Reality examine of the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump : NPR

Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump confronted off of their first — and presumably solely — debate of the 2024 marketing campaign Tuesday, taking questions on key points just like the border, the economic system and abortion.

With the candidates just about tied within the polls, and simply 55 days till Election Day, Trump and Harris sought to outline their visions for America in entrance of a nationwide viewers, and deflect assaults from the opposite facet.

NPR reporters fact-checked the candidates’ claims in actual time. Here is what they discovered:

Economic system

TRUMP: “I had no inflation, just about no inflation. That they had the best inflation, maybe within the historical past of our nation, as a result of I’ve by no means seen a worse time frame. Folks cannot exit and purchase cereal or bacon or eggs or the rest.”

Inflation soared to a four-decade excessive of 9.1% in 2022, based on the buyer value index. Whereas inflation has since fallen to 2.9% (as of July), costs — notably meals costs — are nonetheless greater than many Individuals would love.

Different nations have additionally confronted excessive inflation within the wake of the pandemic, as tangled provide chains struggled to maintain tempo with surging demand. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine additionally fueled inflation by driving up vitality and meals costs worldwide.

Authorities spending within the U.S. underneath each the Biden-Harris administration and Trump additionally could have contributed, placing extra money in folks’s pockets and enabling them to maintain spending within the face of excessive costs.

Whereas excessive costs are a supply of frustration for a lot of Individuals, the typical employee has extra shopping for energy right this moment than she did earlier than the pandemic. Since February 2020 (simply earlier than the pandemic took maintain within the U.S.) shopper costs have risen 21.6% whereas common wages have risen 23%.

Many costs have been depressed early within the pandemic, nevertheless, so the comparability is much less flattering should you begin the clock when President Biden and Vice President Harris took workplace. Since early 2021, shopper costs have risen 19.6% whereas common wages have risen 16.9%. Wage positive aspects have been outpacing value will increase for over a 12 months, in order that hole ought to ultimately shut.

— NPR economics correspondent Scott Horsley

HARRIS: “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment for the reason that Nice Melancholy.”

On the peak of the Nice Melancholy in 1933, the nationwide unemployment fee was close to 25%, based on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.

At first of the COVID pandemic, the unemployment fee peaked at 14.8% in April 2020, a stage not seen since 1948, based on the Congressional Analysis Service.

However by the point Trump left workplace, unemployment had fallen to a decrease, however nonetheless elevated stage. The January 2021 unemployment fee was 6.3%.

— NPR producer Lexie Schapitl

Immigration

TRUMP: “You see what’s occurring with cities all through the USA. You have a look at Springfield, Ohio, you have a look at Aurora in Colorado. They’re taking on the cities. They’re taking on buildings. They are going in violently. These are the folks that she and Biden let into our nation, they usually’re destroying our nation. They’re harmful. They’re on the highest stage of criminality, and we’ve to get them out.”

Trump attacked Harris and Biden’s information on immigration, arguing that they are failing to stem folks from different nations from getting into the U.S. and inflicting violence.

Within the final two years, greater than 40,000 Venezuelan immigrants have arrived within the Denver metro space. And it’s true that many now dwell in Aurora.

A number of weeks in the past, a video of gang members in an Aurora, Colo., condominium constructing had right-wing media declaring town’s takeover by Venezuelan gangs. NPR seemed into these claims.

Shortly after the video appeared, Colorado’s Republican Get together despatched a fundraising letter claiming the state is underneath violent assault, and Venezuelan gangs have taken over Aurora.

It is also true Aurora police have just lately arrested 10 members of a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua. However Aurora’s interim police chief, Heather Morris, says there isn’t any proof of a gang takeover of condominium buildings in her metropolis.

What’s extra, violent crime — together with homicide, theft and rape — is means down nationwide, based on the most up-to-date knowledge from the FBI. Notably, analysts predict violent crime charges this 12 months will fall again all the way down to the place they have been earlier than they surged throughout the pandemic, and could even strategy a 50-year low.

Trump additionally claims that migrants are driving up crime charges within the U.S. That’s not true. Researchers from Stanford College discovered that for the reason that Sixties, immigrants have been 60% much less prone to be incarcerated than folks born within the U.S. The CATO Institute, a libertarian assume tank, discovered undocumented immigrants in Texas have been 37% much less prone to be convicted of a criminal offense.

— NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd and felony justice reporter Meg Anderson

TRUMP: “In Springfield, they’re consuming the canines. The folks that got here in, they’re consuming the cats. They’re consuming the pets of the folks that dwell there.”

This comment refers to a debunked, dehumanizing declare that Haitian migrants residing in Springfield, Ohio, are abducting pets and consuming them.

The declare, which native police say is baseless, first circulated amongst far-right activists, native Republicans and neo-Nazis earlier than being picked up by congressional leaders, vice presidential candidate JD Vance and others. A well known advocate for the Haitian neighborhood says she obtained a wave of racist harassment after Vance shared the idea on social media.

The Springfield Information-Solar reported that native police stated that incidents of pets being stolen or eaten have been “not one thing that is on our radar proper now.” The paper stated the unsubstantiated declare appears to have began with a put up in a Springfield Fb group that was broadly shared throughout social media.

The declare is the most recent instance of Trump leaning into anti-immigrant rhetoric. Since getting into the political area in 2015, Trump accused immigrants of being criminals, rapists, or “poisoning the blood of our nation.”

— NPR disinformation reporter Jude Joffe-Block

TRUMP: “Plenty of these unlawful immigrants coming in, [Democrats] try to get them to vote.”

It’s unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there’s no credible proof that it has occurred in vital numbers, or that there’s an effort underway to illegally register undocumented immigrants to vote this election.

Voter registration kinds require voters to signal an oath — underneath penalty of perjury — that they’re U.S. residents. If a noncitizen lies about their citizenship on a registration type and vote, they’ve created a paper path of a criminal offense that’s punishable with jail time and deportation.

“The deterrent is extremely robust,” David Becker, government director of Middle for Election Innovation and Analysis, advised NPR.

Election officers routinely confirm info on voter registration kinds, which ask registrants for both a driver’s license quantity or the final 4 of social safety numbers.

In 2016, the Brennan Middle for Justice surveyed native election officers in 42 jurisdictions with excessive immigrant populations and located 30 circumstances of suspected noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes solid, or 0.0001%.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger launched an audit in 2022 that discovered fewer than 1,700 suspected noncitizens had tried to register to vote over the previous 25 years. None have been capable of vote.

— NPR disinformation reporter Jude Joffe-Block

TRUMP: “[Harris] was the border czar. Do not forget that she was the border czar.”

Republicans have taken to calling Harris the “border czar” as a solution to blame her for elevated migration to the U.S. and what they see as border safety coverage failures of the Biden administration.

There is no such thing as a precise “border czar” place. In 2021, President Biden tasked Harris with addressing the basis causes of migration from Central America.

The “root causes technique … identifies, prioritizes, and coordinates actions to enhance safety, governance, human rights, and financial situations within the area,” the White Home stated in an announcement. “It integrates varied U.S. authorities instruments, together with diplomacy, overseas help, public diplomacy, and sanctions.”

Whereas Harris has been scrutinized on the proper, immigration advocates have additionally criticized Harris, together with for feedback in 2021 the place she warned potential migrants, “Don’t come.”

— NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd

Abortion

TRUMP: “You would do abortions within the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and possibly after beginning.”

As ABC Information anchor Linsey Davis talked about throughout her real-time reality examine, there isn’t any state the place it’s authorized to kill a child after beginning (Trump known as it “execution”). A report from KFF earlier this 12 months additionally famous that abortions “after beginning” are unlawful in each state.

In line with the Pew Analysis Middle, the overwhelming majority of abortions — 93% — happen throughout the first trimester. Pew says 1% happen after 21 weeks. Most of these happen earlier than 24 weeks, the approximate timeline for fetal viability, based on a report by KFF Well being Information.

A separate evaluation from KFF earlier this 12 months famous that later abortions are costly to acquire and provided by comparatively few suppliers, and infrequently happen due to medical issues or as a result of sufferers face limitations earlier of their pregnancies.

“Nowhere in America is a girl carrying a being pregnant to time period and asking for an abortion. That isn’t occurring; it’s insulting to the ladies of America,” Harris stated.

Harris additionally invoked faith in her response, arguing that “one doesn’t should abandon their religion” to agree that the federal government mustn’t management reproductive well being choices.

As Davis additionally famous, Trump has provided combined messages about abortion over the course of the marketing campaign. He has bragged about his instrumental position in overturning Roe v. Wade, whereas showing to backpedal on a difficulty that polling makes clear is a legal responsibility for Republicans.

— NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon

Afghanistan

TRUMP: The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan “was some of the incompetently dealt with conditions anyone has ever seen.”

Trump and Republicans in Congress say President Biden is accountable for the autumn of Kabul to the Taliban three years in the past, and the chaotic rush on the airport the place 13 U.S. troops died in a suicide bomb assault that killed practically 200 Afghan civilians attempting to flee. Of late, Republicans have been emphasizing Harris’ position. However the Afghanistan warfare spanned 4 U.S. presidencies, and it is vital to notice that it was the Trump administration that signed a peace deal that was principally a fast exit plan.

Trump frequently claims there have been no casualties in Afghanistan for 18 months underneath his administration, and it’s not true, based on Pentagon information.

— NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence

Navy coverage

HARRIS: “There’s not one member of the navy who’s in lively obligation in a fight zone in any warfare zone all over the world for the primary time this century.”

This can be a widespread administration speaking level, and it is technically true. However hundreds of troops in Iraq and on the Syrian border are nonetheless in very harmful terrain. U.S. troops died in Jordan in January on a base that retains watch over the warfare with ISIS in Syria.

— NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence

Fracking

HARRIS: “I cannot ban fracking. I’ve not banned fracking as vice chairman United States, and actually, I used to be the tie-breaking vote on the inflation Discount Act which opened new leases for fracking.”

When she first ran for president in 2019, Harris had stated she was firmly in favor of banning fracking — a stance she later deserted when she joined President Biden’s marketing campaign as his operating mate.

In an interview with CNN final month, Harris tried to clarify why her place has modified from being towards fracking to being in favor of it.

“What I’ve seen is that we will develop, and we will enhance a clear vitality economic system with out banning fracking,” Harris advised CNN’s Dana Bash.

Below the Biden/Harris administration, the U.S. produced a report quantity of oil final 12 months — averaging 12.9 million barrels per day. That eclipsed the earlier report of 12.3 million barrels per day, set underneath Trump in 2019. 2023 was additionally a report 12 months for home manufacturing of pure fuel. A lot of the home increase in oil and fuel manufacturing is the results of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” strategies.

Along with report oil and fuel manufacturing, the Biden-Harris administration has additionally coincided with speedy progress of photo voltaic and wind energy. In the meantime, coal has declined as a supply of electrical energy.

— NPR economics correspondent Scott Horsley

Well being care

TRUMP: “I had a option to make: Do I save [the Affordable Care Act] and make it pretty much as good as it may be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it.”

Throughout his presidency, Trump undermined the Inexpensive Care Act in some ways — for example, by slashing funding for promoting and free “navigators” who assist folks join a medical insurance plan on HealthCare.gov. And moderately than deciding to “save” the ACA, he tried exhausting to get Congress to repeal it, and failed. When pushed Tuesday on what well being coverage he would put as an alternative, he stated he has “ideas of a plan.”

The Biden administration has reversed course from Trump’s administration of the Inexpensive Care Act. Elevated subsidies have made premiums extra inexpensive within the marketplaces, and enrollment has surged. The uninsurance fee has dropped to its lowest level ever throughout the Biden administration.

The Inexpensive Care Act was handed in 2010 and is entrenched within the well being care system. Republicans efficiently ran towards Obamacare for a few decade, but it surely has light as a marketing campaign difficulty this 12 months.

— NPR well being coverage correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin