When Donald Trump speaks for a record-long 92 minutes, you can expect that there will be statements that raise many eyebrows. His rally speech in Wisconsin last night was no exception. During this time, the former US president made a number of bombastic claims about what he accomplished during his four years as president. According to Trump, there was, among other things, world peace, the United States had the best economy in world history and he had built most of the wall along the border with Mexico. As usual, the American media have copied a number of Trump’s claims during the speech. Here follows a selection of sensational statements from the night’s speech that have been fact-checked. “Our adversaries inherited a world of peace and turned it into a planet of war.” This is a false claim, writes CNN. There were many unresolved wars and conflicts in the world when Trump left the White House in January 2021. American troops were still deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia, as well as the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. There was, among other things, conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and Israel and Iran. There was also fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region. NO WAR WITH RUSSIA: – Under President Trump, Russia did not take anything, Trump said during his speech and pointed out that Russia went to war against Georgia when George Bush was president, on the Crimean peninsula when Obama was president and now against all of Ukraine under Biden’s presidential term. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP Stockholm’s international peace research institute Sipri estimates, according to CNN, that there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020. This figure was identical in 2021, according to Sipri. “We fought IS 100 percent in Syria and Iraq. It was said it was going to take five years. We did it in a couple of months.” This is not correct, according to CNN. Trump had been in the presidency for over two years when areas held by the Islamic State were liberated. Trump has said in a previous speech that he considers a visit to Iraq in December 2018 as the starting point for the operation against IS. Even then, it took over two and a half months before the liberation was completed. According to CNN, Trump also gives himself too much credit when he says he fought IS. Kurdish forces did much of the fighting on the ground, and major advances were made against IS under Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016. GO TO IRAQ: Donald Trump and his wife Melania visited American soldiers in Iraq in December 2018. Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP « We had the best economy in the history of the world” This is not true, according to CBS News. If you look at the gross domestic product (GDP), this increased by around 2.5 per cent on average under Trump, figures from the World Bank show. This figure excludes the corona year 2020. If you include 2020, the figure drops by almost one percentage point. GDP growth between 1962 and 1966 varied from 4.4 percent to 6.66 percent. In 1950 and 1951, growth varied from 8.7 per cent to 8 per cent. In comparison. According to the World Bank, the average GDP growth of 3.4 percent is below Biden. “There was no inflation when I was president” This is wrong, according to USA Today. Consumer price index figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that inflation rose by 2.2 percent from February 2017 to February 2018. This was during the Trump administration. The highest inflation under Trump was 2.9 percent in both June and July 2018. This was the highest inflation in the country in six years. During the corona pandemic, however, inflation in the United States dropped to below 1 percent for three months while Trump was president. By comparison, inflation was 9.1 percent under Biden in 2022 – the highest figure in four decades. The highest inflation under Barack Obama was 3.9 percent in September 2011. LOW INFLATION: Inflation during Trump’s presidency was low, but far from non-existent as he claimed last night. Photo: AFP “Our crime is increasing, while crime in the rest of the world is decreasing” This is wrong. FBI figures for 2023 show that violent crime in the United States decreased significantly, writes CNN. The preliminary figures show a decrease of 13 per cent for murder and a 6 per cent decrease in all reported violent crime on a national basis. Many US cities also reported sharp declines in homicides from 2023 to 2024, writes Axios. The FBI figures are preliminary. The figures have been collected from local police districts, and not all have submitted their data. But the figures show that crime has decreased to a certain extent, according to CNN. WANT TO END THE WALL: Around 2,400 kilometers remain before the wall covers the entire border between the USA and Mexico. But according to Trump, this is almost finished. Photo: Alfredo Estrella / AFP “I want to end the immigration crisis by closing our borders and ending the wall. I have already built most of it.” This is not correct, writes CBS News. Around 724 kilometers of wall were built along the border with Mexico during Trump’s administration. This corresponds to around 23 percent of the total border, which is around 3,111 kilometers long. Most of what was built on the 724 kilometer stretch was the replacement of old, outdated barriers. Around 84 kilometers of brand new wall was built, according to figures from the US Customs and Border Protection. Published 19.07.2024, at 09.41
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These claims were wrong during the national assembly speech – news Urix – Utenriksnyheter og -documentarer
