Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination at the Republican national convention on Thursday, a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.
Here is a fact check of some of the things said during the final night of the Republican national convention on Thursday – and why they weren’t true.
Trump claims the US has seen the worst inflation ever under Joe Biden
During his speech, Trump claimed that the country has had the worst inflation ever under the Biden administration.
This claim is misleading. Biden was in office for record-high inflation in June 2022, when it stood at 9.1% – the highest since 1981. But inflation has also since come down in the past two years.
Referring to 2020 election, Trump says ‘they used Covid to cheat’
Making his first foray into the well-trodden path of 2020 election denialism, Trump recited a long list of policy proposals and let slip: “And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again, the election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat. You’re never going to let it happen again.”
The evidence that the 2020 election was not marred by fraud is overwhelming.
Trump claims hundreds of thousands are dying because of fentanyl being brought into the US by illegal immigrants
Trump claimed hundreds of thousands of people were dying because of fentanyl being brought into the US through illegal immigration.
The claim is false. The number of overdose deaths in 2023 involving synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, was roughly 75,000. The CDC said in May that roughly 107,000 people died from a drug overdose, but that is for any drug – not synthetics being brought across the southern border.
Despite Republican claims, illicit opioids are overwhelmingly smuggled over the border by US citizens, not migrants.
Trump displayed a chart he says shows record-low illegal immigration
Trump pointed to a chart – the one he said he was looking at while a gunman fired shots at the stage during his Pennsylvania rally last Saturday and that he says saved his life – to show that illegal immigration was at record lows in 2021 during his presidency.
The chart reportedly comes from a graphic created by the office of Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson’s office, and purports to show monthly encounters with migrants on the US’s south-west border.
The claim is misleading. According to Politifact, an arrow on the chart pointing to a low point in encounters is falsely labeled “Trump leaves office”. In fact, this low point was recorded in 2020 at the height of Covid lockdowns. Later, encounters rose. Trump left office in 2021.
Trump claims that the Biden administration hired 88,000 IRS agents
Trump repeated a claim that is a favorite among Republicans: that the Biden administration supposedly hired 88,000 IRS agents.
This claim is false. The Inflation Reduction Act provides $80bn to the IRS over 10 years, and only some will be spent on IRS agents who do audits and investigations.
after newsletter promotion
In 2021, a US treasury report estimated the US government could hire 86,852 full-time employees across all department with the investment.
Trump claims that Joe Biden destroyed energy policies
Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration “took our energy policies and destroyed them and then they immediately went back to them”.
This claim is misleading. Under Joe Biden, the US is actually producing more crude oil than any country ever. Trump’s record was an average 12.3m barrels a day in 2019. Biden set a new world record of 12.9m barrels in 2023.
And between the lines of Trump’s statement was the suggestion that Biden was trying to stop fossil fuel production, which is not accurate. Biden has also approved some large and controversial projects, including the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
RNC video claims Trump oversaw the largest tax cuts in US history
That claim is generally considered false. Analysts have found for instance that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts were not the largest in history either by inflation-adjusted dollars or percentage of GDP.
The nonpartisan congressional budget office found that two other tax cuts were bigger: Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and Barack Obama’s measure to extend tax cuts signed by George W Bush.
Pompeo claims that Chinese spy balloons did not fly over the US during Trump’s presidency
Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director and secretary of state in the Trump administration, said in his speech that no Chinese spy balloons flew over the US when Trump was in office.
It’s a line that has been used by several speakers at the Republican national convention to suggest that China became emboldened to fly spy balloons because they view Biden as weak.
But it’s not rooted in reality, according to US intelligence officials. There were some balloons that flew over the US during the Trump presidency – they just weren’t detected until the Biden administration.
