President Donald Trump blamed the Obama administration for allowing “bad MS 13 gangs to form in cities across U.S.” due to “weak illegal immigration policies.” The MS-13 gang was formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s and had spread across the country years before Barack Obama was elected president.
Q: Did Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson find over $500 billion in accounting errors while auditing HUD’s financial statements?
A: No. The errors were discovered and published by HUD’s independent inspector general before Carson became secretary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders wrongly claimed that voter turnout in 2016 was “the lowest … in 20 years.” In fact, turnout was higher than it was in 2012.
Sen. Bill Cassidy said William Wilberforce, a late 18th century British politician, “pushed the sale of beer” to successfully combat “drunkenness related to gin” in England. But Wilberforce wasn’t born until after the so-called gin epidemic had ended in the early 1750s, and its conclusion wasn’t due to beer.
President Donald Trump wrongly boasted that Toyota’s plan to invest over $1 billion in its largest manufacturing plant in Kentucky would “not have been made if we didn’t win the election.” A Toyota spokesman told us the car company had long been planning to make the investment.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has apologized profusely for his much-criticized comparison of Syria’s Bashar Assad to Adolf Hitler, but his clarification that he meant Hitler did not drop chemical bombs from airplanes requires some historical context.
Q: Did President Trump increase monthly payments to Social Security beneficiaries?
A: No. Trump had nothing to do with the automatic cost-of-living increases for 2017, which were announced by the Social Security Administration last October.
Rep. Steve King wrongly suggested that “28 percent of the inmates in our federal penitentiaries” are immigrants in the country illegally. About 21 percent of federal inmates are non-U.S. citizens, but that includes those who came to the U.S. both legally and illegally.
While calling for new infrastructure investments, President Trump distorted the facts about President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill. Trump described it as an “infrastructure bill” but “[n]obody ever saw anything being built” and most of the money was used on “social programs.”
Q: Did all eight Supreme Court justices write a letter opposing Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to fill a court vacancy?
A: No. That false claim was made on a liberal website that misrepresented a court ruling regarding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.