President Donald Trump's rally speech in Cincinnati on Thursday was littered with false claims, several of them egregious, several of them trivial, and most of them repeated from previous remarks.
We're still checking some of what he said to come up with a full tally for the 79-minute address and will update the story with more false claims.
"The previous administration, they liked windmills. You know windmills: if a windmill is within two miles of your house, your house is practically worthless."
Facts First: While some homes might fall in value when turbines are erected close by, studies in the US have not found that homes generally become anywhere close to "practically worthless" in such cases and some have found no significant decline at all.
A 2016 study published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, for example, analyzed "more than 122,000 home sales, between 1998 and 2012, that occurred near (within 10 miles) 41 turbines in densely populated Massachusetts communities." The study found "no unique impact on the rate of home sales near wind turbines.
"We're replacing random migration and we're replacing the lottery system. How about the lottery system? How about lotteries? This was Chuck Schumer: you put the name in a basket.
The country puts the name in the basket. And you pick people out of the lottery. 'Well, let's see, this one's a murderer. This one robbed four banks, this one ... I'd better, not say ... this one, another murderer, ladies and gentlemen, another murderer."
Facts First: Almost everything Trump said here was inaccurate. Foreign countries don't enter people into the green card lottery conducted by the State Department, let alone deliberately enter their criminals and problem citizens. Individuals enter on their own because they want to immigrate.
"The greatest betrayal committed by the Democrats is their support for open borders.
And these open borders would overwhelm schools and hospitals, drain public services and flood communities with poisonous drugs."
Facts First: This is misleading. Some Democrats, including presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro, have advocated a significant loosening of immigration law, including a decriminalization of the act of illegally crossing the border. But none of them have proposed literally opening the border to unrestricted migration.
During the Trump era, Democrats have voted for billions of dollars worth of border fencing and other border security measures. In 2018, Democratic leaders offered Trump $25 billion for border security in exchange for a path to citizenship for the "DREAMers," young undocumented immigrants brought to the US illegally as children. The bill was ultimately rejected in the Senate following severe opposition from the White House.
Facts First: This claim is undercut by Trump's actions and those of congressional Republicans during his presidency.
We usually don't fact-check promises, but this one has already proved untrue. Trump's administration and congressional Republicans have repeatedly put forward bills and lawsuits that would weaken Obamacare's protections for people with preexisting conditions. Trump is currently supporting a Republican lawsuit that is seeking to get all of Obamacare declared void. He has not issued a plan to reinstate the law's protections for people with preexisting conditions if the suit succeeds.
"We passed VA Choice and VA Accountability on behalf of our great veterans. They've been trying to pass VA Choice for four decades. They couldn't get it done, we got it done, we got it."
Facts First: Trump did not get the Veterans Choice program passed, nor had there been an unsuccessful 40-year effort to get it passed.
The program was signed into law by Obama in 2014.
"We'll pay the bill, they'll be fixed up all perfect and they can do it immediately," Trump said.
Neither the Obama version nor the Trump version allows veterans to see a private doctor immediately. At present, veterans must be facing a wait of 20 days or more at the VA.
"I say it all the time: never happened before. There's never been a movement like this. They've had movements, they never went, they won a state, they did well in a state. We won 32 states, there's never been anything like it."
Facts First: This is false. Trump won 30 states, not 32. Also, this was far from a historic number: Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 both won 49 states; James Monroe won every state in the uncontested election of 1820.
"There have been 45 presidential elections in which the winning candidate won a larger share of the electoral vote," the New York Times reported.
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