WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump Tuesday night in Milwaukee as six Democratic contenders hoping to unseat him tussled in their in Iowa.
A look at how some of their claims compare with the facts:
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JOE BIDEN: “I was asked to bring 156,000 troops home from that war, which I did. I led that effort.”
THE FACTS: Biden is roughly right about bringing troops home, but he didn’t mention that the U.S. had to send some back.
President Barack Obama did designate Biden, his vice president, to take the lead in pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq and coordinating efforts to maintain stability in Baghdad. His results were mixed. Biden and Obama failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to keep a limited number of U.S. troops there after December 2011. That was the deadline for a complete U.S. pullout under a deal negotiated by the Bush administration in late 2008. Biden was still vice president when Obama was compelled to return American troops to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
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TRUMP: “More than 300,000 people under Obama, 300,000 people, left the workforce. Under just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people have joined the workforce.”
THE FACTS: Trump is wrong about Obama’s record.
More than 5 million people joined the U.S. labor force during Obama’s presidency, according to Labor Department figures. These gains reflect the recovery from the Great Recession as well as population growth. But Trump does have reason to celebrate as well. More than 4.8 million people have joined the labor force in just three years of his presidency.
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TRUMP: “Mexico’s paying for the wall. … You know that. It’s all worked out.”
THE FACTS: Mexico isn’t paying for Trump’s long-promised border wall.
Trump has argued that the updated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico will pay for the wall because of economic benefits he predicts will come from the deal. Nothing in the trade agreement would cover or refund the construction cost or require a payment from Mexico.
Instead, he is assuming a wide variety of economic benefits that can’t be quantified or counted on. For example, he has said the deal will dissuade some U.S. companies from moving operations to Mexico and he credits that possibility as a payment by Mexico.
The agreement preserves the existing liberalized environment of low or no tariffs among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, with certain improvements for each country.
Although his 2016 campaign left open the possibility that Mexico might somehow contribute to the cost indirectly, Trump repeatedly roused his crowds with the straight-ahead promise: “I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
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TRUMP: “We’ve created 7 million jobs since the election including more than 1 million manufacturing and construction jobs. Nobody thought that was possible.”
THE FACTS: Those numbers are less impressive than Trump claims.
Government figures do back the president’s statements. But the job gains under Trump over the past three years were lower than during the final three years of Barack Obama’s presidency. More than 8 million jobs were added during that period under Obama, including 1.2 million combined in manufacturing and construction. What these figures suggest is that much of the job growth under Trump reflects the momentum from a recovery that officially began in the middle of 2009.
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TRUMP: “Our military has been totally rebuilt.”
THE FACTS: It hasn’t.
It’s true that his administration has accelerated a sharp buildup in defense spending, including a respite from what the U.S. military considered to be crippling spending limits under budget sequestration.
But a number of new Pentagon weapons programs, such as the F-35 fighter jet, were started years before the Trump administration. And it will take years for freshly ordered tanks, planes and other weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.
The Air Force’s Minuteman 3 missiles, a key part of the U.S. nuclear force, for instance, have been operating since the early 1970s and the modernization was begun under the Obama administration. They are due to be replaced with a new version, but not until later this decade.
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Associated Press writers Cal Woodward, Josh Boak, Robert Burns, Jill Colvin and Colleen Long contributed to this report.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
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