President Donald Trump walks in Lafayette Park to visit outside St. John's Church across from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night.
Fact-checking Trump's claims on tear gas used against protesters
04:47 - Source: CNN
Washington CNN  — 

President Donald Trump continued his bombardment of pandemic-related false claims in May and the first week of June – and, as usual, made dozens of false claims about a wide variety of other subjects.

Trump made 192 false claims over the five weeks from May 4 through June 7. Sixty-one of them were about the coronavirus or the pandemic crisis, by far the most of any subject.

Trump’s average during the five-week period, about 5.5 false claims per day, was below his overall average of about 7.7 false claims per day since July 8, 2019, when we started our tracking at CNN. It was also down from his seven-per-day average during the previous 14-week period we wrote about here.

But still: 192 false claims, 5.5 per day. That’s a whole lot of dishonesty from the President of the United States.

Where Trump made his false claims

Trump made 42 of the 192 false claims on Twitter. He added 14 in a May interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, 10 in a rare network news interview in May with “ABC World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, nine in a rambling June speech about a surprisingly good jobs report, and eight apiece in two interviews and one exchange with reporters.

Trump is now up to 2,576 false claims since July 8, 2019.

Trump’s favorite false claims

Trump’s single most frequent false claim over the five-week period was also his most frequent exaggeration of the whole pandemic: his assertion that he banned travel from China. (His travel restrictions actually contained multiple exemptions.) He made versions of the claim 15 times during the five-week period – and is now up to 58 times in total.

Trump delivered 13 additional renditions of his false claim that his administration was left no ventilators or an empty national stockpile; he has now made versions of this claim 23 times in all.

He inaccurately asserted on 10 occasions that mail voting is rife with widespread fraud.

Fourth on the list was one of Trump’s most frequent lies of his whole presidency: that he was the one who achieved the creation of the Veterans Choice health care program that was, in fact, created in 2014 under President Barack Obama.

Here is the list of Trump’s false claims from the five-week period, starting below with his new ones. Click here for the list of false claims that he repeated from previous periods we’d fact checked earlier.

The coronavirus pandemic

The pandemic death toll

“Think of it: With a pandemic, and with one of the worst things that’s ever happened, we – our country has never lost 105,000 people. Whether it’s World Trade Center, which was 2,900, or Pearl Harbor, which was less than that, we’ve never lost anything close to this.” – June 5 speech on the jobs report

Facts First: The US coronavirus death toll at the time Trump spoke was over 108,000, according to Johns Hopkins University tracking – and this is not the first time the US has lost so many people, even to a pandemic. An estimated 675,000 Americans were killed in the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 600,000 soldiers are estimated to have died in the Civil War, including more than 300,000 from the Union side.

How long the initial testing problems lasted

Trump acknowledged that there was a problem with the initial coronavirus test put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but added that this was “a short-term problem.” He said, “It lasted for about a week, and then they got that solved.” – May 20 exchange with reporters at a meeting with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly

Facts First: The testing problem took more than “about a week” to solve, as the CDC itself acknowledges. The CDC shipped test kits to laboratories on February 6 and 7, acknowledged a problem with them on February 12, and advised labs of a solution on February 26.

Travel restrictions on Brazil

Trump claimed three times that he had imposed a “ban” on travel from Brazil or that he had “closed down” travel from Brazil. (He did acknowledge once that American citizens were being allowed back in.) In one instance, he claimed his “ban” also applied to people going “to Brazil.”

Facts First: Trump was exaggerating, just as he did about his travel restrictions on China and Europe. Like those restrictions, his new restrictions on Brazil do not amount to a complete “ban” on travel to the US, or a border closure: Trump denied entry to people who had been in Brazil in the preceding 14 days, but he exempted citizens, permanent residents, many of the family members of citizens and permanent residents, and some others.

Trump also did not ban travel to Brazil. His policy imposes restrictions on entry to the US, not on departures.

A hydroxychloroquine study

Trump lambasted a study that found no benefit to coronavirus patients who were treated with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Trump, on May 19, called it a “phony study” and said it was done by “obviously, not friends of the administration” who wanted to “make political points.”

Trump made similar comments earlier the same day, calling the study “a Trump enemy statement.”

Facts First: There is no evident basis for Trump’s claims that the study of veterans was designed to hurt him. While there are valid criticisms of the study – which was small, retrospective, focused on seriously ill patients, not peer-reviewed and not randomized or controlled – Trump has provided no proof for his claims of some sort of political plot. The authors of the study explicitly acknowledged that it has significant limitations. Larger, peer-reviewed studies have also concluded that hydroxychloroquine has not benefited coronavirus patients.

Chuck Schumer and the coronavirus

Trump claimed that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in March that the coronavirus was not a problem: “Schumer was talking in March about there’s no problem.” – May 5 interview with ABC News’ David Muir

Facts First: Schumer did not make any such comments in March. At the beginning of March, Schumer was pushing for billions in funding for the coronavirus response and for seniors to get a future vaccine free of charge through Medicare. In a speech on the Senate floor on March 4, he called the situation a “public health crisis” and warned Trump that the virus was not under “control,” as Trump was still claiming.

Pandemic polls

“We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls - didn’t have a clue!” – May 10 tweet

Facts First: Contrary to Trump’s strong suggestion here, Obama got higher ratings in polls on his handling of the H1N1 pandemic than Trump has gotten in polls on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

As of May 10, the date of this Trump tweet, FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate of polls found that Trump had a 43.5% approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus. A Gallup poll conducted in April 2009, the month of the first confirmed H1N1 cases in the US, found that 66% approved of how the Obama administration was handling the situation. In a CNN poll conducted in late October and early November 2009, 57% approved of Obama’s handling of the response.

For context, it’s important to note that Obama generally had higher approval ratings when the swine flu pandemic hit than Trump had at the time the coronavirus pandemic hit. Nonetheless, Trump’s claim is inaccurate.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s views on the pandemic

Trump said of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s views on the coronavirus: “In retrospect, Tony, as you know, never thought it was going to be as severe as it was. And we’re talking about months later, a long time after I did the ban.” – May 24 interview with Sharyl Attkisson

Facts First: It’s not true that “months” after Trump imposed his travel restrictions on China on February 2 (or announced it on January 31), Fauci did not think the pandemic would be “as severe as it was.”

While Fauci did say in late February that the risk to Americans was “still low” and that they didn’t need to change their daily routines, he warned that this “could change” when there was “community spread” of the virus – and he soon started sounding a sharper warning. On March 15, Fauci said on CNN that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die from the coronavirus, or even “worse,” if people simply went about their lives.

China and the spread of the virus

Trump claimed on five separate occasions that although the coronavirus made its way out of China, China did not allow it to go anywhere in China other than the city of Wuhan. For example, he said on May 19: “Why did they block it from leaving Wuhan but they didn’t block it from going to the rest of the world, including the United States? Why is that? Beijing doesn’t have it; other places don’t have it. So why is it that it was blocked very effectively from leaving that area and going into China, but it went out to the rest of the world, including the United States?”

Facts First: It’s not true that the virus didn’t spread to other parts of China beyond Wuhan. By late January, at least 14 Chinese provinces had 100 or more confirmed cases, NPR reported then. In May, a cluster of new cases in China’s northeast, more than a thousand miles from Wuhan, prompted China to impose lockdown measures there. There have been hundreds of confirmed cases in Beijing, which in mid-June (after these Trump comments) imposed a soft lockdown in response to newly discovered cases.

Protests, policing and criminal justice

Protesters outside the White House on June 1

“You got it wrong! If the protesters were so peaceful, why did they light the Church on fire the night before?” – June 2 tweet

“I didn’t know if there were people around there or not. Somebody said, ‘Oh, they were so peaceful.’ Well, they tried to burn down the church the day before and almost succeeded. The church was badly hurt.” – June 3 interview with Newsmax’s Sean Spicer

“I heard how nice and wonderful the protesters were over there. Really? Then why did they burn down the church the day before? They burned down a big section of it. Fortunately they were able to catch it in time.” – June 3 interview with Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade

Facts First: Trump was baselessly assigning collective guilt to the peaceful protesters who were forcibly cleared out of the way by police before his photo-op outside the St. John’s Episcopal Church. There was no basis for accusing the hundreds of people protesting near the White House that day of setting the fire at the church the night before; the perpetrator of the fire had not been identified at the time. And journalists on the scene from CNN and other outlets, and video taken from multiple angles, confirmed that the crowd protesting near the White House on Monday was overwhelmingly nonviolent. (Even if one person who was present on Monday did set the fire on Sunday, that doesn’t make the others who were present on Monday guilty.)

The use of tear gas

Trump said of the authorities who dispersed protesters before Trump’s June 1 photo-op outside a church near the White House: “They didn’t use tear gas.” – June 3 interview with Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade

Facts First: Trump’s claim that authorities did not use “tear gas” gives the false impression that chemical irritants weren’t used against the crowd. The US Park Police has acknowledged that pepper balls, which accomplish the same broad effects as tear gas – such as burning in the eyes, nose and mouth – were used that day; both are riot control agents, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes the term “tear gas” is sometimes used to refer to riot control agents generally.

You can read a longer fact check here.

Joe Biden and police funding

Trump said three times that Joe Biden wants to “defund the police.”

Facts First: There is no basis for Trump’s claim that Biden wants to defund the police. Biden had not said anything to suggest he endorsed this idea, and Biden’s criminal justice plan called for a $300 million investment in community policing efforts – including the hiring of more officers.

On June 8, after Trump made these claims, Biden told CBS, “No, I don’t support defunding the police,” Rather, he said, “I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness. And, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.”

It’s worth noting that the slogan “defund the police” means different things to different activists – from the dissolution of police forces to partial reductions in funding. Still, Trump’s claim is inaccurate.

The Obama administration and criminal justice reform

“I did Criminal Justice Reform, something Obama & Biden didn’t even try to do - & couldn’t do even if they did try.” – June 4 tweet

Facts First: The Obama administration did try to get a criminal justice reform bill passed; a bipartisan bill failed in the Senate during the 2016 presidential election when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided not to bring it up for a vote.

You can read more here.

The mayor of Washington, DC

“On the bad side, the D.C. Mayor, @MurielBowser, who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved. ‘Not their job.’ Nice!” – May 30 tweet

Facts First: Trump was wrong. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department was involved in policing protesters on the day Trump was talking about. The Secret Service itself said in a statement the next day that the Washington force was “on the scene” during the protests.

You can read a longer fact check here.

Trucker protests

Trump claimed on three occasions that truckers who were honking their horns as part of a protest near the White House were actually there to support him or to celebrate, not to protest. He told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired May 14: “Well, they’re not protesters. They’re supporters of me…” He said in a speech on May 15: “It’s almost a celebration, in a way.”

Facts First: All three of Trump’s claims were false. The truckers who had lined streets near the White House since May 1 were indeed protesters, not people holding any kind of celebration – and they were protesting a variety of issues affecting their jobs, not protesting in favor of Trump. In fact, one of their complaints was about what they said was lax federal enforcement of a regulation requiring more transparency from freight brokers.

You can read a longer fact check here.

Voting

California’s governor and mail ballots, part 1

“The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one.” – May 26 tweet

“But in California, the governor sent, I hear – or is sending – millions of ballots all over the state. Millions. To anybody. To anybody. People that aren’t citizens, illegals. Anybody that walks in California is going to get a ballot.” – May 26 exchange with reporters at event on protecting seniors with diabetes

“But when they send out – like in California – millions and millions of ballots to anybody that’s breathing – anybody in California that’s breathing, gets a ballot.” – May 28 exchange with reporters at event on online “censorship”

Facts First: California Gov. Gavin Newsom is sending mail ballots only to registered voters (due to concerns over in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic), not to anyone living in the state regardless of immigration status. Noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, are explicitly not permitted to register to vote in federal elections.

You can read a longer fact check here.

California’s governor and mail ballots, part 2

Trump claimed that Newsom was sending out “28 million ballots” through the mail. – May 28 exchange with reporters at event on online “censorship”

Facts First: Trump was off by a third. Newsom ordered ballots sent to the state’s 20.6 million registered voters.

A voting location in California

Trump claimed that Democrats, who had fought for mail-in voting, had “just opened a voting booth in the most Democrat area in the State.” – May 9 tweet

Facts First: An additional in-person voting location was indeed added during the last week of the May special congressional election in California’s 25th District – but the city where the location was opened, Lancaster, is not “the most Democrat area in the state.” While Lancaster’s voters did strongly favor Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, they also elected a Republican mayor – who requested to add the voting location even though he had endorsed the Republican candidate in the race. Lancaster is also represented by two Republicans in the state legislature.

California’s governor and the voting location

Trump claimed that California Gov. Gavin Newsom was responsible for opening the in-person voting location in Lancaster, California, during a special congressional election in the state’s 25th District: “Governor @GavinNewsom of California won’t let restaurants, beaches and stores open, but he installs a voting booth system in a highly Democrat area (supposed to be mail in ballots only) because our great candidate, @MikeGarcia2020, is winning by a lot.” – May 9 tweet

“We won a tremendous race in California. That was – that was interesting, because at the end of the race, they brought in the Democrat – the Democrat governor, same governor; he brought in voting booths – not mail-in – voting booths, because they were losing. They saw that through the ballots.” – May 26 exchange with reporters at event on protecting seniors with diabetes

Facts First: Newsom was not the one who installed the voting location in the city of Lancaster. The decision was made by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan; Logan’s office says the request was made to them by Lancaster’s Mayor R. Rex Parris – a Republican who had endorsed the Republican candidate in the race. “The request came from him specifically,” Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the office, told CNN this week. (Parris did not respond to a request for comment from CNN, but he has previously been open about his support for the voting location.)

Newsom’s office declined to comment, referring questions to the office of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. “The Governor does not decide where vote centers are placed. Vote center and polling place locations are determined by county elections officials,” said Sam Mahood, press secretary for Padilla.

Mahood said Padilla’s office itself made an inquiry to the county clerk’s office “about the status and feasibility of in-person voting opportunities in Lancaster” after seeing “concerns from community leaders and organizations – including the Republican mayor – about the lack of a vote center.”

Michigan and mail voting

Trump tweeted on the morning of May 20: “Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

Six hours later, after numerous observers pointed out that the tweet was inaccurate, Trump deleted it and tweeted a new version that changed “absentee ballots” to “absentee ballot applications” but otherwise left almost all of the original tweet’s wording intact.

Facts First: Trump’s initial tweet was incorrect in two ways, his revised tweet incorrect in one. Michigan’s secretary of state, Democrat Jocelyn Benson, was sending absentee ballot applications, not actual absentee ballots, to all 7.7 million registered voters. Contrary to Trump’s claims in both tweets, this is not illegal.

You can read a longer fact check here.

Nevada and mail voting

“State of Nevada ‘thinks’ that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S.” – May 20 tweet

Facts First: There is no indication Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, did anything illegal by sending out absentee ballots to all registered voters for the state’s June primaries because of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has never identified the law Nevada was supposedly breaking.

Twitter and speech

”.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” – May 26 tweet

Facts First: Twitter does not have an obligation to let Trump speak; the First Amendment applies to the government, not to private companies. Even aside from that though, Twitter did not stifle (or reject, delete or obscure) Trump’s speech at all; it simply countered his inaccurate speech with additional speech of its own – by appending the words “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” to his false claims about supposedly widespread fraud with mail voting and leading users to news articles that explained that fraud is very rare.

What Twitter said about voting

“His name is Yoel Roth. And he’s the one that said that mail-in balloting – you look, mail-in – no fraud. ‘No fraud.’ Really? Why didn’t you take a look all over the country? There’s cases all over the country.” – May 28 exchange with reporters at event on online “censorship”

Facts First: Twitter didn’t say there was “no” fraud with mail voting. Rather, it linked to news articles that explained that fraud is very rare, and said, in a summary on top of the list of articles, “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.” “Very rarely linked to voter fraud” is not the same as “no fraud.”

In addition, there is no evidence that Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity, was the single person responsible for Twitter’s decision to take these steps in response to Trump’s tweets on mail voting; Twitter has made clear that it was not Roth’s call alone. “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email.

Military

The resignation of James Mattis

After former defense secretary and retired Marine Corps general James Mattis issued a new statement that sharply denounced Trump as a threat to the Constitution, Trump claimed three times that he had fired Mattis as defense secretary.

On one of these occasions, Trump said he had asked Mattis for a letter of resignation “as a courtesy,” but indeed fired him. On another occasion, Trump specifically rejected former White House chief of staff John Kelly’s assertion that Mattis was not fired; Trump said he did not inform Kelly of the planned firing because Kelly was not in his “inner circle” at the time.

Facts First: Mattis was not fired, he resigned in December 2018 because of policy differences with Trump, saying in a resignation letter that Trump deserved a secretary of defense whose views were “better aligned” with the President’s. In 2019, Mattis confirmed widespread 2018 reports that his breaking point had been Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Trump initially announced in December 2018 that “General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February,” complimenting Mattis for his work as defense secretary. But after Mattis issued a resignation letter that observers noted had featured barely veiled criticism of Trump, Trump began baselessly claiming Mattis had been fired.

“The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly, who like Mattis is a retired Marine Corps general, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused. The president tweeted a very positive tweet about Jim until he started to see on Fox News their interpretation of his letter. Then he got nasty.”

After Mattis announced the resignation, Trump did push Mattis out two months earlier than Mattis had planned. But hastening a planned resignation is not a firing, either.

James Mattis’ nicknames

Trump said of James Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general and former defense secretary: “His nickname was ‘Chaos’, which I didn’t like, & changed to ‘Mad Dog.’” – June 3 tweet

Facts First: Trump did not give Mattis the nickname “Mad Dog.” As the website Snopes noted, there is public evidence of Mattis being called “Mad Dog” since at least 2004.

US troops in Iraq

“And in Iraq, we’re down to 4,000 soldiers.” – May 26 exchange with reporters at event on protecting seniors with diabetes

Facts First: The US has about 5,200 troops in Iraq, Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a spokesperson for the US-led coalition against ISIS, told CNN on June 9.

US troops in Afghanistan

Trump said of the war in Afghanistan: “We’re down to 7,000-some-odd soldiers right now.” – May 26 exchange with reporters at event on protecting seniors with diabetes

Facts First: The exact number of US troops in Afghanistan is not known, but the number was known to be at least 8,600 at the time Trump spoke; that is the number to which the US has planned to reduce its presence by mid-July at the latest. Earlier on the day of Trump’s comments, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell said in a statement to The New York Times: “Any reduction under 8,600 U.S. troops will be conditions-based after the U.S. government assesses the security environment and the Taliban’s compliance with the agreement, and in coordination with our NATO allies and partners.”

The Space Force and the Air Force

“You know, one of the things we’ve done is created the Space Force. First program in – if you look, I guess it’s 74 years now. It was 72, and now it’s 74. And time flies. But since the Air Force.” – May 30 remarks after viewing SpaceX launch

Facts First: The “74 years” claim was another one of Trump’s trademark little exaggerations. The Air Force was made a separate branch of the armed forces in September 1947 – as Trump said, about 72 years before the Space Force was founded in 2019. It is not now “74 years”; even the 73rd anniversary hasn’t arrived yet.

The media

A New York Times story about the Republican convention

“I have zero interest in moving the Republican National Convention to Doral in Miami, as falsely reported by the Fake News @nytimes in order to stir up trouble. Ballroom is not nearly big enough & would like to stay in N.C., whose gov. doesn’t even know if he can let people in?” – May 25 tweet

Facts First: The Times had not reported that Trump wanted to move the convention to his Doral resort. Rather, the Times reported something less specific – that Trump had “mused aloud to several aides about why the convention can’t simply be held in a hotel ballroom in Florida, given all of the health concerns and the fact that Florida is further along in reopening portions of the state.”

The Times’ reporting did not identify Doral or any other particular Florida hotel in particular; reporter Maggie Haberman said on Twitter: “If the president is interested in hosting the RNC at Doral, it would be news to us! (And news).”

CNN’s polling

Trump accused CNN’s polling of bias, then of being entirely fabricated: “Take a look at who they’re polling, if they poll anybody, because I don’t even think they go out and poll. I think they sit at a desk and say, give this number, give that number.” – June 3 interview with Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade

Facts First: There is simply no basis for Trump’s claim that CNN is fabricating poll numbers. CNN conducts polls with research firm SSRS.

Inspectors general

Firing inspectors general

“I’ve gotten rid of a lot of inspector generals; every president has. I think every president has gotten rid of probably more than I have.” – May 18 exchange with reporters at roundtable with restaurant executives

Facts First: It’s not true that every president has “gotten rid of” more inspectors general than Trump had. As of the time he spoke here, he had fired four inspectors general in his three years and almost four months in office; President Barack Obama fired one in eight years, two were ousted under President George W. Bush over eight years, and Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush did not fire any of them.

Rebecca Jones, policy counsel at the Project On Government Oversight, noted that the modern inspector general system was not created until 1978, so this question only applies to a small number of presidents. The first new president to take office after the system was created, Ronald Reagan, summarily fired all of Jimmy Carter’s inspectors general immediately upon his inauguration (he later rehired some of them), but, since then, the tradition has been for inspectors general to remain in their jobs following a presidential transition. “Most presidents didn’t have IGs to fire and those who did (with the exception of Reagan) fired the same number or fewer than Trump,” Jones said in an email.

Jones said it’s also important to note the nature of Trump’s firings. She said he is “attacking the entire IG system” by firing people “for doing their jobs as watchdogs” and by “nominating unqualified individuals to hold these roles permanently.”

The inspector general and the whistleblower complaint

Trump claimed that Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community (whom Trump fired in April), had rushed to judgment about the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president by failing to review the rough transcript of the call – and then admitted that the whistleblower’s account of the call was wrong: “He didn’t want to see the conversation that I had. When he saw the conversation that I had, he said, ‘Well, that bears no resemblance to what the whistleblower said.’” – May 18 exchange with reporters at meeting with restaurant industry leaders

Facts First: There is no evidence that Atkinson ever said that Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president “bears no resemblance” to what the whistleblower said about the call. The whistleblower’s allegations about the call have proven highly accurate.

It is true that Atkinson did not view the rough transcript of the call before passing on the complaint to be viewed by Congress. Atkinson wrote that seeing the document was “not necessary” to make his determination that the complaint “appears credible.” He also said he had determined that it was highly unlikely he could successfully negotiate to obtain the call document before the end of his legally mandated 14-day deadline to determine whether the complaint appeared credible or not.

Democrats and the Russian ambassador

“Well, Kislyak had dinner with Nancy Pelosi and Schumer. All these guys, they all – everybody in Washington knew Kislyak. She had dinner with him many, many times…” – May 8 interview with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends”

Facts First: There is no evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had dinner “many, many times” with Sergey Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador to the US, or that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer has had dinner with Kislyak.

Kislyak attended a 2010 meeting between Pelosi, other members of Congress and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, but that was not a dinner; Pelosi has “never had dinner with him,” Pelosi deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill told CNN this week.

Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman said he could not find any record of a Schumer dinner with Kislyak. Neither could we. (Trump has previously mocked Schumer over the time he ate doughnuts in New York with Russian President Vladimir Putin, so he might have been confused.)

Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb

Trump said of Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb: “Conor Lamb has proven to be an American fraud, and a puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi. He said he would NOT vote for her for Speaker, and did.” – May 26 tweet

Facts First: Lamb, elected in a special election in March 2018 and then again in the general election in November 2018, kept his promise not to vote for Pelosi as speaker of the House of Representatives. Lamb voted for Rep. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts.

Trump initially tweeted this accusation while misspelling Lamb’s name as “Connor Lamm.” He then deleted the original tweet and replaced it with a tweet that corrected the spelling but retained the false claim. You can read a longer fact check here.

James Madison

Trump said James Madison was the first president to attend St. John’s Episcopal Church, outside of which Trump had a controversial photo-op: “…and Madison was your first – was your president. He was number six I believe, and Madison was your president, and he was the first president to enter and go to that church.” – June 3 interview with Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade

Facts First: Madison was indeed the first president to go to the church, but he was the fourth president of the United States, not the sixth.

The stock market on Friday, June 5

“I mean – and the market went through, it finished very, very high – almost, I guess, around 900 points up.” – June 5 speech at Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, Maine

Facts First: Trump was exaggerating slightly about the market’s performance on the day of the surprisingly good jobs report for May: the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 829 points. (We’d allow Trump to round to “around 850 points,” but “around 900 points” is too big a stretch.)

NASA and Obama

“What we’ve done with NASA is amazing. We’ve brought it back from the dead. It was not essentially functioning, and now it’s one of the great centers in the world.” – May 30 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

“But we want to watch the rocket launch. NASA’s come a long way. It was dead as doornails, and now it’s the most vibrant place in the world for that, and – so I look forward to it.” – May 30 exchange with reporters before Air Force One departure

“You know, four years ago, this place (the Kennedy Space Center) was essentially shut down. The space program was over.” – May 30 remarks after viewing SpaceX launch

Facts First: Trump is entitled to criticize the state of NASA or the space program under President Barack Obama, but it’s a clear exaggeration to say NASA or the space program was “over” or “dead.”

“It is NOT correct that NASA was dead under the Obama administration,” said John Logsdon, the founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, where he is a professor emeritus, and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. “Much was started, like the commercial crew program that sent the two recent astronauts to the Moon and the beginning of the Space Launch System that will return Americans to the Moon – plus lots of robotic science.”

“NASA was not ‘dead’ nor was (the Kennedy Space Center) ‘shut down’ under the Obama administration, but activity back then was arguably at a lower level,” said Leroy Chiao, a nonresident fellow in space policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a former NASA astronaut and International Space Station commander.

“The Obama administration did not make space exploration a priority, but it did keep hardware development going. There are other things that the Obama administration can take credit for, such as the commercial crew program that allowed SpaceX to launch NASA astronauts to ISS very recently.”

Golfer Rickie Fowler’s record

Speaking about golfer Rickie Fowler, Trump said, “And he had the one year, where he came in second in the majors – I think in four majors he came in second and that’s, you know, quite an achievement.” – May 17 call on NBC golf broadcast

Facts First: Trump was mistaken. As noted by UK golf writer Ben Coley, Fowler has never finished second in all four of the major tournaments held each year; in 2014, Fowler finished tied for second in two of the majors, third in another and tied for fifth in another. (Yes, we realize this is a fact check about golf, but we count all of the president’s inaccurate statements big and small, and facts are facts.)

Economic policy in 1928

“In 1928, they raised interest rates and they raised taxes. How did that work out? Not too good. Not too good. But if you look at 1928, 1929, the first thing they did was raise taxes. And then they raised interest rates and they choked everybody to death. And it took 15 years to recover – more than that. So, we – we do it – we’re doing it the right way.” – May 8 remarks at meeting with Republican members of Congress

Facts First: Trump had half of his history correct – interest rates were increased in 1928 – but half of it incorrect: federal income taxes were not increased in 1928.

“Federal personal income tax rates were cut across the board in 1925 and remained there through 1928. In 1929 there was a one percent reduction in federal personal income tax rates at all income levels,” Gene Smiley, a Marquette University emeritus professor of economics who has studied tax policy in the 1920s, said in an email.

Obamacare and competition

“In the past, Obamacare prevented insurance providers from competing to offer lower costs for seniors. There was no competition, there was no anything, and they ran away with what took place, and the seniors were horribly hurt.” – May 26 speech on protecting seniors with diabetes

Facts First: It’s not true that there was no price competition among insurers because of Obamacare.

“Obamacare actually didn’t affect competition in the market for prescription drug coverage. There were reductions in the number of drug plans available during the Obama administration in an effort to root out needlessly duplicative plan offerings, but seniors have consistently had dozens of plan options over the years,” said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Medicare policy program at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“In terms of insulin costs and drug costs more generally, Obamacare actually helped on this front by phasing out the so-called ‘doughnut hole’ in the Part D benefit, which was the portion of drug spending where seniors were on the hook for 100% of their total drug costs. So, if anything, Obamacare did more than anything that had been done previously in terms of modifying the Part D benefit to help make drug costs more affordable for seniors with relatively high drugs costs.”