After last month's debate, President Biden's performance was analyzed closely by reporters, pundits and American voters, beginning a process that led to his withdrawal from the 2024 race. What perhaps faded into the background much too quickly in all this focus on Biden was a familiar performance by the former president Donald Trump, in which he repeated versions of various lies he's told for years. Trump's speech at last week's Republican National Convention was similarly repetitive and rife with mistruths. Trump has been in the political spotlight for more than eight years. After so much of his blustering, Americans are familiar with certain claims he makes regularly — of the superiority of his presidency, of the harm immigration wreaks on the American economy and of an increase in crime since Biden took office. Voters may also sense that many of these statements aren't fully true. Short of real-time fact-checking of every speech or statement made by Trump, it's hard to nail down how false his claims are. So the contributing Opinion writer Steven Rattner decided to address this problem by taking on some of Trump's most common lies. Rattner contrasts many of Trump's statements from June's presidential debate and last week's convention speech with data to highlight and debunk some the most oft-repeated untruths. Some highlights? While Trump claims that he made the largest tax cut in history, we found that his 2017 tax cuts were well behind those made by President Reagan in 1981 and President Obama in 2010 and 2013. In contrast to his claim that "One hundred and seven percent" of jobs are "taken by illegal aliens," data shows that since July 2021 there have been millions more job openings than there have been workers to fill them. Finally, Trump claims that Biden is "the worst president" in history. A group of political scientists ranked the presidents this year. You'll have to read on to see where former President Trump and President Biden rank, but the results might surprise Trump. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Opinion Today: Examining Trump’s lies
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