From now on, we’ll be keeping track of each and every false claim made by President Donald Trump. And we’ll be giving you a weekly breakdown of the highlights, or lowlights, from the false claims of the previous week. You can find the full list of 29 false claims at the bottom of this article.
Where he made them: Trump uttered 11 of the 29 false claims in his Friday speech in Milwaukee about the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. He uttered six more in his exchange with White House reporters before his departure for that speech.
Seven false claims came in his largely improvised Thursday speech at the White House about the supposed political bias of social media companies. The remaining five were scatteredover other speeches and tweets.
The most egregious false claim: The social media non-conspiracy.
Trump is fond of simultaneously boasting of his success while blaming others for preventing him from being even more successful.
He tried this two-pronged approach last week when talking about the size of his following on social media. Though he boasted that “I have millions of people, so many people I wouldn’t believe it,” he alleged that Twitter is keeping his follower count down by somehow making it difficult for people to follow him.
As he has done so often, he attributed his assertion to unnamed people. His claim: “I know that we’ve been blocked. People come up to me and they say, ‘Sir, I can’t get you. I can’t follow you.’ “
There is no evidence that Twitter has done anything to impede people from following him.
The most trivial false claim: The “outside” crowd in Orlando.
The very first dishonest controversy of Trump’s presidency was over his exaggerations about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He has been reliably inaccurate about crowd sizes since.
He returned last week to one of the false claims he regularly makes after his campaign rallies. Not only was his June campaign kickoff in Orlando packed to the rafters, he said at the White House, but there were about 20,000 people “outside” the Amway Center unable to get in.
Trump’s “outside” claims can be hard to fact check, since journalists tend to be inside the venues where he is speaking. This time, though, the Orlando Sentinel did have journalists outside — who found that there were a mere “few dozen” people in the outdoor overflow area, since everyone in line for the rally was able to get in.
The most revealing false claim: California non-vindication
Trump has a long memory for slights, and he delights in declaring that he has been vindicated about things he had been mocked for saying or doing.
Even when he has not been vindicated.
Trump was widely criticized for his claim last year that poor forest management, not climate change, was the only reason California was having a severe problem with wildfires.
Last week, he said: “When I went to California, they sort of scoffed at me for the first two weeks and maybe three weeks, and not so much — four weeks. And after about five weeks they said, ‘You know, he’s right. He’s right.’ “
We could not find evidence that any once-critic eventually admitted that Trump was right about this.
The most notable numerical exaggeration: “44 years”
Trump often boasts that he has reached heights that previous presidents were unable to ascend. In particular, often claims that people had been trying and failing to get something done for a specific, large number of years before he came along and delivered.
Last week, in a speech on kidney-health policy, he claimed that people had been attempting for “44 years” to get a Right to Try law that would make it easier for terminally ill patients to access experimental medications…
…which was rather confusing to experts, since the very concept of a Right to Try law was developed about five years ago by a libertarian think tank.
The false claim that won’t go away: The trade deficit with China
More than 100 times as president, Trump has claimed that the US has, for years, had a trade deficit of “$500 billion” with China.
He said it again last week. It continues to be wrong.
The deficit has never once been $500 billion. It was $381 billion last year — and was $420 billion even if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services, as Trump almost always does.
Here is the complete list of 29 false claims for the week. You can click here for the complete list of 61 false claims for the week following.
The economy
Auto companies
“And your executives know this: Companies are pouring back into our nation. Automobile companies from Japan and other nations are pouring back in. Many, many of the great auto companies are coming back into Michigan. They’re coming back into Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: There are no major automotive plants in Pennsylvania, Florida or North Carolina (North Carolina does have plants making commercial buses and heavy-duty trucks), and there are no known plans to build any in those states, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan.
Trump could be referring to auto parts companies or other smaller firms in the industry, but he has repeatedly created the impression that he is talking about major automakers.
Automakers have made major investments in Michigan and Ohio during Trump’s presidency.
Wisconsin economy
“And you (Wisconsin) had the greatest year you’ve ever had in the history of this state. This is a great state, but you had your best economic year that you’ve ever had, so that’s great.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: This is hyperbole. Wisconsin’s economy has been growing under Trump, but it has not had its best year ever in terms of either job growth or overall growth.
The state said in an official report: “Wisconsin added just 21,500 jobs in 2017 and 23,000 in 2018, after adding an average of 33,700 jobs per year between 2011 and 2016. Wisconsin employment posted year‐over‐year growth of 0.7% in 2017 and 0.8% in 2018, compared to growth of 1.6% nationwide.”
The state’s 2018 growth rate of 2.5% was the best since 2010 — good, but not the best ever.
Women’s unemployment
“Women, I think, Kellyanne (Conway), the best in 75 years — the best unemployment numbers in 75 years.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: Trump exaggerated slightly. The women’s unemployment rate for June was 3.6%, a tick above the 3.4% in April and 3.5% in May.
It has been 66 years since the women’s rate has been this low, not 75 years.
Job creation
“Since the election, we have created more than 6 million new jobs. Nobody would have believed that during the campaign. If I would have said ‘6 million jobs,’ they would have said, ‘Oh, that’s — no, he’s exaggerating.’ I did say like 4 million, but we got 6 million. So I was under-exaggerating.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: The economy has added more than 6 million jobs since the election, but Trump did not promise during the 2016 campaign to create “like 4 million” jobs by this point in his presidency.
His signature jobs promise was to create 25 million jobs over 10 years.
Manufacturing
“Our nation was made of vibrant and strong — and it’s got to be the most powerful, the best — it really was made with American manufacturing. And you know that a previous administration said, ‘Manufacturing is gone. You’re going to have to take a magic wand to bring it back.’ Well, that was wrong.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: The Obama administration did not say this. In his “magic wand” comments in 2016, Obama did say that some manufacturing jobs were gone for good, but he also boasted of how many were still being created.
At a PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, during the 2016 campaign, Obama mocked Trump for claiming, without outlining a specific plan, that he would bring back manufacturing jobs that had been lost to Mexico; he asked, “What magic wand do you have?”
But Obama didn’t say all manufacturing was gone. He also noted that some manufacturers were indeed coming back, and he boasted that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.”
Energy production
“We launched an American energy revolution. The United States is now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: The US became the No. 1 crude oil producer under Trump, but it had already achieved the No. 1 spot in natural gas, and in oil and natural gas combined, under Obama.
The government’s official source for energy data, the Energy Information Administration, said in 2017: “The United States has been the world’s top producer of natural gas since 2009, when US natural gas production surpassed that of Russia, and it has been the world’s top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when its production exceeded Saudi Arabia’s.” The US had surpassed Russia for the top combined spot by 2012, the EIA has reported.
It is crude oil production in particular in which the US became top in the world under Trump, according to the EIA: it surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia in 2018.
Trade
Trade deficit with China
“It’s not China’s fault that we were stupid. It’s not China’s fault that we allowed it to happen. We lose $500 billion a year.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
“China made, over the last 10 years, hundreds of billions of dollars. You could say four to five hundred billion dollars a year. That’s not sustainable.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: The US has never had a $500 billion trade deficit with China. (Trump refers to trade deficits as losses, though most economists don’t.)
The 2018 deficit was$381 billion when all kinds of trade were considered, $420 billion when counting goods alone and ignoring trade in services.
Tariffs on China
“We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars in tariffs. I’m giving billions of dollars back to the farmers because they pinpointed the farmers. They said, ‘We’re not going to buy here. We’re not going to buy there because then Trump will stop doing to us what he’s doing.’ Except the farmers said, ‘We don’t care because he’s right.’ Because for 15 years, the farmer — if you look, 15 years, it’s been like this. It’s a one-way street and it was a street downward.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: US farmers had not been on a downhill slide for 15 years before Trump imposed his tariffs on China in 2018.
Net farm income doubled between 2000 and 2013, from just under $60 billion to just over $120 billion. The Congressional Research Service wrote in 2018: “US farm income experienced a golden period during 2011 through 2014 due to strong commodity prices and robust agricultural exports,” setting a record high in 2013.
Who is paying for the tariffs on China
“And, in the meantime, our government has billions of dollars of money pouring in, and that money is paid for by China through reducing — if you take a look, what they’re doing is they’re playing around with their monetary policy to a level like nobody has ever seen before. We’re not paying. And they’re also pumping out cash into their system. And China is paying; our people are not paying.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
“The Democrats have caused tremendous problems. What they’ve let China get away with — for years and years, China has been ripping us off. They’re not ripping us off anymore. Right now, companies are fleeing China because of the tariffs. And right now, we’re taking in billions of dollars. And, by the way, our people are not paying for it. They’re paying for it — they’re paying for it by depressing their currency and they’re putting a lot of money.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: Americans are paying these billions of dollars in Trump tariffs on imported Chinese products.
The American importers, not the Chinese exporters, make the actual payments; economic studies,including one by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have concluded that the overwhelming majority of the costs are being eaten by Americans.
Some companies are moving some of their operations out of China in response the tariffs, but there is not good data on how many. And experts said it is not true to say the firms are entirely “fleeing” the country.
“We have stories about firms leaving China, but that was happening before tariffs were applied because Chinese labor and land costs have been rising. Now we have more stories but no documentation that ‘many’ firms are leaving, given the huge number of foreign firms operating in China. And we certainly don’t have evidence that a large number of firms are returning production to the US,” said Derek Scissors, an expert on Asian economies as a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“I think it’s untrue to say that companies are leaving China, though it’s possible that a handful may have done. What has been happening on a significant scale is that many firms have been moving, or plan to move, some of their supply chain operations out of China to avoid tariffs, and or to go to places where they sense greater political and policy stability,” said George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre.
Magnus added: “They’re going mainly to north Asia, Vietnam and Mexico, though, not the US.”
Chinese agriculture spending
“But, in the meantime, they were targeted by China. I went to Sonny Perdue, and I said, ‘Sonny, how much has China spent, let’s say, in the — in just about the biggest year?’ He said, ‘Sixteen billion dollars, sir.’ I said, ‘Here’s what I’m doing. I’m giving our farmers $16 billion out of the tariffs, which frankly, are much more than that.'” And: “But now things are pretty good because we are doing $16 billion and that was the most that China ever purchased.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: Sixteen billion dollars is not even close to the most money China has spent buying US agricultural products in a year.
The peak was $29.6 billion in 2014, according to the Department of Agriculture.
US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement
“And here at Derco, you’ll be able to expand your commerce with Canadian customers and suppliers (because of the USMCA), and they’ll be buying your product. Now they have an incentive to buy your product. Before this deal, they had no incentive whatsoever to buy product in the United States.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: This is nonsensical. Trump’s trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is an update to NAFTA.
If Canadians will have an incentive to do business with this Lockheed Martin aerospace company under the USMCA, they had an incentive under NAFTA.
Qatar’s US investments
“And, Tamim, you’ve been a friend of mine for a long time, before I did this presidential thing, and we feel very comfortable with each other. And I have to say that the investments that you make in the United States — one of the largest in the world — but the investments that you make are very much appreciated. And I know the planes you’re buying and all of the other things you’re investing in. And I view it differently; I view it as jobs. Because for me, it’s jobs.” — July 8 dinner in honor of the Emir of Qatar
Facts First: Qatar is not one of the largest investors in the United States.
Out of 46 countries whose 2017 investments were tracked by the US government’s investment promotion body SelectUSA, Qatar ranked 35th, with $3.5 billion in investment. Its investments totaled less than $3.5 billion in the four previous years.
The Census
What is asked on the Census
Referring to the census, Trump said, “They go through houses, they go up, they ring doorbells, they talk to people. How many toilets do they have? How many desks do they have? How many beds? What’s their roof made of? The only thing we can’t ask is, ‘Are you a citizen of the United States?’ ” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: The decennial census does not ask about the number of toilets, beds or roofing materials. The Census Bureau’s supplemental American Community Survey does ask detailed questions about the dwellings of a small sample of households — but those surveys also ask about citizenship, so Trump would be wrong that they can’t ask both at the same time.
The 2019 version of the American Community Survey asks people whether their homes have hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, and a sink with a faucet. It does not mention toilets, desks or roofing materials.
The citizenship question
Question: “Did you back down on that (Census decision)?” Trump: “No. No. Not only didn’t I back down, I backed up. Because — anybody else would’ve given this up a long time ago. The problem is we had three very unfriendly courts…So I asked, ‘Is there another way?’ And somebody said there’s a way that might be better. It might be more accurate. They explained it…So, when I heard this, I said, ‘I think that’s actually better. I think what we’re doing is actually better.’ And only the fake news, which there’s plenty, would say differently.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: We give Trump leeway for political rhetoric, but there is no reasonable argument that he did not back down, or that he did the opposite and “backed up,” on the question of putting a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
The option Trump chose — collecting citizenship data from government entities, without a census question — was the same one the Census Bureau recommended in a memo to his administration before the administration launched its effort to get the question on the census.
The Mueller report
What Mueller said
Question: “But on Robert Mueller, is there anything you’d like Robert Mueller to say about you?” Trump: “There’s nothing he can say. He’s written a report. The report said, ‘No collusion.’ And it said, effectively, ‘No obstruction,’ because there’s no obstruction.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: Mueller’s report did not say “no obstruction” in any way.
Mueller laid out a case that Trump may have committed obstruction, but he explained that he would abide by a Justice Department policy that holds that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. We are unable to reach such a judgment,” Mueller’s report said.
It was Attorney General William Barr who determined that the evidence laid out by Mueller was “not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Immigration
Mexican troops at the border
“But it’s all changing and it’s changing very rapidly, and we’re doing really well right now. Mexico has 21,000 troops on the border, guarding our border.” — July 12 speech in Milwaukee on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Facts First: This is the approximate number of Mexican troops stationed at both the US-Mexico border and the country’s southern border, not the US-Mexico border alone.
Earlier in the day, and in the days following, Trump made clear that the 21,000 troops were on “both their southern border and our southern border.”
Democrats’ past positions on the border wall
“For instance, on the wall: Chuck Schumer was totally in favor of a wall, right Liz (Cheney)? Totally in favor. Everybody: Hillary, everybody. They were all in favor of a wall just a few years ago.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: Some Democrats, but far from all, voted in 2006 to approve a fence on the Mexican border — a fence Trump himself said was much different than the wall he wanted.
In the Senate, 26 Democrats (including Schumer and Clinton) voted yes on the Secure Fence Act, 17 voted no; in the House, it was 64 yes, 131 no. That isn’t close to unanimous support.
The law was to authorize 700 miles of fencing. Trump himself said during the 2016 campaign that this fencing was not comparable to the giant concrete wall he was proposing: “It was such a little wall, it was such a nothing wall,” he told Fox News.
Democrats on immigration
“They (Democrats) want open borders. They want people to pour in, including criminals — the worst criminals. They want people to pour into our country. Nobody can tell me that’s good, politically. Nobody can tell me.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: There’s no evidence that anyone wants criminals to ‘pour in’ to the United States.
Some Democrats, including presidential candidates such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, have advocated a significant loosening of immigration law, including a decriminalization of the act of illegally crossing the border, but none of them has proposed literally opening the borders to unrestricted migration.
Conditions at the border
Trump said: “Very importantly, today, in a few hours, Vice President Pence and the head of Homeland Security are taking the press and congresspeople into detention centers. And we’re the ones that said they were crowded. They’re crowded because we have a lot of people. But they’re in good shape. And the reason is because the fake-news New York Times wrote a phony story. What Border Patrol is doing — they’ve become nurses and janitors and doctors. And they’re not trained for that. What they’ve done is so incredible. So they’re touring detention centers. And that was my idea because I read a phony story in The New York Times today — or the other day — about the detention centers, about the conditions. And I had people calling me up at the highest levels from Border Patrol and ICE, almost crying, about that phony story. And they never saw anything. They have phony sources. They don’t even have sources. They write whatever they want. The New York Times is a very dishonest newspaper. They write what they want.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: There is no evidence the Times invented imaginary sources or that its article on squalid conditions for child migrants at a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, was substantially false. The Times issued a statement saying, “We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting on the US Border Patrol’s detention centers.”
Vice President Mike Pence subsequently visited two facilities in the Rio Grande Valley: the Donna Processing Facility, where families are being held, and the McAllen Border Patrol Station, which is holding single adults who have been found crossing into the United States illegally.
Children in the Donna facility were lying on cots, watching movies and eating snacks, and the facility had air conditioning and ample space, according to CNN reporters who traveled with Pence. At McAllen, Texas, hundreds of men were overcrowded in a sweltering room with no space for cots.
Nothing Pence saw at these facilities disproved what the Times reported about the Clint facility.
Trump’s popularity, actions and accomplishments
Donating the presidential salary
“But, another thing, I get a salary of $400- or $450,000 a year. I don’t think any other president has ever given up — it’s a lot of money, almost a half a million dollars. I give it up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody say, ‘I give up my salary.’ I’m not looking for credit, but I give up my salary. I get zero. I get zero.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: Trump is not the first president to donate his salary.
John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover also donated theirs.
Orlando rally attendance
“We had sort of an opening rally in Orlando, Florida. We had 109,000, maybe more, wanting to come. We were doing as much as we could to keep people not from coming. We had a 21,000-seat stadium, and then with the basketball court, it held many more than that, it was packed. And we had a similar number outside.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: There were nowhere close to 21,000 people outside the rally as Trump was speaking; the Orlando Sentinel said there were “a few dozen people” in an overflow area. And the arena had a capacity of 20,000 that night, not “many more than” 21,000.
The Sentinel reported: “About an hour before the President’s speech, the long lines around the Amway were gone and people could easily walk into the event right up to the start of the rally.” The city of Orlando, which owns the arena, issued an official crowd count of 19,792, just shy of the 20,000 a city spokesperson said would have been let in, the Sentinel reported.
Biden’s crowd size
“You look at Biden. They say he had 600 people. That wasn’t 600, that was 150 people. That was 150.” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: Independent observers reported that former Vice President Joe Biden did indeed have 600 people at his first public event after announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Atlantic said that journalists occupied 100 of the 600 spots at a union hall in Pittsburgh, but that is still 500 non-journalists, not 150.
Social media followers
Trump alleged a deliberate attempt by social media companies to prevent him from gaining followers, claiming that “a lot of bad things are happening.” He said, “People come up to me: ‘Sir, we want to follow you; they don’t let us on.’ ” He added later: “I have millions of people, so many people I wouldn’t believe it, but I know that we’ve been blocked. People come up to me and they say, ‘Sir, I can’t get you. I can’t follow you.’ ” — July 11 speech on social media
Facts First: There is no evidence that Twitter or other social media companies have made it difficult for people to follow Trump. Trump did briefly lose followers on Twitter last year, but that was part of a broad purge of suspected fake accounts.
The purge also removed followers from the accounts of many other famous people. Trump lost approximately 300,000 followers, far fewer than Barack Obama (more than 2 million) and the Dalai Lama (about 375,000), according to a New York Times count.
We obviously can’t verify what people might have told Trump in private, but following him is not complicated: doing so is simply a matter of signing up for an account, searching his name and clicking a single button.
Right to Try law
“We’re very proud of Right to Try. They’ve been trying to get it for 44 years. More complicated than you think to get it. A lot of people didn’t want to have it. But we got it, and it’s just something we’re very proud of.” — July 10 speech at signing of executive order on kidney health
Facts First: There had not been a 44-year push for a federal Right to Try law, experts said.
The law tries to make it easier for terminally ill patients to access experimental medications that have not received approval for widespread use. Similar laws have been passed at the state levelsince 2014, soon after the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank, began pushing for them.
“I have no idea what ‘they’ve been trying to get’ for 44 years. The Right to Try law was a creation of the Goldwater Institute, and it first became state law in 2014 (in Colorado), relatively soon after it was first conceived of,” said Alison Bateman-House, assistant professor of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Health.
Republicans and preexisting conditions
“And we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. It’s an absolute fact. It’s done. The Republican Party will protect patients with preexisting conditions.” — July 10 speech at signing of executive order on kidney health
Facts First: We generally don’t fact-check promises, but this one is belied by recent history. Trump’s administration and congressional Republicans have repeatedly put forward bills and lawsuits that would weaken Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.
Trump’s administration is supporting a Republican lawsuit that is seeking to get all of Obamacare declared void. He has not issued a plan to reinstate the law’s protections for people with preexisting conditions if the suit succeeds.
EPA clean-ups
“We’ve refocused the EPA back on its core mission, and, last year, the agency completed more Superfund hazardous waste clean-ups than any year of the previous administrations and set records in almost every year.” — July 8 speech on the environment
Facts First: Last year was not a record for the completion of Superfund clean-ups.
The Environmental Protection Agency has boasted that last year was a 13-year high in deleting Superfund sites from the National Priorities List: 18 sites were deleted. But a 13-year high is not a record, and 18 deletions is not even close to the actual record; there were 34 deletions in the 1996 fiscal year. Also, Superfund clean-ups tend to take many years. As FactCheck.org noted, all of the 18 sites deleted from the list in 2018 had their physical cleanup work completed by the time Trump took office.
California forest management
“I spoke to certain countries, and they said, ‘Sir, we’re a forest nation.’ I never thought of a country — well-known countries: ‘We’re a forest nation.’ I never heard of the term ‘forest nation.’ They live in forests and they don’t have problems. One was telling me that his trees are much more susceptible to fire than what they have in California, but they don’t have fires because they manage, they clean, they do what you have to do. There’s not so much to burn. And we’re going to start doing that. And it’s called, remember, ‘management.’ It’s called ‘forest management.’ So it’s a very important term. When I went to California, they sort of scoffed at me for the first two weeks and maybe three weeks, and not so much — four weeks. And after about five weeks they said, ‘You know, he’s right. He’s right.’ So I think you’re going to see a lot of good things. It’s a lot of area. It’s a lot of land.” — July 8 speech on the environment
Facts First: The California leaders who criticized his remarks on the state’s forest management practices (and minimizing the role of climate change in causing wildfires), including former Gov. Jerry Brown and current Gov. Gavin Newsom, did not ever concede that Trump was correct.
The primary subject of the dispute was not the idea that good forest management can play a role in combating wildfires. It was Trump’s suggestion, rejected by scientists, that climate change is not a significant cause of the fires.
Trump also received criticism for casting sole blame on the state’s own forest management practices, since the federal government manages more than half of California’s forest land. Scientists and California politicians noted that forest management could not have prevented the major Woolsey Fire last year, which did not start in a forest.
Veterans Choice
“So nobody has treated the military better than President Trump. Nobody. Nobody has even come close. And you see that with budgets, you see that with the pay increases, and you see that with medical. But you know where you see it more than any place is with the vets. Because the vets now have Choice. They never had Choice before. For 40 … for 44 years … For 44 years — we are looking at that. For 44 years, they’ve tried to get Veterans Choice. I got it. Nobody else could’ve gotten it … I’ve done more in two-and-a-half years than any other President — nobody’s even close — including, we just said, Veterans Choice and all of the other things I’ve gotten.” — July 12 exchange with reporters before Marine One departure
Facts First: Trump did not get the Veterans Choice program passed. It was signed into law by Obama in 2014.
In 2018, Trump signed the VA MISSION Act, which expanded and changed the Choice program.
