Night 3 of the Republican National Convention

Summary

Former President Donald Trump’s newly selected running mate, JD Vance, accepted the Republican Party’s vice presidential nomination on the convention’s third night, which featured claims about the economy, immigration and foreign policy.

• Vance wrongly said that workers’ wages “stagnated” for much of his life until they “went through the roof” under Trump. Inflation-adjusted wages had been rising over several presidencies before Trump took office.

• Vance said “Trump was right” to oppose “the disastrous invasion of Iraq.” But there is no record of him opposing the war before it started in 2003 or the congressional resolution authorizing the war in 2002.

• Media personality Kimberly Guilfoyle said that “President Trump handed Biden a booming economy.” But when President Joe Biden took office, the U.S. had just experienced a rare drop in gross domestic product in 2020, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and unemployment remained high.

• Rep. Matt Gaetz falsely said Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed a “border czar.” Harris wasn’t appointed to lead immigration issues. Instead, Biden assigned her to lead a group of actions intended to “address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” 

• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich falsely claimed that Trump wanted to keep Bagram Air Base when U.S. troops were being withdrawn from Afghanistan. Trump had negotiated an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 that called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from all bases.

• North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum misleadingly blamed “Biden’s red tape” for increasing the price of gasoline. The cost of gas is primarily fueled by global supply and demand factors beyond a president’s control, experts say.

• Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told the convention crowd that he “went to prison so you won’t have to.” Navarro was sentenced to prison after a jury convicted him in 2023 on two counts of contempt for refusing to comply with a 2022 subpoena from Congress.

• Vance noted then-Sen. Biden’s support for NAFTA in 1993 and called it “a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.” But economic studies say the trade deal had a relatively small overall impact on jobs.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed that Trump had succeeded as president in “eliminating illegal immigration.” That’s false. The number of border crossings did drop in his first year in office, but they were never eliminated. And they began growing in his second year.

• Abbott claimed that neither Biden nor Harris had visited the southern border before he began busing migrants to other parts of the country. But Harris had gone to El Paso, Texas, almost a year before his busing policy began.

• Rep. Michael Waltz channeled the false Trump talking point that Biden is converting the military to electric tanks. While the military is moving toward the electrification of its vehicle fleets, that does not apply to combat vehicles.

Analysis

Wages Were Rising Before Trump

In his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination, JD Vance falsely claimed that workers’ wages “stagnated” for much of his life until they “went through the roof” under Trump. Inflation-adjusted wages had been rising over several presidencies before Trump took office.

“There’s this chart that shows worker wages,” Vance said, “and they stagnated for pretty much my entire life until President Donald J. Trump came along — workers’ wages went through the roof.”

That’s not what this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows on real, meaning inflation-adjusted, average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees.

Vance was born in 1984, when real wages were still generally falling after reaching their long-term peak in the early 1970s. But around the mid- to late 1990s, when Vance was 12 or so years old, real wages began to rise.

As the chart shows, wages have fluctuated, but they were on an upward trend before Trump took office. The noticeable spike in the chart came in April and May 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when unemployment also shot up and many lower-wage workers lost their jobs.

Over Trump’s four years, wage growth was solid. The average weekly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up 81% of all private-sector workers — went up 9.6% under Trump. Before the pandemic hit, they had gone up 3.6%.

But as we’ve explained before, that rise extended a trend that started after the 2007-2009 recession. Over President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, real weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers rose 4%.

And wages had been climbing prior to that. Under President George W. Bush, real wages went up by 4.5%, and under President Bill Clinton, they rose by 6.4%.

Trump and the Iraq War

In discussing decisions made by the “ruling class in Washington” that hurt people living in small towns in America, Vance criticized Biden for leading the U.S. into war in Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Vance said: “Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq” — which, as we wrote, is true. Biden voted in October 2002 for a joint resolution authorizing use of military force against Iraq, and spoke out in support of then-President George W. Bush immediately after the Republican president used that congressional authorization to invade Iraq on March 19, 2003.

Vance then contrasted Biden’s support for the war with Trump’s position, saying that “somehow a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right” about Iraq. But, as we also wrote, there is no evidence that Trump spoke against the war before it started, although we did find he expressed early concerns about the cost and direction of the war a few months after it started.

When Trump first ran for president, we did a deep dive into the subject of Trump’s position on the Iraq war after he repeatedly claimed to have opposed the Iraq war before it started. In a Sept. 16, 2015, debate, Trump claimed he “fought very, very hard against us … going into Iraq.” A few weeks later, Trump told Fox News that he was “visited by people from the White House” in an attempt to silence him, because, he said, he was getting “a disproportionate amount of publicity” for his opposition to the war.

The Trump campaign at the time provided no evidence of what Trump called his “loud and clear” opposition to invading Iraq. Other fact-checking organizations — including PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker — were also unable to find any evidence to support Trump’s claims. Around this time, BuzzFeed reported that Trump indicated his support for war in a radio interview with shock jock Howard Stern on Sept. 11, 2002 — a little more than six months before the war started. Stern asked Trump directly if he supported going to war with Iraq, and Trump hesitantly responded, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Our reporting found that Trump had a financial interest in opposing the war in the weeks leading up to the war, and that he expressed concerns about the financial cost of the war not long after it started. For example, Trump in July 2003 said in an interview that he wished the money being spent in Iraq could be spent in New York City.

By 2004, Trump’s opposition to the war was well documented, but there is no record that he opposed the war before it started in 2003 or the resolution authorizing the war in 2002.

Biden Inherited a Struggling Economy

Media personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr., misrepresented the state of the U.S. economy when Biden took office in January 2021. “President Trump handed Biden a booming economy and a strong nation,” she said. “All Joe had to do was leave it alone and take a nap.”

But by some key measures, the economy was struggling when Biden took office and has improved since.

Unemployment in January 2021 was at 6.4% — an improvement from its pandemic-related peak of 14.8% in April 2020, but still above the historical norm of 5.6% and up 1.7 percentage points from when Trump’s term began. The unemployment rate under Biden as of June was 4.1%, below the historical norm.

Trump also presided over a net loss of 2.9 million jobs, largely due to the pandemic. As of last month, the U.S. has gained more than 15.7 million jobs under Biden.

Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product has grown most years in modern history, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But it dropped by 2.2% with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, after growing modestly by 2.5% to 3% during Trump’s first three years in office. It went on to grow by 5.8% in 2021, amid the economic recovery, followed by increases of 1.9% and 2.5% in the subsequent two years of Biden’s term.

Harris Wasn’t Appointed ‘Border Czar’

Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida falsely claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed a “border czar.”

“Kamala Harris isn’t able to do any job,” he said while speaking about Biden’s ability to do his job. “She was appointed border czar — appointing Kamala Harris to oversee the border is like appointing Bernie Madoff to oversee your retirement plan.”

Harris was not appointed a “border czar” or a person in charge of immigration issues at the border. In 2021, Biden appointed Harris to lead an effort to “improve security, governance, human rights, and economic conditions” in Central America named the “Root Causes Strategy.” The strategy consisted of several actions intended to “address the root causes of migration” specifically “from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” The efforts to deter migration from those countries included funds for natural disasters and COVID-19 vaccines, the creation of task forces and plans to address security issues and fighting corruption, and partnerships with the private sector and international organizations.

On Tuesday night, during the second night of the convention, Harris was repeatedly called a “border czar” by other Republican speakers. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida had previously called Harris a “border czar” in a letter he sent to Harris on Feb. 20 urging her to “fulfill your constitutional duty to serve as the presiding officer of Secretary Mayorkas’ impeachment trial.”

Trump’s Statements on Bagram Air Base

In his remarks about foreign policy, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich misrepresented Trump’s actions and statements regarding the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. While referring to the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the final days of the withdrawal, Gingrich said, “Biden ordered a chaotic panic-filled withdrawal that left 13 American troops and hundreds of Afghans dead. Where President Trump insisted on keeping Bagram Air Base, which is located within one hour of the Chinese nuclear facilities, President Biden gave it to the Taliban.”

But Trump did not say the U.S. should have kept Bagram until months after he left office.

As we’ve written before, in 2020 Trump had reached a deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops from all bases in Afghanistan. The Doha agreement included a “complete withdrawal of all remaining [Coalition] forces from Afghanistan” by May 1, 2021. The pact also said, “The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all forces from remaining bases.”

Biden pushed back the withdrawal date, with a plan to bring all troops home by Aug. 31. Trump criticized Biden’s delay, releasing a statement on April 18, 2021, that said, “we can and should get out earlier.”

At a rally in Ohio on June 26, 2021, Trump said “all the troops are coming back home” and the Biden administration “couldn’t stop the process.”

On July 6, 2021, U.S. forces were pulled out of Bagram, as we’ve written.

But days before the final withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, Trump said, “we should have kept Bagram because Bagram is between China.”

In an interview with Fox News on Nov. 7, 2021, Trump said after the withdrawal of troops that he would have maintained a military prison at the Bagram Air Base. “We would have kept Bagram because it is next to China,” Trump said. “And it is one hour away from their nuclear facility, and we gave that up too.” 

We could find no statements by Trump while he was in office about maintaining an American presence at Bagram. The pact he reached with the Taliban called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from all the bases in Afghanistan.

Gasoline Prices

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the nomination, misleadingly claimed that “Biden’s red tape has raised the price of the gas in your car.”

While gasoline prices have risen under the Biden administration, experts told us that the increase is primarily fueled by global supply and demand factors beyond the president’s control, and not government actions. 

According to the Energy Information Administration, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump has increased by 47% under Biden’s presidency, rising from $2.38 when he first entered office in late January 2021 to $3.50 as of July 15. Economists primarily pointed to the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the increase under the Biden administration. 

In 2020, gasoline prices dropped as economic activity declined sharply due to the pandemic. In 2021, as the global economy began to recover, people began to resume their regular activities, including travel, and the global demand for crude oil drove up prices rapidly, because the global supply was not able to keep pace. 

Experts told us that oil and gasoline prices were pushed even higher when Russia, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, invaded Ukraine in late February 2022. In response to the attack, the U.S. and other nations put sanctions and bans on Russian oil, further restricting global supply.

Alan Reynolds, an economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote in a May 2022 post that “what happened to crude oil and gasoline prices in 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though partisans falsely deny the link between war and oil markets and instead blame President Biden for U.S. gasoline prices.” The war is now in its third year.

Similarly, Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis and a co-founder of the Oil Price Information Service, told us in March 2022 that the price of oil “doesn’t really have much to do with US crude production,” and that “President Biden and his administration are being falsely accused of pursuing policies that led to rampant price inflation.” 

In blaming “red tape,” Burgum may be referring to actions such as a pause in new leasing of federal land and water in 2021 — a decision that was then blocked by the courts. However, as we’ve written previously, experts told us that this decision did not significantly affect gasoline prices.

“The truth is that there’s not much Biden can do to make the situation better in the short term, nor have his policies to date made things worse,” Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative and a fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told us in a March 2022 email. “Biden’s slowing of federal leasing is a SMALL issue for producers, and has made no difference at all in what is being produced today,” she said.  

Why Navarro Went to Prison

Peter Navarro, Trump’s former White House adviser on trade, spoke at the convention several hours after being released from a prison in Miami. “Joe Biden and his department of injustice put me there,” Navarro said.

He warned convention attendees that “if they can come for me, and if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful, they will come for you.” And he later told them, “I went to prison so you won’t have to.” He went to prison for contempt of Congress. We’ll explain what happened.

Navarro reported to a federal prison in March to serve a four-month sentence. That was about six months after a jury found him guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress for not complying with a February 2022 subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The subpoena that Navarro ignored required him to appear for a deposition and produce documents to Congress, which he did not do. The committee said it believed Navarro had information relevant to its investigation because he played a role in “efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”

In court, Navarro said that he could not comply with the committee’s request because Trump had invoked executive privilege, precluding him from providing testimony to Congress. But a federal judge rejected that argument.

Navarro’s subsequent appeals of his conviction were denied by federal courts. And his emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from prison was also denied.

NAFTA

Making the argument that Biden has a long history of destroying “middle class manufacturing jobs,” Vance noted then-Sen. Biden’s support in 1993 for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Vance said “sent countless good jobs to Mexico.” But economic studies say the trade deal had a relatively small overall impact on jobs.

“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” Vance said.

As we have written, NAFTA was negotiated and signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the bill enabling NAFTA in 1993; however, it took Republican congressional support to get that bill to his desk. The Senate passed the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 61-38, in November 1993, with 34 Republican votes. Biden was among those who voted in favor of ratifying it. The House passed it 234-200, with 132 Republican votes.

Though Vance claimed NAFTA “sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” economic studies overall say NAFTA’s net impact on U.S. jobs was small.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service evaluated four studies in 2004 and concluded that “NAFTA had little or no impact on aggregate employment.” Thirteen years later, a 2017 report from the Congressional Research Service called the overall impact on the U.S. economy “relatively modest.”

That 2017 report also noted that it was difficult to gauge the overall economic impact “since trade and investment trends are influenced by numerous other economic variables, such as economic growth, inflation, and currency fluctuations.” CRS said: “The agreement likely accelerated and also locked in trade liberalization that was already taking place in Mexico, but many of these changes may have taken place without an agreement.”

Illegal Immigration Not Eliminated Under Trump

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott echoed a Republican talking point about border security under Trump. Abbott said, “The president’s most sacred duty is to secure our country. Donald Trump fulfilled that duty by eliminating illegal immigration. Under President Trump we had the lowest illegal border crossings in about four decades.”

But that’s not true. Trump did not eliminate illegal immigration.

As we’ve written before, illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year compared with the last full year before he took office.

As for Abbott’s claim that Trump brought illegal immigration to the lowest level in four decades, it’s true that illegal border crossings did drop dramatically in Trump’s first year in office, reaching the lowest level since the turn of the century. But that’s cherry picking.

The number of apprehensions at the southern border began to rise in Trump’s second year. And they peaked at nearly 800,000 in 2019, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection monthly data spanning fiscal years 2019 and 2020. That was the highest number of apprehensions since 2007. It was also higher than any year during Obama’s two terms in office.

Abbott went on to claim that “under Joe Biden, illegal immigration has skyrocketed. Under his watch around 11 million immigrants have crossed our border illegally.”

Illegal immigration certainly took off after Biden became president, jumping by over 300% in Biden’s first year compared with Trump’s last. And apprehensions have remained at those higher levels until very recently. But Abbott’s 11 million figure is inflated.

Abbott appears to be including people who arrived at legal ports of entry, but without authorization to enter the U.S. They weren’t crossing illegally. Also, millions of those who did cross illegally have been removed or returned under the Biden administration.

Since February 2021, the month after Biden took office, there have been nearly 7 million apprehensions on the southwest border of those trying to cross illegally. The figure doesn’t represent the total number of people, because some people attempt multiple crossings.

As we’ve explained before, there are also estimates for “gotaways,” or migrants who crossed the border illegally and evaded the authorities. Based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, which Department of Homeland Security provided to us, that would mean there about 2 million gotaways.

After being processed by border officials, some of those apprehended are removed from the country, and some who are seeking asylum are given notices to appear in court.

When we looked though comprehensive data from DHS of the initial processing of encounters of migrants under Biden, through February of this year — both those apprehended and those arriving at legal ports of entry — we found that 2.9 million were removed by Customs and Border Protection and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole. 

There were also transfers of unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services and transfers to ICE, who are then booked into ICE custody, enrolled in “alternatives to detention” (which include technological monitoring) or released by ICE.

Harris Visited Border

Abbott also claimed that Biden and Harris hadn’t visited the southern border until he started busing migrants out of the state. He’s wrong about Harris.

“When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas and to see the border crisis that they created, I took the border to them. I began busing illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C.,” Abbott said, referencing a controversial policy under which his administration transports migrants from Texas to other parts of the country.

Harris visited El Paso, Texas, in June 2021, about six months after taking office and almost a year before Abbott began his busing policy.

It is true that Biden didn’t visit the border until after Abbott’s busing policy began.

The president has now visited the southern border twice, both times in Texas. He went to El Paso in January 2023, and he went to Brownsville in February.

No Electric Tanks

After praising Trump’s military leadership, Rep. Michael Waltz, a U.S. Army veteran, said that, by contrast, Biden is “focused on building electric tanks.” Waltz then added sarcastically, “Has anybody seen any charging stations in the Middle East for Biden electric tanks?”

The claim that Biden is converting the military to all-electric-powered tanks is a regular talking point in Trump’s rally speeches. But as we have written, it is false.

The military is moving toward the electrification of its vehicle fleets, starting with light-duty, non-tactical vehicles, citing not only environmental benefits but cost savings and operational advantages. As part of the military’s Climate Strategy released in 2022 — which talks about reducing national security risks posed by climate change — the military also aspires to move to “purpose-built hybrid-drive tactical vehicles by 2035 and fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.”

Tactical vehicles are used on the battlefield, typically in support roles. Those are different from combat vehicles, which are the ones that shoot at the enemy, Fabian Villalobos, an associate engineer at the RAND Corporation and an expert in emerging technologies and the defense industrial base, told us in November. “Tactical definitely does not mean tanks,” he said.

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