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Fact checks: Trump, Clinton and their debate claims

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton walks past Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis today.

WASHINGTON » Claims from the second presidential debate and how it stacks up with the facts:

Trump encouraged people to check out sex tape

DONALD TRUMP, asked whether his early morning tweets directing people to check out a sex tape showed discipline, said: “It wasn’t ‘check out a sex tape.’”

THE FACTS: Wrong. Trump told his 12.2 million Twitter followers to check out a sex tape as he criticized a former Miss Universe.

In the early morning hours of Sept. 30, Trump tweeted, “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”

Trump’s tweet was an attack on former 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado, a woman who Clinton brought up in the last presidential debate as an example of Trump’s derogatory comments about women. The video Trump appeared to be referencing was from a Spanish reality show. In 2005, Machado, who was a contestant on the show, was filmed in bed, under the covers with a male contestant and speaking sexually about his body parts. The grainy footage doesn’t show any nudity, though Machado has said that she was having sex in the footage.

Machado, a Venezuela-born woman who is now a U.S. citizen, has publicly supported Clinton and criticized Trump for body-shaming her, including calling her “Miss Piggy” and threatening to take away her crown for gaining weight. Trump has stood by his criticisms of Machado’s weight, saying in a recent interview with Fox News: “She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”

Trump on support for Iraq war

DONALD TRUMP: “I would not have had our troops in Iraq.”

Trump has repeatedly said in the campaign he opposed the Iraq War before it started. But the facts are clear: He did not.

There is no evidence Trump expressed public opposition to the war before the U.S. invaded. Rather, he offered lukewarm support. The billionaire businessman only began to voice doubts about the conflict well after it began in March 2003.

Trump’s first known public comment on the topic came on Sept. 11, 2002, when he was asked whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion in an interview with radio host Howard Stern. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. During a Fox News Channel interview with Neil Cavuto in January 2003, Trump suggested the economy and threats from North Korea posed greater problems for then-President George W. Bush than Iraq, but he did not say he opposed a possible invasion.

On March 21, 2003, just days after the invasion began, Trump told Cavuto on his show that the invasion “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”

Trump bolsters his position by pointing to an interview he did with Esquire. He was quoted as saying he opposed the war, saying he “would never have handled it that way.” He made that comment, however, 16 months after the invasion began.

Clinton says the U.S. is energy independent

CLINTON: “We are now, for the first time ever, energy independent.”

THE FACTS: Clinton overstates the case. For the first time in decades the United States gets more energy domestically than it imports, but it is not yet entirely energy independent. Oil still is imported, from the Mideast and elsewhere. Estimates vary as to when the U.S. might achieve full energy independence.

Domestic oil production has greatly increased in recent years and oil imports as a percentage of consumption have dropped, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Oil imports have dropped from 3.58 billion barrels in 2008 to 2.68 billion barrels in 2015.

Clinton cited Lincoln on political deals

HILLARY CLINTON, in response to a question about her saying that politicians need to have “both a public and a private position” in a 2013 paid speech, said, “As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln. It was a master class watching President Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th Amendment.”

DONALD TRUMP replied, “She lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln.”

THE FACTS: Clinton’s recollection is correct.

Clinton invoked the movie “Lincoln,” and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, in an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council.

According to excerpts of the speech included in hacked emails published last week by WikiLeaks, Clinton said politicians must balance “both a public and a private position” while making deals, a process she said was like making sausage.

“It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be,” Clinton said according to the excerpts. “But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

Trump overstates cost of Obama’s health plan

DONALD TRUMP: Obamacare “is going to be one of the biggest line items very shortly.”

THE FACTS: Trump vastly exaggerates the cost of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The cost of the coverage expansion in Obama’s health care law is nowhere near what the government spends on Medicare and Medicaid, for example.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the government will spend $110 billion this year on “Obamacare” coverage. By comparison, Medicare will cost an estimated $590 billion, and the federal share of Medicaid will amount to $370 billion.

Trump wrong on Clinton and health care

DONALD TRUMP: “She (Clinton) wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster…she wants to go to single-payer, which means the government basically rules everything.”

THE FACTS: It’s Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — not Clinton — who supports a Canada-style government-run health care system.

While Clinton’s health care proposals would expand the government’s role in the health care system, she’s not talking about dismantling the current system, which is a hybrid of employer-sponsored coverage, government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and individually purchased insurance.

As president, Clinton would push for a government-sponsored insurance plan in the health care markets created by President Barack Obama’s health care law, as an alternative to private insurance. But those markets currently cover about 11 million people, while about 155 million have job-based coverage.

Trump says Clinton laughed at rape case

DONALD TRUMP: When Hillary Clinton defended an accused child-rapist in court, she “got him off, and she’s seen on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s depiction of Clinton laughing at a child rape victim is false, and his statement that she got the man off the hook isn’t quite right.

Clinton defended the man in 1975 at the demand of the judge in the case.

According to both Clinton in a recorded interview and later statements by the prosecutor who handled the case, Clinton asked not to be assigned to defend the attacker of Kathy Shelton, but ultimately Clinton agreed to defend the man at the judge’s insistence.

According to audio of an interview Clinton gave to a reporter one decade later, Clinton suggested she believed her client, Thomas Alfred Taylor, was guilty, saying that his successful questioning under a polygraph test “forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.”

Despite her discomfort with the case, Clinton aggressively defended her client. In an affidavit to the court, she said a child psychologist had told her that children “from disorganized families,” such as the victim, “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.”

But it was a misstep by the prosecution that broke in favor of Clinton’s client. The crime lab in the case lost a swatch of the victim’s underwear that the prosecution had said contained Taylor’s semen and the victim’s blood. Clinton seized on the mistake, arguing that the absence of evidence fatally undermined the prosecution’s case — prompting the prosecutor to offer Clinton’s client a plea deal to a lesser charge, “unlawful fondling of a child.”

In the recorded interview, Clinton never laughed at Shelton, calling it a “terrible” case and saying it was sad that prosecutors had lost the evidence against her client. But she did laugh at procedural errors in the case, and the judge’s request to speak privately with her client at one point.

Clinton on email security

CLINTON: “After a yearlong investigation, there is no evidence that anyone hacked the server I was using, and there is no evidence that anyone can point to, at all … that any classified material ended up in the wrong hands.”

THE FACTS: Maybe, maybe not. While there’s indeed no direct, explicit evidence that classified information was leaked or that her server was breached, it was nevertheless connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers — and the public may never know who saw them.

The Associated Press previously discovered that her private server, which has been a major campaign issue for Clinton and the focus of U.S. investigations, appeared to allow users to connect to it openly over the internet and control it remotely. That practice, experts said, wasn’t intended to be used without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government warnings at the time over attacks from even amateur hackers.

Since the AP in early 2013 traced her server to her home in Chappaqua, New York, Clinton hasn’t fully explained who administered her server, if it received software updates to plug security holes or if it was monitored for unauthorized access. It’s also unclear what, if any, encryption software Clinton’s server may have used to communicate with official U.S. government email accounts.

Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey has said Clinton and her staff “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But he said the FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Clinton for use of the server while she was secretary of state and closed the investigation.

No evidence Trump sexually assaulted women

DONALD TRUMP, asked whether he had ever sexually assaulted a women, said: “No, I have not.”

THE FACTS: There’s no proof that Trump sexually assaulted women, but he’s been accused of it before.

Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of rape in a deposition in the early 1990s. She later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she felt violated. Trump was also sued for sexual harassment in 1997 by Jill Harth, a woman who, along with her romantic partner, was pitching Trump to get involved in a pin-up competition in the early 1990s.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Harth said Trump ran his hands up her skirt during dinner in 1992, and on another occasion, she said Trump tried to force himself on her in his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom. “Next thing I know he’s pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me,” Harth told the newspaper. Harth dropped her harassment lawsuit against Trump after he settled a separate breach of contract lawsuit. Trump has denied Harth’s allegations.

Trump says Bill Clinton lost law license

DONALD TRUMP described the consequences of a sexual harassment lawsuit against former President Bill Clinton: “He lost his license. He had to pay an $850,000 fine.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s facts are, at best, jumbled. In 1998, lawyers for Bill Clinton settled with former Arkansas state employee Paul Jones for $850,000 in her four-year lawsuit alleging sexual harassment. Clinton did not acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement. But Trump erred in describing the legal consequences of that case. In a related case before the Arkansas State Supreme Court, Clinton was fined $25,000 and his Arkansas law license was suspended for five years. Clinton also faced disbarment before the U.S. Supreme Court, but he opted to resign from the court’s practice instead of facing any penalties.

Trump disputes describing sex assaults

DONALD TRUMP, when asked whether his words captured in video footage from 2005, in which he made sexually predatory and crude comments about women, amounted to a description of sexual assault, said, “No, I didn’t say that at all.”

THE FACTS: Trump clearly described groping women without their permission in a footage captured by “Access Hollywood.” And Trump said he would automatically kiss women he considered beautiful.

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump said. “Grab them by the p——. You can do anything.”

In the audio, first reported by The Washington Post, Trump also described his sexual advances toward a married woman. “I moved on her like a b——. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married.”

15 responses to “Fact checks: Trump, Clinton and their debate claims”

  1. allie says:

    Trump lies with such regularity. Sorry. We cannot support someone that poorly informed about American issues. He is the classic shibai artist

  2. lunalilohi says:

    Dishonest Donald continues to lie and use obtuse exaggerations to mislead his blind mice.

  3. MillionMonkeys says:

    Should we call him Crooked Donald or Lying Trump? Or just a Huuuuge A-hole?

    • bumbai says:

      AP’s biased spin is now called “fact checking.” Kind of like Orwell’s 1984’s INGSOC propaganda apparatus being called the Ministry of Truth.

  4. Waterman2 says:

    HUMMMM ……….Somebody needs to fact check the fact checkers. Obviously they are part of the DNC .

    • sarge22 says:

      We all know it’s rigged. There is a female felon on the loose wearing a pant suit. Lock her up.

    • MillionMonkeys says:

      Trump folks should either:

      1) Learn how to read/watch mainstream media (which tries to be balanced) and take in both sides of the issue. If you read or watch a one-sided source (like a liberal journal or Fox News), take it all with a grain of salt. Yes, Fox News is biased to the right, so if you believe everything they say, that’s your fault.

      2) Take your tin foil hat off. Nobody is trying to send probe waves into your mind, and it only cuts off circulation to your brain. How do I know? BECAUSE IT WAS ON X-FILES!

      • 64hoo says:

        and CNN,MSNBC,ABC,CBS, the AP,SA Washington post new York times are all biased to the left, that people been letting them brainwashed them for the last 30 or 40 years on a lot of lies and half truths, so that’s a lot people believe there bull. but that’s okay those are people with mental disorders to let liberal press and T.V. treat them like brainwashed robots.

        • MillionMonkeys says:

          Why do mainstream media “pick on” Trump? Because of…

          1) The birther theory, the most ridiculous conspiracy theory of our generation. And Donald pushed it with NO evidence for FIVE years. Then INSANELY tried to blame Hillary for it, then DISINGENUOUSLY tried to take credit for “putting it to rest.”

          2) Super-offensive comments made about Mexicans, Muslims, Rosie O’Donnell, all other women, top generals, John McCain, the handicapped, Alicia Machado, babies….

          3) Lying every 3 minutes.

          4) – 100) About 97 other things I don’t have time to list. But the above 3 are enough.

          When you say outrageous things as Trump does, the media will report on it, fact check it, and criticize you for it. That is the CORRECT thing for the news to do!

  5. NanakuliBoss says:

    Trump has no plan. “We are going to Syria and fix it! Believe me! I have 200 generals and admirals (retired) that will help. Oh I also have Gen.George Patton and MacArthur!! Believe me it wI’ll be VERY VERY bad. Oh,,we will let Asad and Putin kill ISIS first! Then we will fix things. YES, VERY VERY GOOD. “Cooper, Why are you asking me WHY I DIDN’T GO TO NAM??3 TIMES DEFFERED??? $$$! HEY DIMWIT!!!!MY FOIT WAS HURT, IT’S CALLED 4 F. MILITARY 4F!!! $$$$$$
    GO LOOK IT UP. ANYWAY I WAS NEEDED BACK HOME TO MAKE $$$$$$ FOR THE U.S.A.!!!!!! NONE OF MY BUDDIES DIED. WHY????? BECAUSE WE WERE THE 1%ER OF AMERICA. IF WE DIDN’T MAKE $$$$ FOR THE U.S. ,THE COMMIES FROM NAM WOULD HAVE INVADED LAS VEGAS.

  6. bumbye says:

    I remember an SNL skit from ’88 – the Dukakis-Bush debate. John Lovitz (Dukakis) said, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” Although I don’t think Hillary is losing at this point, (I’m sure Trump and his supporters beg to differ), I can’t believe it’s that close. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QP9Zqge4s

    • mctruck says:

      The so-called poll, “tweeter” which probably has thousands/millions Russian subscribers(subordinates), which accounts for the padded numbers supporting trump, which really don’t mean diddly, makes donald so very proud to brag about.
      Thirty+ days donald, say goodbye.

  7. Ronin006 says:

    Anyone who accepts the AP’s fact checks as fact needs a reality check.

    • nodaddynotthebelt says:

      Anyone who scoffs at the information just because it does not agree with one’s beliefs needs a reality check. Fox News is not the only source. You need to check all the sources and then make your own conclusions. And that goes for everyone including myself. Don’t take the anything stated by the news with a grain of salt. Go check it. But don’t go dismissing EVERYTHING that does not agree with your own beliefs. Doing so will result in a closed minded robot that will accept everything as law from one source. That’s what happened in history. Check out Warren Jeffs and his followers where they only listened to his words and called them sacred whilst ignoring the things that happened around him and his followers. That is indeed dangerous.

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