Fact Check - Page 10

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump “fired the entire White House pandemic team.” VERDICT: Partly false. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton “dissolved” the pandemic office but staff remained to deal with the issue.

Former Vice President Joe Biden claims that he was responsible for the Obama administration’s handling of the Ebola outbreak in 2014. But Biden caused panic in 2009 during the swine flu outbreak, telling Americans not to take flights or subways. Biden had to walk back his remarks and the Obama White House had to issue an apology.

An Associated Press fact check confirms what Breitbart News reported earlier this week: that Democrat presidential candidates are falsely claiming that President Donald Trump cut funding and personnel needed to fight coronavirus.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) claimed at the Democrat debate in Charleston, South Carolina, broadcast on CBS Tuesday night that she was fired from her first teaching job for being pregnant.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Trump “fired” the government’s pandemic specialist, and “defunded” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). VERDICT: Mostly false. The specialist was not fired; he quit. Some CDC cuts were proposed, but not implemented.

Fact check – CLAIM: Democrat billionaire-turned-presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg funded Republican campaigns. VERDICT: True, though Bloomberg has also funded — or “bought,” as he almost said — Democrats as well.

CLAIM: Michael Bloomberg claimed the non-disclosure agreements reached between his company and employees who allegedly experienced misconduct were “consensual” and weren’t forced upon those employees.

Pete Buttigieg falsely claimed most abortions that occur late in pregnancy are due to some “devastating news” the mother has just heard.

Social media giant Facebook will reportedly soon be paying news wire Reuters to fact-check and verify news headlines, user-generated videos and photos, and other content in English and Spanish.

CLAIM: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez states that President Trump is “introducing fascism into the United States.” VERDICT: False.

Fact Check – CLAIM: Romney said the White House argued a statutory violation was needed for impeachment. VERDICT: FALSE.

Fact check – CLAIM: Trump told Sondland that “Zelensky has to announce these investigations.” FALSE. Adam Schiff relied on third-hand testimony contradicted by Sondland himself.

Fact check – CLAIM: The White House believes that it’s OK to take information from a foreign country in an election. VERDICT: FALSE.

Fact check – CLAIM: Alan Dershowitz and the White House lawyers believe that any action a president claims is in the public interest is unimpeachable. VERDICT: FALSE. Dershowitz specifically said crime-like actions are impeachable.

Fact check – CLAIM: Trump’s lawyers argued he has a right to abuse his power as much as he wants, which is also what he said. Verdict: FALSE.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump only released the transcript of the Ukraine call after Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry. VERDICT: FALSE. Trump said he would release it, then Democrats announced the inquiry.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump engaged in a “cover up” because of the way the administration handled the transcript of the Ukraine call. VERDICT: FALSE. Trump declassified and released the transcript.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump never cared about corruption in Ukraine. VERDICT: FALSE. Democrats’ own investigation showed that he did — long before Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Burisma were an issue.

Fact check: Tim Morrison told Adam Schiff himself that he saw nothing political about the call. But Schiff told the Senate exactly the opposite.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump subscribed to the “debunked conspiracy theory” that Ukraine, “rather than Russia,” interfered in the 2016 presidential election. VERDICT: FALSE. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Fact check – CLAIM: The House impeachment inquiry was fair, inclusive, and obeyed precedent from previous impeachments. VERDICT: False.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump believes that he has absolute power under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and must therefore be impeached. VERDICT: False. Trump was talking specifically about the power to fire Robert Mueller.

Fact check – CLAIM: Americans are paying more for prescription drugs than they did a decade ago, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said. VERDICT: Incomplete. Prescription drug prices also fell last year for the first time in nearly half a century.

CNN’s Abby Phillip continued to cite Warren’s claim — that Sanders told her a woman could not win — as fact, even after Sanders denied it.

Fact check – CLAIM: President Donald Trump wants to cancel health insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. VERDICT: False. He has supported such coverage.

CLAIM: The nuclear deal with Iran was “working” before Trump pulled out. VERDICT: False. It allowed Iran to become a nuclear power on expiration.

The smug CNN anchor (is there any other kind?), a woman named Becky Anderson, was either wholly ignorant of the issue she was supposed to be reporting on, or simply lying.

CLAIM: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) says California had an “incredible” decade because it stood up for “our values” and took on “big issues.” VERDICT: Mostly false.

Facebook will hire its own team of part-time contracted fact-checkers, in a departure from the company’s previous reliance on third party fact-checking, according to a report from Axios.

CLAIM: MoveOn.org and other pro-impeachment organizations care about the Constitution. VERDICT: False. MoveOn.org was, ironically, founded to protest Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) attempted to defend his and other Democrats’ claims that the facts in the impeachment debate were “undisputed” by challenging Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee to dispute his facts. It went badly — very badly.

Fact check – CLAIM: No impeachment has accused the president of constantly changing crimes. VERDICT: Partly true. Andrew Johnson in 1868.

CLAIM: President Donald Trump did not care about corruption in general in Ukraine — only with regard to Joe Biden, a political rival. VERDICT: False. Trump raised it in 2017, before the Biden issue came up.

CLAIM: A Republican “insulted” legal experts by claiming they had not read transcripts of impeachment testimony.

VERDICT: False. He said they could not have “digested” Adam Schiff’s 300-page report from just one day before.

Fact check – CLAIM: Pete Buttigieg said he would send U.S. troops to Mexico to fight the drug cartels. VERDICT: Mostly true, though he said he would do so in partnership with Mexico.

The “gender pay gap” is widely disparaged, even by liberal publications, as highly misleading at best.