WASHINGTON (AP) – In his closing remarks as president, Donald Trump tried to take credit for the achievements of his predecessor and even those that would come under President Joe Biden.
Falsehood permeated his farewell comments Wednesday morning and the night before, although he got it right: “We were not a regular administration.”
In addition, noting that the Americans were “horrified” by the Capitol invasion this month, he ignored the encouragement he had given the crowd in advance and his praise for the attackers as “very special” people while they were still looting the headquarters of the power.
A look at some of his statements to supporters of Andrews Joint Base en route to Florida on Wednesday and his recorded speech on Tuesday:
COVID-19
TRUMP: “We developed the vaccine in nine months, instead of nine or five years or ten years, a long time. It was supposed to take a long time. … We have two out, we have another coming almost immediately. ”- comments on Wednesday before leaving Washington.
TRUMP: “Another administration would take three, four, five, maybe even ten years to develop a vaccine. We did it in nine months. ”- address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: In fact, the administration has not developed vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies do. And one of the two American companies that launched vaccines now in use has not received government funding for development.
Trump’s claim that a vaccine would take years under a different administration increases credulity. COVID-19 vaccines were indeed incredibly fast, but other countries have also developed them. A coronavirus vaccine is not a singular achievement of the United States, much less the Trump administration.
The American pharmaceutical Pfizer developed its vaccine in partnership with the German BioNTech, avoiding federal development funds, although benefiting from a previous commitment by Washington to buy large quantities if the vaccine is successful. A vaccine from Moderna, from the United States, is also widely used.
But the British vaccine AstraZeneca-Oxford is being administered in several countries, and vaccines from China and Russia are also of limited use. More than a dozen potential vaccines are in the final stages of testing worldwide.
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TRUMP: “We passed VA Choice.” – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: No, he didn’t pass the Choice program. President Barack Obama did. Trump expanded that. The program allows veterans to obtain medical care outside the Veterans Affairs system under certain conditions. Trump has tried to take credit for Obama’s achievements countless times.
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TAXES
TRUMP: “We also got tax cuts, by far the biggest tax cut and reform in our country’s history.” – comments Wednesday.
TRUMP: “We approve the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history.” – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Your tax cuts are nowhere near the largest in the history of the United States.
It is a tax reduction of $ 1.5 trillion over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of this size ranks 12th, according to the Federal Responsible Budget Committee. President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 cut is the largest, followed by the 1945 reversal of taxes that financed World War II.
Post-Reagan tax cuts are also among the historically significant: the cuts of President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and the renewal of them by Obama a decade later.
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ECONOMY
TRUMP: “We have the largest economy in the world.” – comments Wednesday.
TRUMP: “We also built the largest economy in the history of the world.” – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: No, the numbers show that it was not the largest in the history of the United States. And he is the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to leave his job with fewer jobs than when he started.
Did the US have the most jobs registered before the pandemic? Of course, the population had grown. The 3.5% unemployment rate before the recession was at a half-century low, but the percentage of people working or looking for a job was still below the 2,000 peak.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer looked at Trump’s track record of economic growth. Growth with Trump averaged 2.48% per year before the pandemic, only slightly better than the 2.41% gains made during Obama’s second term. In contrast, the economic expansion that began in 1982 during Reagan’s presidency averaged 4.2% per year.
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TRUMP, on the economy after the pandemic: “It is a rocket up.” – comments Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It is not so.
There has been no dramatic V-shaped economic recovery under Trump. Employers cut jobs during their last December in the job. But economists say the additional aid approved in December and the prospect of more than Biden could cause the strongest growth this year in more than two decades.
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TRUMP: “We have reactivated job creation in America and achieved a record unemployment rate for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women – almost everyone. – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: It is not an ignition. Job creation actually slowed in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, to about 2 million, compared to nearly 2.5 million in 2016, Obama’s last year in office.
Low unemployment rates refer to a pre-pandemic economy that no longer exists. The pandemic has cost the United States economy 10 million jobs and made Trump the first president since Hoover to oversee the net job loss. The U.S. has about 2.8 million fewer jobs now than when Trump opened, and lost 140,000 in December alone. And job losses have fallen disproportionately for black Americans, Hispanics and women.
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TRUMP: “We rebuilt the American manufacturing base, opened thousands of new factories and brought back the beautiful phrase Made in the USA.” – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: This is overkill. There are now 60,000 fewer industrial jobs in the U.S. than when Trump took office. Despite gains before the pandemic, the manufacturing base was not exactly “rebuilt”.
Prior to the coronavirus, almost 500,000 industrial jobs were added under Trump, slightly better than the nearly 400,000 earned during Obama’s second term. Still, even before the pandemic, the United States had 4.3 million fewer factory jobs than it did in 2001, the year that China joined the World Trade Organization and a flood of cheaper imports from that country entered the United States.
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CAPITOL INSURRECTION
TRUMP: “All Americans were horrified by the attack on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. This can never be tolerated. ”- address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: This may sum up the reaction of most Americans, but it ignores its own part in arousing the anger of its supporters before they staged the violent melee.
For months, Trump falsely claimed that the November election was stolen, then invited supporters to Washington and sent them to Capitol Hill with the exhortation to “fight like hell”.
With the uprising still underway and the speed of the attack apparent from videos and reports from the scene, Trump released a video saying “to go home now” while repeating “this was a fraudulent election” and added, “We love you. You are very special. “
The House accused Trump, accusing him of inciting an insurrection. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, a Trump political ally for four years, said on Tuesday that Trump supporters were “fed with lies” and “provoked by the president and other powerful people”.
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MILITARY
TRUMP: “We rebuilt the United States military.” – comments Wednesday.
THE FACTS: This is overkill.
It is true that his government accelerated a sharp increase in defense spending, including a truce of what the United States military saw as crippling spending limits under budget hijacking.
But a series 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 tanks, planes and other newly ordered weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.
Air Force Minuteman 3 missiles, a key part of the United States’ nuclear force, for example, have been operating since the early 1970s and modernization began in the Obama administration. They should be replaced by a new version, but only at the end of this decade.
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TRUMP: “We obliterate the ISIS caliphate.” – address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Your suggestion of a 100% defeat is misleading, as the Islamic State group still poses a threat.
ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, then lost the last of its lands in Syria in March 2019, marking the end of the self-declared caliphate of extremists. Still, sleeping extremist cells have continued to launch attacks on Iraq and Syria in recent weeks and are believed to be responsible for murders directed against local officials and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The continued attacks are a sign that the militant group is taking advantage of governments that were otherwise focused on the pandemic and the ensuing fall in economic chaos. The virus is raising long-standing concerns among security experts and the UN that the group will return.
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CHINA
TRUMP: “We impose historic and monumental tariffs on China. … Our business relationship was changing rapidly, billions and billions of dollars were being poured into the United States, but the virus forced us to go in a different direction. ”- address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: This is a familiar statement, totally false.
It is false to suggest that the United States never charged tariffs on Chinese products before it took action. Tariffs on Chinese products are simply higher in some cases than they were before. It is also wrong to suggest that tariffs are being paid by China.
The tariff money that reaches the government coffers comes mainly from US companies and consumers, not from China. Tariffs are mainly, if not entirely, a tax paid internally.
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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EDITOR’S NOTE – A look at the truth of the claims of political figures.
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