saying she said the police “brought you home,” rather than “arrested” him,  the Washington Post Fact Checker reported. 

    Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad” did not include mention of an arrest. But he did write that his mother spoke to him about Obama wanting Biden as his running mate and that his mom had “watched my lifelong fight for civil rights and racial equality.”

    Our ruling

    Biden told Stern that he “got arrested” while protesting against desegregation.

    Biden might have been present as a teenager when there were housing discrimination protests near his Delaware home. And although Biden has been telling this story in one version or another for many years, his spokespersons have not provided evidence of an arrest, nor have we found a record of his arrest. 

    We rate this statement False.

    PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.

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  • PolitiFact – What PolitiFact learned in 1,000 fact-checks of Donald Trump

    PolitiFact – What PolitiFact learned in 1,000 fact-checks of Donald Trump

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    PolitiFact has hit a milestone: We published our 1,000th rated fact-check of Donald Trump.

    In classic Trump fashion, he claimed in his New Hampshire primary victory speech Jan. 23 that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to “cheat” in the 2020 presidential election. 

    Unsurprisingly to our regular readers, his claim was Pants on Fire.

    It’s not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up. But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy. 

    Our fact-checking saga of Trump began in 2011, when he used his celebrity to amplify “birther” conspiracy theories to undermine former President Barack Obama’s eligibility. The pace of our checks intensified in 2015, with his surprise Republican primary ascent and his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton. Trump’s turbulent policy-by-Twitter updates kept our reporters sprinting during his presidential tenure. He downplayed the COVID-19 public health threat and fanned persistent falsehoods about voting and election results that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    Trump’s fast-and-loose style surely endears him to some of his supporters, who propelled him to the White House in 2016 and made him the Republican front-runner to challenge President Joe Biden in 2024.

    The 45th president stands apart — and the election year has barely started. Here’s what our fact-checking data shows us about his Truth-O-Meter record so far.

    It will be some time before another politician hits 1,000 ratings. After Trump, our three most-fact-checked politicians are all Democrats: former President Barack Obama with 603 fact-checks, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with 301, and President Joe Biden with 286.

    Trump stands alone for the share of rated claims that are some degree of false. About 76% of his statements earned ratings of Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. The median rating for his 1,000 checks is False.

    More than 18% of our fact-checks of Trump landed at Pants on Fire, which we define as a statement that is not just false but ridiculous. 

    About a quarter of Trump’s 1,000 rated statements landed on the relatively true side of our meter (True, Mostly True or Half True). Often these involved statistics, such as his accurate tweet in 2019 that said U.S. food stamp program participation had hit a 10-year low. 

    Trump’s median rating of False is worse than a cross-section of frequently checked Democratic and Republican politicians. Politicians with median ratings of Half True include Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton; three senators who ran for president, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and two longtime congressional leaders, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

    Trump has also fared worse than three frequently checked politicians who have a median rating of Mostly False: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

    “It’s been an astounding eight years in American politics,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University communication professor and a historian of American political rhetoric. “He’s built his entire political identity on the fact that he doesn’t owe anyone the truth about anything.”

    A relentless flow of ‘truthful hyperbole’

    In his 1987 best-seller “The Art of the Deal,” Trump described “why a little hyperbole never hurts.”

    “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole,” Trump wrote. “It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”

    That approach held true for politics as it did for business. Ever since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, we have encountered a firehose of claims. 

    He talks a lot — in TV interviews, on social media, at campaign rallies that stretch for nearly two hours. As president, Trump made Twitter essential reading, before the social media platform exiled him after the Capitol riot. Of the tweets we checked, about 79% rated Mostly False or lower. So far, on his Truth Social platform, we have not yet rated a claim higher than Mostly False.

    Among his most common settings for claims, Trump fared best in State of the Union addresses. His median Truth-O-Meter rating for those annual speeches inched into the Half True range.

    In practice, we have looked at many more Trump statements than just the 1,000 cited in this article. 

    Each of the 1,000 fact-checks has a formal Truth-O-Meter rating. Sometimes, we instead write articles about claims without rating them. Examples include summaries of multiple claims made in a debate, rally or major speech. Other times, a statement is a prediction, or too vague for us to rate, or involves an unanswerable question, such as how courts will rule in the classified documents case. In those cases, we’ll write an explanatory story without a rating. These are not captured in Trump’s Truth-O-Meter scorecard.

    The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column sought to collect every statement by Trump during his term that Glenn Kessler and his team determined was false or misleading. They ended up with 30,573 statements. 

    Even though these mentions were usually brief rather than fully detailed fact-check articles, and even though they included many repeated claims, compiling the database was “exhausting,” Kessler told us. The database ended up at about 5 million words.

    After this experience, Kessler said the Post has capped future efforts at the first 100 days of a new presidency, as the newspaper did for Biden’s 78 false or misleading claims.

    If the past is prologue, 2024 will be another peak year for checking Trump. Our rated fact-checks peaked in 2016 and 2020, the two years he ran for president. 

    In the beginning, there was birtherism

    For Trump’s accusations and insults, accuracy hardly matters.

    In 2011, Trump leveraged his TV businessman persona to discredit Obama’s legitimacy as the nation’s elected leader. Trump told an annual conservative conference that the people who went to school with Obama “never saw him, they don’t know who he is.” His accusation was part of “birtherism,” a series of false beliefs that Obama, the first Black president and one with Kenyan lineage, wasn’t a natural-born American citizen. We rated this statement Pants on Fire!

    He kept repeating birther claims through his 2015 campaign. In 2016, Trump falsely said Clinton started the rumors about Obama’s birthplace. Clinton supporters circulated the rumor in the 2008 Democratic primary’s final days and after Clinton had conceded to Obama. But the record did not show Clinton or her campaign ever promoting, or starting the birther theory.

    In his new campaign, Trump promoted baseless birtherism claims about Republican rival Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor who was born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents.

    Sometimes it’s easy to fact-check Trump because his statements fly in the face of available video. He tweeted in 2020 that “I never called John (McCain) a loser.” But 2015 video of Trump speaking in Ames, Iowa, showed that he said of McCain, “I never liked him much after” McCain lost the 2008 presidential race, “because I don’t like losers.”

    During a 2016 GOP primary debate, Trump said of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, that “he said he would take his pants off and moon everybody … nobody reports that.” Bush was making a joke about what he felt was scant press coverage. We rated Trump’s statement Mostly False.  

    We have fact-checked many politicians who admit, usually through a spokesperson, that they misspoke. When Trump is challenged on his dubious statements, he typically ignores reporters’ questions or says he shouldn’t have to defend his words.

    In November 2015, Trump tweeted an image that crime statistics show Black people kill 81% of white homicide victims. We rated the statistic Pants on Fire. Days later, then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Trump he was wrong. 

    “Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?” Trump said. “I get millions and millions of people.”

    Trump is the three-time winner of our annual Lie of the Year, which we award for the year’s most significant falsehood. He won:

    • In 2015 for three outrageous claims in the Republican presidential primary, including the claim about Black people.

    • In 2017 for calling claims of Russian election interference a “made-up story.”

    • In 2019 for saying a whistleblower got his call with Ukraine’s president “almost completely wrong” when the account was close to the White House’s own transcript.  

    Trump shared in our 2020 and 2021 Lies of the Year for his efforts to downplay the threat of COVID-19 and the significance of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, respectively.

    By topic, Trump’s immigration claims stand out

    PolitiFact’s focus has been on Trump’s more consequential statements. His rhetoric around immigration often distorts reality. 

    Trump campaigned in 2015 and 2016 on a message of fear of immigrants illegally in the U.S. He told Americans that “the Mexican government … they send the bad ones over.” That’s Pants on Fire. Most Mexicans were crossing the border seeking work. There was no evidence that their government sent criminals. 

    Trump also wildly misrepresented Democratic policies. In October 2016, he said Clinton would allow 650 million immigrants into the U.S. in one week. That’s an absurd number considering the U.S. population was about half that amount.

    In December 2017, Trump said that under the diversity visa lottery program, other countries “give us their worst people” — a distortion of how the U.S. government vets and selects them. 

    During the 2020 campaign and Biden’s presidency, Trump continued to use scare tactics, falsely stating that Biden halted virtually all deportations, including of murderers, or planned to give immigrants welfare benefits.

    Trump’s falsehoods have fueled threats to democracy

    Trump’s ridiculous statements about elections stretch back to 2016, when a few months before Election Day he called elections “rigged.” After he won in 2016, Trump claimed there was “serious voter fraud” in states he lost. It was particularly absurd for him to blame voter fraud for his 2016 loss of California, a state that hadn’t voted for a Republican for president since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

    Trump’s election falsehoods increasingly became focused on grievances.

    As Trump faced reelection in 2020, he said Biden could win only if the election was rigged. Elections are administered in thousands of local areas nationwide, each with safeguards, making any attempt to “rig” a national election highly improbable.

    Trump’s election result denial has poisoned many Americans’ views on voting, misleading the public about how elections are run. 

    A December 2023 Washington Post/University of Maryland survey found that about one third of respondents believed there was solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020. 

    Gallup found before the 2022 midterms that most Americans were very confident or somewhat confident that the results would be accurately counted. Democrats were more than twice as confident as Republicans, representing the largest gap Gallup has recorded on this measure since 2004.  

    One week before the 2020 election, Trump said counting ballots for weeks after Election Day “is totally inappropriate, and I don’t believe that’s by our laws.” However, most ballots are counted quickly; federal law allows states more than a month after the election to check their math, resolve disputes.

    In the early morning hours after polls closed, Trump made the ridiculously premature declaration that he had won. Because the ballots were still being counted,  no one could say with any confidence whether Trump or Biden had won. Yet claims that Trump had won prompted Trump’s supporters — some armed — to gather outside of vote counting sites including in Philadelphia and Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix.

    Trump continued this theme over the next several weeks, telling his supporters of “surprise ballot dumps” and “massive fraud” that did not exist. He told his allies, “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

    More than 1,200 people have been charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Court records show that some have said Trump told them to act. Whether Trump faces consequences for actions to subvert lawful election results remains to be seen in Fulton County, Georgia, and the federal courts.

    What is PolitiFact’s role?

    Readers sometimes ask us what our endgame is with a politician like Trump. They say our fact-checks don’t keep Trump from repeating his false claims, including lies about the 2020 election.

    It’s not our job to silence Trump or force him to change his rhetoric. Nor is it our job to tell voters how they should mark their ballots. 

    Our job is to provide factually vetted information to voters so they can make informed choices.

    We fact-check all major political parties, holding their leaders and candidates accountable for misleading rhetoric. We write for Americans who are open to considering evidence. And we document for the historical record, including analysts who will study the Trump era for decades to come.

    RELATED: These are PolitiFact’s top 10 most-read fact-checks of Donald Trump

    RELATED: How Trump fared on 100 campaign promises tracked on our Trump-O-Meter

    RELATED: The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter: PolitiFact’s methodology for independent fact-checking

     



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  • PolitiFact – In final report, House Ethics Committee targets George Santos’ falsehoods

    PolitiFact – In final report, House Ethics Committee targets George Santos’ falsehoods

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    Despite widespread attention to dubious claims about his personal story, Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., remains a member of Congress. But with the Nov. 16 release of a scathing House Ethics Committee report, Santos’ days in the House may be numbered.

    The committee report found “overwhelming evidence of his misconduct,” including several matters it referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. The referrals go beyond the charges Santos was already facing in federal court, including counts of wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions, false statements, records falsification, identity theft and conspiracy. Santos has pleaded not guilty to all charges; a trial is scheduled for September.

    After the committee released its report, Santos said he would not run for reelection. The report also accelerated House lawmakers’ efforts to expel him, which would take a two-thirds majority.

    As journalists dedicated to determining what is true and false in politics, we at PolitiFact were struck by how much the committee’s report addressed not just possible criminal and ethical violations by Santos but his falsehoods as well.

    The 64-page document uses a variation on the word “lie” nine times, and a variation on the word “false” more than 30 times.

    “A fundamental tenet of government service is that public office is a public trust,” the report said, concluding that Santos “cannot be trusted.”

    The committee added that “while it is not uncommon for committee investigations to involve multiple allegations and a pattern of misconduct, the sheer scope of the violations at issue here is highly unusual and damning. … Most significantly, Rep. Santos’ fraud on the electorate is ongoing — he continues to propound falsehoods and misrepresentations rather than take responsibility for his actions.”

    Here, we’ll take a closer look at what the report said about Santos’ problems with the truth.

    Santos’ dubious personal story

    Earlier this year, we covered the breadth of Santos’ questionable claims about his personal background. We found that he only rarely acknowledged fabrications or falsehoods; instead, he mostly reiterated them or ignored any questions about their veracity.

    In most cases, lying about one’s background would be outside the Ethics Committee’s purview. But the committee’s report recapped Santos’ litany of apparent fabrications, adding its voice to those who have said they are false.

    “Rep. Santos’ congressional campaigns were built around his backstory as a successful man of means: a grandson of Holocaust survivors and graduate from Baruch College with a Master’s in Business Administration from New York University, who went on to work at CitiGroup and Goldman Sachs, owned multiple properties, and was the beneficiary of a family trust worth millions of dollars left by his mother, who passed years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a result of long-term health effects related to being at one of the towers.

    “No part of that backstory has been found to be true.”

    These falsehoods, the committee found, were a gateway into more serious acts.

    “Rep. Santos’ ‘omissions’ are more than just embellishments intended to cover up his embarrassment about not having the academic pedigree he claimed,” the panel wrote. “His missing disclosures hid his disreputable business dealings that coincided with his campaign for Congress.”

    Falsehoods about money

    Much of the report addressed problems with the mandatory campaign finance disclosure forms that Santos and his campaign filed. The investigators found “systemic errors and omissions” that it concluded were “part of an overall scheme to avoid transparency.”

    For instance, the report noted a financial disclosure form in which Santos said he owned an apartment in Brazil; a checking account worth as much as $250,000; a savings account worth between $1 million and $5 million; and ownership of the Devolder Organization, a company worth between $1 million and $5 million. None of these claims were close to accurate.

    The committee interviewed several witnesses who said Santos would “boast of significant wealth and claim to have access to a ‘trust’ managed by a ‘family firm’” when in fact he “was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits.”

    The report added that Santos “referenced a background in finance as part of his qualifications for election to the House. That background was largely fictional.”

    Santos’ lack of candor during investigation was ‘just another fraud’ 

    The report didn’t just take Santos to task for failing to provide a full accounting to the committee; it also accused him of lying when he said he would cooperate.

    “Shortly after the committee announced that it had impaneled (a subcommittee) to review allegations relating to Rep. Santos, he told news outlets: ‘I’m going to comply 100% with’ the committee’s investigation,” the report said. But “despite his public assurances, Rep. Santos provided limited documents … often following lengthy delays.” 

    The report characterized this as “clear” evidence that Santos’ promise to cooperate with the investigation “was just another falsehood.”

    The report also knocked Santos for claiming the committee never told him to correct his financial disclosure filings. The report said the committee had told him clearly that he should do so. 

    “This is just another fraud on the electorate,” the report said.

    Dishonesty to his staff

    The report details multiple instances in which Santos was dishonest with his staff.

    During his campaign, his team presented him with a 141-page “vulnerability report” that flagged numerous concerns about his personal and financial background.

    “As a result of the report, Rep. Santos was encouraged by his campaign staff to drop out of the race and, when he refused, three staffers quit his campaign altogether,” the report said. “This was a key moment wherein Rep. Santos could have put an end to all the lies he told, or at a minimum, taken steps to correct the record about his background and personal and campaign finances. Instead, he downplayed the significance of the report,” telling his aides that it was inaccurate.

    One particularly bold claim concerned a sports car. “At no point does Rep. Santos appear to have owned a Maserati, despite telling campaign staff otherwise,” the report said.

    The committee concluded that despite such statements, Santos’ aides eventually became wise to his ways: “Members of Rep. Santos’ own campaign staff viewed him as a ‘fabulist’ whose penchant for telling lies was so concerning that he was encouraged to seek treatment.” 

    PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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