Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Fact-Checking Trump & the Republicans at the Republican National Convention

Donald J. Trump accepts the Republican nomination for President “humbly and gratefully.” © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Donald J. Trump accepts the Republican nomination for President “humbly and gratefully.” © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

“Here, at our convention, there will be no lies.  We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else.” – Donald Trump. 7-21-16
“The GOP convention has ended and it’s clear that while the Republican party is divided over their nominee, they are united in their obsession with lying about Hillary Clinton.  From deceiving viewers with misleading claims, to making up their own facts, to spreading straight up conspiracy theories, the GOP had no reservations when it came to smearing the former secretary of state,” the Hillary for America campaign responds.
The campaign compiled a list of 172 false and misleading claims told over the course of the convention that were debunked by independent fact checkers.

  1. PolitiFact: “Trump called the United States ‘one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.’ […] [A] reasonable listener could take away from Trump’s remark that he meant taxes overall, particularly given that he set up the line with a joint reference to middle-income Americans and businesses. We rate the claim Mostly False.”
  1. PolitiFact: “Trump said, ‘My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.’ […] We rate Trump’s claim False.”
  1. PolitiFact: “Trump said, ‘In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map.’ The terrorist group known as ISIS was, in fact, on the map five years before Clinton became secretary of state. […] We rate this claim Mostly False.”
  1. PolitiFact: “Trump said “Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies. She is responsible for ISIS.” […] This claim is inaccurate. We rate it False.”
  1. CNN: “Trump also said that ‘58% of African-American youth are not employed.’ […] [T]he verdict is false.”
  1. CNN: “Although the actual implementation of the deal with Iran occurred four days after the incident with the U.S. sailors, Trump referenced the signing of the deal which occurred the previous July. We rate his comments as false.”
  1. CNN: “Trump says there’s ‘no way to screen these refugees.’ […] The effectiveness of these procedures may be a matter of debate, but to say that there is ‘no way to screen’ refugees is false.”
  1. CNN: “According to Trump, ‘the Democrats, on the other hand, received 20% fewer votes than they got four years ago.’ […] We rate his claim about the Democratic vote tallies as false.”
  1. CNN: “Trump returned to a common theme of the convention, slamming Clinton for her use of personal email during her tenure as secretary of state. […] Although Clinton did delete more than 30,000 emails, after a forensic examination, the FBI investigation ‘found no evidence’ that the deletions were made to conceal her activity, therefore we rate this claim ”
  1. CNN: “Trump rattled off a litany of events he claimed would make up ‘the legacy of Hillary Clinton.’ […] [W]e rate his claim that the state of the Middle East and Libya are Clinton’s personal legacy as false.”
  1. New York Times: Donald Trump claim: “In our nation’s capital, killings have risen by 50 percent. They are up nearly 60 percent in nearby Baltimore.” “Fact Check: Those statistics are based on an analysis performed by The Washington Post, which found no clear pattern in which cities saw increases in homicides.”
  1. New York Times: Donald Trump claim: “The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.” “Fact Check: In fact, the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks officer deaths, reports that 68 police officers have been killed so far this year, almost exactly the same as the 69 who were killed in the same period last year.
  1. New York Times: Donald Trump claim: “Nearly four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58 percent of African-American youth are not employed.” “Fact Check: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate of African Americans ages 16-19 in June was 31.2 percent.”
  1. New York Times: “Fact Check: The deal does not directly give Iran money, but by easing or terminating sanctions, it would allow Iran to have access to many billions of dollars of its own money that has been frozen in overseas accounts.”
  1. AP: “TRUMP: ‘Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.’ […] President Barack Obama has actually achieved some big increases in spending for state and local law enforcement.”
  1. AP: “TRUMP: ‘When a secretary of state illegally stores her emails on a private server…’ […] THE FACTS: Clinton’s use of a private server to store her emails was not illegal under federal law.”
  2. AP: “TRUMP: ‘The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.’ THE FACTS: Not according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.”
  1. AP: “Trump persists in making the bogus claim that the U.S. doesn’t screen refugees.”
  2. AP: “TRUMP: ‘Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago. Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely. … President Obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing.’ THE FACTS: Trump is playing with numbers to make the economy look worse than it actually is.”
  3. AP: “TRUMP: ‘America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.’ THE FACTS: Trump continues to repeat this inaccuracy.”
  4. AP: “TRUMP: ‘My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.’ THE FACTS: Hillary Clinton has not proposed any revocation of the constitutionally protected right to bear arms.”
  5. AP: “It’s an exaggeration to suggest Clinton, or any secretary of state, is to blame for the widespread instability and violence across the Middle East.”
  6. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.’ […] But there’s simply no evidence that a federal ‘rollback of criminal enforcement’ has led to a reversal of those trends. […] Ruling: Baseless.”
  7. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s 50 largest cities. […] But what Trump leaves out is that one of the researchers behind this work, Richard Rosenfeld, has repeatedly said that it’s way too early to say whether this trend is applicable to the rest of the country or whether it truly indicates a reversal to the long-term violent crime drop of the past 25 years.”
  8. Vox: “Trump says: ‘The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.’ In fact: This statistic apparently comes from an outdated, poorly worded USA Today headline. But according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, on-duty deaths of police officers are actually down 1 percent in 2016 compared to the same point in 2015. […] Ruling: False.”
  9. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.’ In fact: There are indeed about 180,000 immigrants with criminal records still in the United States who have been ordered deported. But the assumption that all of them are ‘threaten[ing] peaceful citizens’ is deeply questionable.”
  10. Vox: “The reason that Trump is telling this story, of course, is to imply that all unauthorized immigrants are lawless. In fact, immigrants are less likely than citizens to commit crimes. But to Trump and his followers, the very fact that someone doesn’t yet have legal status in the US is proof that he’s on some level a criminal.”
  11. Vox: “Trump says: ‘58 percent of African-American youth are not employed.’ In fact: CNN’s Tami Luhby looked into this claim and found that the 58 percent figure was extrapolated from the fact that roughly 42 percent of black Americans ages 16 to 24 were employed as of earlier this year. That’s an erroneous way to calculate; many of those people aren’t unemployed but are simply in school or otherwise not looking for work.”
  12. Vox: “Trump says: ‘2 million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago.’ […] But this isn’t a case where using raw numbers is informative. If you use rates, the Hispanic poverty rate was either roughly unchanged or, using the more accurate metric, reduced in Obama’s time in office.”
  13. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.’ […] Ruling: False.”
  14. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Our trade deficit in goods reached — think of this — our trade deficit is $800 billion last year alone.’ In fact: This is just false. The manufacturing trade deficit is large, but it was $681 billion in 2015, not ‘nearly $800 billion.’ It’s also worth noting that many economists do not consider high trade deficits to be inherently bad.”
  15. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in Third World condition, and 43 million Americans are on food stamps.’ […] However, claiming that American airports are in Third World conditions is, at best, an exaggeration. According to Priceonomics, which analyzed reviews of 17,000 airports worldwide, America’s still rank among the best.”
  16. Vox: “Trump says: ‘The Iran deal … gave back to Iran $150 billion and gave us nothing – it will go down in history as one of the worst deals ever made.’ […] [T]he United States does in fact get something out of the deal: In exchange for unfreezing these assets, Iran is complying with the requirements of the nuclear agreement that makes it much harder for the country to build a nuclear weapon. Ruling: False.”
  17. Vox: “Trump says: ‘America is far less safe — and the world is far less stable — than when Obama made the decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of America’s foreign policy. … I am certain it is a decision that President Obama truly regrets.’ […] [T]he fact that Obama is now actively campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton strongly suggests he does not particularly regret the way she performed when she was his secretary of state.”
  18. Vox: “Trump says: ‘In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map.’ In fact: The group named ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) did not formally exist under that name until 2013; however, it was formed out of the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which dates back to 2004.”
  19. Vox: “Trump says: ‘In 2009, pre-Hillary … Egypt was peaceful.’ […] Ruling: Misleading.”
  20. Vox: “Trump says: ‘In 2009, pre-Hillary … Iraq was seeing really a reduction in violence.’ […] Iraq’s slide back into full-blown chaos began in 2010, when US troops, under an agreement reached by the Bush administration with former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, began withdrawing from the country in significant numbers.”
  21. Vox: “Trump says: ‘In 2009, pre-Hillary … Syria was under control.’ […] The uprising of 2011 plunged the country into chaos, mainly because of the actions of Assad himself, who, rather than leave power, chose to launch a full-scale war against his own people.”
  22. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Iran is on a path to nuclear weapons.’ […] There is no evidence that Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapon in contravention of the deal’s terms. Ruling: False.”
  23. Vox: “Trump says: ‘And when a secretary of state illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can’t see her crime…’ In fact: The claim that Clinton ‘illegally’ stored her emails has no merit, according to FBI Director James Comey. After an investigation that lasted nearly a year, Comey said he found no evidence that Clinton intentionally broke the law.”
  24. Vox: “Second, when Trump claims Clinton deleted 33,000 emails to cover up a crime, he’s leaving out one key fact: According to Clinton, these were personal emails stored on her private server. And she had no obligation to turn personal emails over to the government.”
  25. Vox: “Trump says: ‘When the FBI director says that the secretary of state was ‘extremely careless’ and ‘negligent’ in handling our classified secrets, I also know that these terms are minor compared to what she actually did.’ In fact: FBI Director Comey did indeed use those terms, but Trump’s assertion that what Clinton ‘actually did’ was far worse is utterly baseless — an unsupported smear.”
  26. Vox: “Trump says: ‘…that same secretary of state rakes in millions and millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers.’ […] But no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of either Hillary Clinton or the foundation itself has been found to date, and even Peter Schweizer, the author of a book aimed at exposing the Clinton Foundation’s faults, admits as much.”
  27. Vox: “Trump says: ‘There’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from.’ […] Ruling: False.”
  28. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers.’ […] Ruling: False.”
  29. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more … than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border. These families have no special interests to represent them. There are no demonstrators to protest on their behalf.’ […] Ruling: False.”
  30. Vox: “Trump says: ‘By ending catch and release on the border, we will stop the cycle of human smuggling and violence. Illegal border crossings will go down. We will stop it. It won’t be happening very much anymore. Peace will be restored.’ In fact: Illegal border crossings are already extremely low. […] Ruling: Baseless.”
  31. Vox: “Trump says: ‘America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Reducing taxes will cause new companies and new jobs to come roaring back into our country.’ In fact: Among rich countries, America is one of the least-taxed nations in the world. […] Ruling: False.”
  32. Vox: “Trump says: ‘Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year.’ […] [T]his study doesn’t include any benefits of these regulations (such as, for instance, lower pollution and cleaner air). Failing to include benefits gives a misleading picture
  33. Vox: “Trump says: ‘We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.’ […] David Victor, an energy expert at the University of California San Diego, has called Trump’s $20 trillion number ‘a fantasy’ and ‘off by an order of magnitude.’”
  34. Vox: “Trump says: ‘My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work — that will never happen when I am president.’ […] But miners would also very likely continue to go out of work even under a President Trump, because the coal industry is being crushed right now by cheap natural gas, collapsing demand from China, and other forces that Trump would have no control over.”
  35. Vox: “Trump says: ‘We will repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare. You will be able to choose your own doctor again.’ […] One of the assumptions implicit in Trump’s statement is that right now, it’s particularly hard to see a doctor of one’s choice. But the data doesn’t back that up.”
  36. Vox: “Trump says: ‘My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment.’ […] Ruling: False.”
  37. org: “Trump said, ‘Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons.’ But Iran was already on a path to nuclear weapons before Clinton became secretary of state in January 2009.”
  38. org: Trump “also blamed Clinton for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But Clinton […] urged President Obama not to be quick to abandon support for Mubarak.”
  39. org: “Trump claimed Clinton ‘plans a massive … tax increase,’ but tax experts say 95 percent of taxpayers would see ‘little or no change’ in their taxes under Clinton’s plan.”
  40. org: “Trump boasted that under his tax plan, ‘middle-income Americans will experience profound relief.’ Experts say Americans at all income levels would see their taxes reduced under Trump’s plan, but the biggest cuts — both in raw dollars and as a percentage of income — would go to the wealthiest Americans.”
  41. org: “Trump said, ‘America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.’ The U.S. has one of the highest business tax rates, but for personal taxes, the U.S. ranked in the bottom half among industrialized nations.”
  42. org: “Trump was correct to say that ‘homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s 50 largest cities,’ but criminology and statistics experts disagree with his conclusion that a one-year increase in some cities means that ‘decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed.’”
  43. org: “Trump twisted the facts when he said that Clinton ‘illegally’ stored emails on her private server while secretary of state, and deleted 33,000 of them ‘so the authorities can’t see her crime.’ The FBI on July 5 cleared Clinton of wrongdoing, and found no evidence of a cover-up.”
  44. org: “Trump said that ‘there’s no way to screen’ those refugees to determine ‘who they are or where they come from.’ That’s false. All refugees admitted to the U.S. go through an extensive vetting process that involves multiple federal agencies and can take up to 24 months to complete.”
  45. org: “Trump also used a bit of cherry-picking when he said, ‘Our trade deficit in goods reached nearly — think of this, think of this — our trade deficit is $800 billion … last year alone.’ The important word here is ‘goods.’ The total trade deficit, counting both goods and services, is smaller.”
  46. org: “Overall, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services was just over $500 billion last year. And another fact Trump didn’t mention — that figure peaked a decade ago.”
  47. org: “Trump said: ‘Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country.’ Actually, [NAFTA] was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush.”
  48. org: “Trump criticized Clinton for her ‘failed policy of nation-building and regime change’ and he counted Libya among them. Left unsaid was that Trump also supported the military ouster of Moammar Gadhafi at that time.”
  49. org: “Trump used an often-cited but outdated figure when he said, ‘Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000 — that’s 16 years ago.’ Actually, incomes have been rising lately.”
  50. org: “[T]he notion of a 16-year decline is misleading. What Trump failed to mention is that in 2014, real median household income had already risen by $1,052 since hitting a recession-driven low in 2012.”
  51. org: “Trump used a popular false talking point about the Affordable Care Act when he said that he’d repeal it and ‘you will be able to choose your own doctor again.’ The law didn’t take away the ability to choose a doctor.”
  52. org: “Trump repeated an overstatement on the costs of regulation[.] […] Trump said that ‘excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year,’ but that figure comes from a conservative group’s admitted ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculation and is an estimate of regulatory costs that does not include potential savings.”
  53. org: “Trump was more careful with his wording in his convention speech, saying only that the Iran deal ‘gave back to Iran $150 billion.’ The deal did result in Iran gaining access to tens of billions in frozen assets. However, experts told us the $150 billion figure is inflated.”
  54. ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. Rating: False.”
  55. ABC News: “Claim: America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Status: Mostly False. The U.S. is near the bottom of the list of industrialized countries in terms of taxes as a share of GDP.”
  56. ABC News: “Claim: There is no way to screen Syrian refugees. Rating: False.”
  57. ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton deleted emails to hide other crimes. Rating: Highly Questionable. This is a speculative accusation not supported by evidence.”
  58. ABC News: “Claim: The U.S. gave Iran $150 billion for ‘nothing.’ Rating: False.
  59. ABC News: “Claim: Obama signed the Iran deal just after U.S. sailors were captured by Iran and forced to kneel. Rating: False. The deal was finalized six months earlier.”
  60. ABC News: “Claim: Crime has increased under Obama’s presidency. Rating: False.”
  61. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end.” “Policing, public safety and the vast majority of the criminal justice apparatus are controlled by state and local authorities, not the federal government.”
  62. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “But here, at our convention, there will be no lies. We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else.” “Fact checkers might beg to differ. PolitiFact, for instance, has found a number of false statementsuttered at this week’s RNC.”
  63. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s fifty largest cities.” “[T]here’s a broader context for crime figures: While violent crime may be climbing this year, rates are far below their peak in the early 1990s.”
  64. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50% compared to this point last year.” “The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says as of July 21, 2016, total fatalities this year compared with the same time last year reflect an increase of five deaths, or 8 percent.”
  65. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015.” “[T]otal apprehensions at the border todayare far, far lower than they were in the early 2000s.”
  66. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “One more child to sacrifice on the order and on the altar of open borders.” “America does not have ‘open borders.’
  67. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Nearly 4 in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58% of African-American youth are now not employed.” “[T]he unemployment rate for black Americans ages 16 to 19 was 38.1 percent as of June.”
  68. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.” “The labor force has still been growing — Trump’s 14 million figure might imply that it’s not.”
  69. NPR: Donald Trump claim: The Iran Deal “gave back to Iran $150 billion and gave us absolutely nothing – it will go down in history as one of the worst deals ever negotiated.” “PolitiFacthas debunked this — that $150 billion is an estimate (and a high one) of the value of Iranian assets tied up by economic sanctions, according to the site.”
  70. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “In Libya, our consulate – the symbol of American prestige around the globe – was brought down in flames.” “The diplomatic outpost in Benghazi was not a consulate.”
  71. NPR: “I am certain that [putting Hillary Clinton in charge of America’s foreign policy] was a decision that President Obama truly regrets.” “President Obama has enthusiastically endorsed Clinton, so it would seem unlikely that he regrets choosing her to be his secretary of state.”
  72. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change. Never ever.” “Clinton has reams of plans and proposals to change everything from the nation’s immigration system and criminal justice policies to the way people pay for college.”
  73. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “And when a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can’t see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country.” “There was no official determination that the private server was illegal.”
  74. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “When the FBI Director says that the Secretary of State was ‘extremely careless’ and ‘negligent,’ in handling our classified secrets, I also know that these terms are minor compared to what she actually did.” FBI Director Comey “said ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would charge Clinton with a crime for the emails.”
  75. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “[W]e will fix [Bernie Sanders’] biggest single issue: trade deals that strip our country of its jobs and strip us of our wealth as a country.” “Sanders had a lot of issues that he was deeply passionate about, including trade, but it wouldn’t be at the top of his list.”
  76. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Millions of Democrats will join our movement, because we are going to fix the system so it works fairly and justly for all Americans.” “A recent Pew poll found that just 9 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning Sanders supporters said they planned to vote for Trump in the general election.”
  77. NPR: “Trump is saying that he and Pence will improve U.S. trade deals, but trade is just one of several areas on which they differ. Pence has been a strong proponent of free trade in the past, having approved of NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as the New York Times
  78. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “I will restore law and order to our country. Believe me. Believe me. I will work with, and appoint, the best and brightest prosecutors and law enforcement officials to get the job properly done.” “[T]hose top federal prosecutors handle a small fraction of violent crime cases in the nation.”
  79. NPR: Donald Trump claim: President Obama “has made America a more dangerous environment that frankly that I have ever seen of anybody in this room has ever watched or seen.” “The Brennan Center for Justice says overall crime rates from 2014 to 2015 were ‘nearly identical.’”
  80. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “My opponent has called for a […] 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country already under the leadership of President Obama.” “In 2015, the U.S. admitted (per the State Department) 1,682 Syrian refugees. That is well under President Obama’s goal. It would be hard to argue that is ‘massive.’”
  81. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “[T]here’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from.” “PolitiFact ranked the claim about the lack of a vetting system false.”
  82. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it very, very quickly.” “[A]s the Washington Post’s Fact Checkerhas pointed out, in the past this figure has been characterized as a ‘back of the envelope’ count, and that moreover, it doesn’t make sense to talk about costs without trying to count the benefits of regulation.”
  83. NPR: Donald Trump claim: “My opponent asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads: ‘I’m With Her’.” “‘I’m With Her’ started out as a hashtag and sometimes supporters do chant it at events, but the Clinton campaign doesn’t ask supporters to pledge loyalty by reciting it.”
  84. NBC News: “TRUMP CLAIM: We all remember the images of our sailors being forced to their knees by their Iranian captors at gunpoint. This was just prior to the signing of the Iran deal. THE FACTS: It actually came AFTER the signing of the Iran deal.”

 

  1. NBC News: “TRUMP CLAIM: Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years. THE FACTS: […] [O]verall, violent crime is down significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, according to FBI statistics.”
  2. NBC News:  “TRUMP CLAIM: The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. THE FACTS: That statistic is true, but it’s also a bit of cherry-picking.”
  1. NBC News: “Trump isn’t correct that 58 percent of African American youth are unemployed.”
  2. NBC News: “Trump is misleading on his claim about Latinos living in poverty.”
  3. NBC News: “TRUMP CLAIM: Where was sanctuary for all the other … Americans who have been so brutally murdered [by undocumented immigrants], and who have suffered so, so horribly? THE FACTS: Researchers have found that first-generation immigrants (legal or not) commit less crime than native-born Americans or second-generation immigrants.”
  4. NBC News: “TRUMP CLAIM: [Hillary Clinton] supported NAFTA, and she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization — another one of her husband’s colossal mistakes and disasters … She supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. THE FACTS:  Trump’s vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence also has praised NAFTA and TPP.”
  5. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump cherry-picks data to paint an alarming picture of homicide trends, when in reality, they have been declining for decades.”
  6. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.” “This is wrong.”
  7. Washington Post Fact Checker: “It’s not clear what Trump is referring to” in saying that “decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this Administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.”
  8. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015.” “This is another cherry-picked number.”
  9. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers.” “This claim is quite convoluted.”
  10. Washington Post Fact Checker: “The official unemployment rate for black youth is about half of what Trump says it is.”
  11. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump is being misleading” in saying that “2 million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the President took his oath of office.”
  12. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.” “Yet another misleading figure.”
  13. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000.” “So it is essentially flat, not down $4,000.”
  14. Washington Post Fact Checker: “[Trump] fails to mention that this is actually the lowest number of people receiving food stamps since it reached its peak in 2013.”
  15. Washington Post Fact Checker:  Donald Trump claim: “America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” “[T]he United States isn’t anywhere near the top among industrialized nations.”
  16. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year.” “Trump presents an unbalanced figure
  17. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump frequently misstates the facts about the Iran deal, making it sound like the United States simply shipped $150 billion of taxpayer’s funds to Iran.”
  18. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump falsely calls the Benghazi facility a ‘consulate’ and a ‘symbol of American prestige’ but it was merely an unofficial and temporary facility that had not even been declared to the host government.”
  19. Washington Post Fact Checker:  Donald Trump claim: “In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. Libya was cooperating. Egypt was peaceful. Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Syria was somewhat under control.” “Aspects are not factually correct.”
  20. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump […] falsely claims there’s ‘no way to screen’ refugees.”
  21. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump likes to say ‘others’ have gotten punished for far worse than Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but there are few known cases that are comparable to hers.”
  22. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump has criticized Clinton’s record as secretary of state and donations given to the Clinton Foundation. But critics […] have not been able to prove quid pro quo.”
  23. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “America has lost nearly-one third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997, following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton.” “It is simplistic to pin all of the blame on trade agreements.”
  24. Washington Post Fact Checker: Donald Trump claim: “Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country.” “[NAFTA] was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush.
  25. New Republic: “Trump is right that many American cities have murder rates that are unacceptable. But there are a lot of problems with this section of the speech, the biggest being that it’s just not really true. Blaming the national government for crime in cities is questionable at best.”
  26. PolitiFact: “Pence said, “It was Hillary Clinton who left Americans in harm’s way in Benghazi and after four Americans fell said, ‘What difference at this point does it make?’” […] We rate Pence’s claim Mostly False.”
  27. PolitiFact: “Ruffin said that Donald Trump ‘always pays his bills promptly.’ […] We rate the statement False.”
  28. PolitiFact: “Scott said, “Our economy is not growing.” […] We rate this claim False.”
  29. PolitiFact: “Glenn said, “Neighborhoods have become more violent under your watch,” referring to President Obama. […] We rate this claim Mostly False.”
  30. CNN: “Priebus’ claim that the deal ‘lined the pockets’ of the Iranian government with American money is also false.”
  31. CNN: “Because Priebus mischaracterized a number of details about the nuclear deal, we rate his claims false.”
  32. CNN: “‘Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks. Our newest fighter jets can’t even fly in the rain,’ Thiel said. […] While the F-35 program continues to be mired with difficulties, we rate this particular claim as false.”
  33. CNN: “Pence criticized the Obama administration’s use of executive orders. “We’ve seen relentless mandates from the executive branch. It seems no aspect of our lives is too small for the present administration to supervise, no provision of the Constitution too large for them to ignore,” Pence said. […] Because the actual count of executive orders issued by Obama is not out of line with those issued by modern day presidents, we rate Pence’s claim to be false.”
  34. CNN: “Cruz also railed against the nuclear deal with Iran, claiming that the country expresses its hostility toward the West with two “holidays”: “Death to America Day” and “Death to Israel Day.” […] Verdict: False.”
  35. CNN: “Donald Trump’s son, Eric, said in his speech that his father invested $2 million of his own money into the refurbishing of an ice skating rink in Central Park because he was ‘disgusted by government incompetence’ when the project ‘dragged on for over six years and ballooned to over $13 million — $5 million over an already inflated budget.’ […] So, while Trump took over the project, Eric’s claim that his father ‘invested $2 million of his own money’ is false.”
  36. CNN: “Trump’s middle son rehashed one of his father’s favorite lines throughout his campaign: that the Obama administration agreed to give $150 billion to Iran as part of the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The line remains false.”
  37. CNN: “Hamm, who helped pioneer the shale industry, slammed Obama’s energy policies Wednesday night, saying that restrictions on domestic oil and gas drilling was helping to fund terrorism. […] Therefore we rate the claim that restrictions on domestic oil and gas help “to fund terrorism” false.”
  38. CNN: “We rate Hamm’s claim that Obama “chose not to get’ energy independence as false.”
  1. CNN: “It’s also false to say Clinton wants to ‘eliminate fossil fuel development in America.’”
  1. CNN: “[Michelle Van Etten] said the country needs a president “who will repeal Obamacare and allow small businesses to be able to provide health care for their employees again.” […] Small businesses are not now required to offer health insurance and they didn’t universally do so prior to Obamacare. Because of this, we rate Van Etten’s statement as false.”
  1. AP: Pence and “other Republicans are wrongly accusing Hillary Clinton of speaking with indifference about the death of Americans in Benghazi, Libya — twisting her comments out of context to make their indictment.”
  1. AP: Pence: “‘In my home state of Indiana we prove every day that you can build a growing economy on balanced budgets, low taxes.’ THE FACTS: While true, Pence’s balanced-budget claim isn’t much to brag about. … his biggest contribution to ‘low taxes’ was a reduction of Indiana’s income-tax rate from 3.4 percent to 3.3 percent last year — a savings of about $50 a year for someone with $50,000 in taxable income.”
  1. AP: “NEWT GINGRICH, former House speaker: ‘Iran — the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism — is close to having nuclear weapons.’ […] Before the deal, Iran was just a few months away from having enough weapons-grade uranium to build 10 to 12 nuclear weapons, according to the U.S. government. Now, if Iran were to race toward an atomic weapon, the Obama administration and most independent experts say it would need at least a year, which they say would be enough time to discover the effort and intervene.”
  1. AP: “GINGRICH: ‘So when you hear about Hillary’s dishonesty, or the emails, or taking millions from the Saudis and other Middle Eastern dictatorships — remember, this is not about politics.’ THE FACTS: Clinton was not personally paid for making any speeches in Saudi Arabia or other Mideast nations. […]  Most of those donations were made before she took a leadership role in the charity after stepping down as secretary of state in 2013.”
  1. AP: “CRUZ: ‘There is a better vision for our future: A return to freedom. … On health care, your freedom to choose your own doctor, without Obamacare.’ THE FACTS: Without ‘Obamacare’ or some replacement, millions of people would lose health insurance, which could make it tough for them to choose a doctor.”
  1. AP: “FLORIDA GOV. RICK SCOTT: ‘We’ve allowed our military to decay, and we project weakness on the international stage.’ THE FACTS: The U.S. continues to have the most powerful military in the world. […] China, the second-biggest spender, has a defense budget less than a third of the Pentagon’s.”
  2. AP: “GINGRICH: The terrorism danger to the United States ‘is even worse than September 11th, when 19 hijackers murdered almost 3,000 Americans.’ THE FACTS: Such an assertion fits the GOP convention’s theme of raising fears about the nation’s current political leadership, but it’s a stretch to say the danger has escalated since the 9/11 attacks. […] in the last 15 years the nation has spent massively on new security systems. The FBI has reinvented itself into a terrorism-fighting agency, securing surveillance powers that have diminished the likelihood of a coordinated attack in multiple cities.”
  1. Vox: “Ted Cruz is being wildly misleading about Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi reaction […] If you’ve been listening to Republican convention speeches this week, you’ll have heard many, many, many variations on this riff — Republicans aren’t quite sure exactly why it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault that Americans died at Benghazi (spoiler: because it’s not).”
  1. org: “Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, erroneously claimed that the Iran nuclear deal ‘lined the pockets of the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism with your money.’ Your money? No.”
  1. org: “Priebus also said that ‘a Clinton presidency only means more debt.’ Yes, but Clinton’s plan would result in a ‘relatively small’ increase in the debt, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. On the other hand, the group found that Trump’s tax and spending plan would cause a ‘massive increase’ in the debt.”
  1. org: “Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said that Hillary Clinton’s ‘only answer’ to the debt ‘is to keep borrowing and spending.’ But the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s tax and spending plan would cause a ‘massive increase’ in the debt, while Clinton’s plan would result in a ‘relatively small’ increase.”
  1. org: “Pence said ‘we cannot have four more years of apologizing to our enemies,’ an old claim from 2012 that Obama apologized to other countries. […] Our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker reached the same conclusion: Obama never apologized.”
  1. org: “Both Cruz and Pence took a Hillary Clinton quote on the Benghazi terrorist attacks out of context, leaving the false impression that she didn’t care about the deaths of four Americans.”
  1. org: “Eric Trump wrongly claimed that the U.S. is ‘one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.’ Though the U.S. has one of the highest business tax rates, U.S. personal taxes don’t even break the top ten among industrialized nations.”
  1. org: “Florida Gov. Rick Scott claimed the U.S. has ‘world-record high debt,’ when, in fact, it doesn’t, at least by the measure economists prefer. And he said the U.S. economy is ‘not growing,’ when it is.”
  1. org: “Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm said that ‘America now has more oil than Saudi Arabia or Russia.’ Not so.”
  1. org: “Pastor Darrell Scott was incorrect when he said that minority unemployment had increased under President Obama. In fact, unemployment for African Americans, Hispanics and Asians, the nation’s three largest minority groups, has declined significantly since Obama took office in January 2009.”
  1. ABC News: “Priebus said: ‘It was on her watch ISIS began to spread its wings of evil over the Middle East.’ That is false.”
  1. ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton Took Money from Saudi Government Rating: Misleading. […] There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton personally ‘took’ money from the Saudi government, as Gingrich’s statement implies.”
  1. ABC News: “Claim: Donald Trump set aside his company and global brand to run for president. Status: False.”
  1. ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton turned her back on American officials in Benghazi and lied about the attack […] No investigation has shown Clinton ignored the attack.”
  1. ABC News: Ted Cruz claim: “The U.S. government admits ISIS terrorists as refugees.” “Rating: False. While intelligence gaps abroad means there’s a degree of risk in resettling refugees from Syria and elsewhere, the U.S. employs a thorough, multi-stage vetting process. Recent historical data further undermines this claim.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: “This is a carefully phrased statement — note the use of the word ‘helped’ — that tries to pin the blame on Clinton for a complex dynamic that both pre-dates and post-dates her tenure as secretary of state.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Pence really pushes the envelope with this line. Numerous investigations into the September 2012 Benghazi attacks have found that security was inadequate at the Benghazi diplomatic facility, but no evidence has emerged that security requests ever reached Clinton’s level.”
  2. Washington Post Fact Checker: “Pence’s attack on Hillary Clinton’s claim about coal jobs is another example of taking a statement out of context.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: “[Pence] misfires when he criticizes Clinton’s proposals. Clinton proposes $1.45 trillion in new spending, but it would be mostly offset by new revenues.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: Claim by Pence that Trump has “brought ‘millions of new voters’ into the GOP… has been disputed by analyses by The Washington Post and Politico.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: Eric Trump: “What had taken [New York City] over half a decade to botch, my father completed in less than six months.” “Actually, New York City ended up paying for this project, which ended up being a nice publicity boost for Trump.”
  1. Washington Post Fact Checker: “’If conservative reforms can work in a blue state like mine, they can work anywhere in the country.’ — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. This was one of Walker’s favorite lines when he was running for president. But … it stretches the truth.”

Haven’t got enough?  Here’s critical reports from independent fact checkers from just the first 48 hours of the convention.

  • Politifact:“Trump said he liked having the convention in Cleveland and that he had recommended Ohio. […] The selection of Cleveland was conducted by the party in 2014, when it wasn’t known who would ultimately win the nomination. We rate Trump’s statement False.”
  • Politifact:“Donald Trump Jr. said Clinton is proposing ‘destroying Medicare for seniors.’ […] We rate the claimFalse.”
  • Politifact:“McConnell said that Clinton changed her views on allowing Iran to enrich uranium. […] We rate this claimMostly False.”
  • Politifact:“Day said that as a senator Clinton ‘paid women less than the men in your office.’ […] We rate this claimMostly False.”
  • Politifact:“Manafort said, ‘The Clinton camp was the first to get it out there and try to say there was something untoward about the speech that Melania Trump gave.’ […] We rate Manafort’s claim False.”
  • Politifact:“Duffy said: ‘Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have left us with $19 trillion in debt.’ […] Our rating isMostly False.
  • Politifact:“Sabato said Obama is “absolutely” a Muslim. That’s wrong. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
  • Politifact:“Sessions said, ‘There are about 350,000 people who succeed in crossing our borders illegally each year.’ […] The number of immigrants illegally in the country is staying the same or getting smaller. We rate Sessions’ statement False.”
  • Politifact:“Geist said, “We defied the stand-down orders” during the Benghazi attack. […] Testimony in the House Select Committee on Benghazi report shows there was no stand-down order to defy because there was never an order to not intervene in the unfolding disaster. […] We rate it Mostly False.
  • Politifact:“Giuliani said, “Hillary Clinton is for open borders.” […] We rate this claim ”
  • Politifact:“Sessions said Clinton “has been a champion of globalist trade agreements. … Worst of all, they are now pushing the disastrous 5,554-page Obamatrade — the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.” […] We rate Sessions’ claim Mostly False.”
  • CNN:“While Clinton was head of the State Department at the time, Christie says she “fought” to keep [Boko Haram] off the list and there is no evidence that she herself was personally responsible for the delay in the designation. Our verdict: false.”
  • CNN:“Christie went on to add: […] “what was the solution from the Obama/Clinton team? A hashtag campaign.” […] Therefore we rate the claim that the “solution from the Obama/Clinton team” was a “hashtag campaign” as false.”
  • CNN:“Christie assumed the role of prosecutor on the RNC stage, arguing that Clinton’s policy in Libya made her “guilty” of “ruining Libya” and “creating a nest for terrorist activity by ISIS. […] because Clinton was neither the first to call for military intervention, nor the only one to plan the administration’s handling of the aftermath, we rate Christie’s claim false.”
  • CNN:“Donald Trump Jr. said his father would be “a President not beholden to special interests, foreign and domestic and one who funded his entire primary run out of his own pocket just to prove it.” […] His son’s claim is false.”
  • CNN:“We rate Donald Trump Jr.’s claim that Clinton has proposed destroying Medicare false, however you read the phrase — Clinton has not proposed to destroy Medicare, but to expand it.”
  • CNN:“So, is Cox correct in his claim that Clinton would abolish the Second Amendment? […] Verdict: False.”
  • CNN:“Our verdict on McConnell’s charge that Clinton changed positions on Keystone XL: false.”​
  • CNN:“‘Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same. Open borders, executive amnesty and the surge of Syrian refugees,’ said Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the Homeland Security Commission. […] Clinton’s proposed policies and past rhetoric do not reflect open borders. That’s false.”
  • CNN:“Therefore, Sessions’ statement that immigrants have taken all the jobs is false.”
  • CNN:“Glenn also said American neighborhoods have become more violent since Obama has been in office.  […]  Glenn’s assertion here is false.”
  • CNN:“Because Clinton’s role in the attack in Benghazi has been thoroughly investigated and she has been cleared of wrongdoing, we find Smith’s claim of culpability false.”
  • CNN:“Ernst said the terrorist group’s threat is not limited to the Middle East, but is spreading. “Terrorists from ISIS are in every one of our 50 states,” Ernst said. […] Therefore, we judge her statement false.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“But the security decisions were made well below Clinton’s level and no evidencehas emerged that Clinton was aware of the requests or decided not to provide the requisite level of security.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“But, unlike the implication of Ernst’s statement, Comey did not say that the ISIS terror group was present in each state or that these troubled souls had already become terrorists.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“Trump has made the same claim about Clinton recently, but Giuliani repeating itdoesn’t make it any more correct. Giuliani exaggerates Clinton’s stance on border security and immigration enforcement.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“Recent data show the unauthorized immigrant population has leveled off, whichdoes not support Sessions’s claim.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“But even so, Christie appears to not have been listening to Obama speak about the issue. He’s simply wrong that Obama has been silent on violence in Chicago.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“For example, homicides are a small percentage of the crimes committed by noncitizens, whether they are in the United States illegally or not.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“Our friends at FactCheck.org took an extensive look into the internal data from 2002 to 2008 and found that the median salary for men and women were the same. And the Clintons’ staff had roughly twice as many women as men.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“Christie grossly simplifies a complex debate at the State Department — which actually did not involve Clinton personally.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “This is a mysterious claim by Trump’s son that appears to have no factual basis. There is no specific proposal by Clinton that could be said to ‘destroy’ Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“We’ve looked at this number before, and it’s pretty bogus. […] The $15,000 figure has serious methodological problems — even the report admits it is “not scientific” and “back of the envelope” — and it is especially misleading when the benefit side of the equation is ignored.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker:“Trump’s campaign manager tried to pin the blame on the Clinton campaign for the flap over allegations of plagiarism in Melania Trump’s prime-time address Monday night at the Republican National Convention. But no evidence has emerged that is the case; indeed, Manafort has offered no evidence.
  • New York Times:“Fact Check: He suggested Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server was a crime, something the F.B.I. director had concluded it was not.”
  • New York Times:“Fact Check: While Mrs. Clinton has said she supports President Obama’s executive actions to allow some illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States, she has not called for “open borders” and her support for accepting Syrian refugees has been limited to 65,000 people, far fewer than the number who were accepted by some European countries.”
  • New York Times:“Fact check: The Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton opposed the “Buy America” provision because, they said, it was a protectionist measure that could cause a trade war with China in the midst of an economic crisis.”
  • New York Times:“Fact check: Mrs. Clinton’s comments about Mr. Assad came in an interview in 2011, before much of the bloodshed, when she said that some members of Congress in both parties “believe he’s a reformer.” Some in the George W. Bush administration had also expressed hope that he would be a better leader than his father, Hafez al-Assad. And Mrs. Clinton did not “defend” the atrocities committed by Mr. Assad during the later period of the civil war.”New York Times: “Fact check: Mrs. Clinton was already gone from the administration when Mr. Obama pursued secret negotiations with Cuba, though she did express support for his efforts.”
  • org:“Donald Trump Jr. distorted Clinton’s gun control proposal, claiming, as his father did, that she wants to ‘take away Americans’ guns.’ Clinton’s gun control proposal doesn’t call for taking away guns.”
  • org:“Two speakers claimed that Clinton paid women less than men in her Senate office […] The Clinton campaign provided FactCheck.org a list of the names, titles and annual salaries of every full-time person employed in Clinton’s Senate office between 2002 and 2008. Those data show the median salary for men and women to be the same at $40,000. The data also show Clinton hired roughly twice as many women as men.”

​​

  • org:“Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey both mentioned Clinton’s ‘what difference does it make’ quote on Benghazi, but left out the context of that remark. […] Republicans, like Mukasey, have portrayed the remarks as being uncaring toward the lives lost that night. Johnson himself went on to describe in his speech several victims of terrorists attacks, saying ‘it made a difference’ to them. But Clinton’s full remarks indicate she was concerned about the lives lost.”
  • org:“Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia took Clinton’s words on coal-mining jobs out of context. […]  Sullivan and Capito ignore her promise to create new jobs for communities hurt by the shift away from coal.”
  • org:Sen. Shelly Moore Capito “used a one-sided report … to claim that ‘the burden of government regulations in this country amounts to $15,000 a household.’ And she exaggerated the number of coal mining jobs that have been lost since 2011, putting the figure at 60,000, when it’s 36,700.”
  • org:“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrongly said that Clinton was for the Keystone XL pipeline before she was against it. She did not take a position until she opposed the pipeline in 2015.”
  • org:Sen. Shelly Moore Capito said “the Obama ‘economic agenda’ has led to ‘the lowest workforce participation in decades,’ […] But Obama’s ‘economic agenda’ hasn’t caused the decline in the labor force participation rate, which actually started going down in the late 1990s, a full decade before he took office.”
  • org:“Sen. Jeff Sessions claimed that ‘respect for America has fallen,’ but the U.S. is viewed more favorably in many countries now than it was before President Obama took office. […] As we’ve written before, the U.S. is viewed more favorably now than it was before Obama took office in 2009.”
  • org:“Donald Trump Jr. also wrongly said that his father ‘funded his entire primary run out of his own pocket.’ Trump provided about 73 percent of the funding, but not all of it.”
  • org:“Two security contractors at the CIA annex in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, repeated their claim that they were told to ‘stand down’ and not help Americans under attack. But multiple official reports say such an order was never issued.”
  • org:“The sister of a slain Border Patrol agent said President Obama has left ‘border patrol agents thinly equipped,’ and undermanned. In fact, both funding and staffing have increased under Obama.”
  • org:Darryl Glenn, Colorado Republican nominee for Senate, “wrongly suggested that violent crime in the United States had gone up during President Obama’s time in office. The violent crime rate has gone down 20 percent from 2008, the year before Obama was sworn in, and 2014, the most recent statistics available from the FBI.”
  • org:“Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Michael McCaul both wrongly claimed that Hillary Clinton supports ‘open borders.’ She supported a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally, but it also would have increased border security.”
  • org:Rudy Giuliani said that Hillary Clinton “‘advocated for the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya’ and should be ‘accountable’ for the country’s chaos. But he failed to mention that Trump, at the time, also supported the ouster of Gadhafi.”
  • org:“Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions claimed that wages ‘have fallen,’ when they’re up under Obama. He blamed immigration for a low labor force participation rate, when it’s mainly the result of demographics, including the aging of baby boomers.”
  • ABC News:“Claim: Hillary Clinton is an “apologist” for Boko Haram. She and Obama responded to its mass kidnapping with a “hashtag campaign.” Rating: ”
  • ABC News:“Claim: Clinton said that “what difference, at this point, does it make?” in discussing the deaths of Americans in Benghazi. Rating: ”
  • ABC News:“Claim: Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy promises “open borders.” Rating: False.”
  • ABC News:“Claim: U.S. military responders were ordered to “stand down” during the 2012 Benghazi attack. Rating: Highly Questionable. Every investigation ever done on Benghazi concluded there was no “stand down order.”
  • ABC News: “Claim: ‘No one was ever held accountable’ for Fast & Furious. Rating: False.”
  • ABC News: Claim: ‘All security had been pulled from the embassy’ in Benghazi. Rating: False
  • NPR:“There’s been no evidence uncovered of a direct order to “stand down” from mounting a defense of the facilities.”
  • NBC News:“CLAIM (Rudy Giuliani): ‘Hillary Clinton’s answer to Congress about the death of these four brave Americans [in Benghazi] because of her failures as Secretary of State was ‘what difference at this point does it make?’ […] THE FACTS: According to the video of Clinton’s congressional testimony, Clinton’s ‘what difference at this point does it make’ was over whether the violence in Benghazi was inspired by anti-Islam video or not.”
  • NBC News:“CLAIM (Melania Trump): ‘Donald intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people. That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims, it includes Hispanics and African Americans and Asians, and the poor and the middle class.’ THE FACTS: In addition to the temporary Muslim travel ban that Trump first proposed in Dec. 2015, Trump has once talked about a ‘Muslim problem’ in a 2011 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody.”
  • NBC News:“CLAIM (Rudy Giuliani): ‘…Obama’s Nuclear Agreement with Iran that will eventually let them become a nuclear power and put billions of dollars back into a country that the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism.’ […] THE FACTS: The Iran Deal requires that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency continuously monitor Iran’s nuclear sites to verify that Tehran is keeping its enrichment activities within limits set out in the deal and that none of the fissile material is being moved to covertly build a bomb.”
  • NBC News:“CLAIM (Jeff Sessions): ‘…From 2000 to 2014, while our existing population increased by millions, the number of jobs held by Americans actually declined. Amazingly, all the net job growth during that period went to immigrants.’ THE FACTS: Sessions is citing the research of the Center for Immigration Studies […] PolitiFact has checked out claims made from this study before and found that this reading of the data is misleading. The organization found that the study looks at jobs for workers 16-65, ignoring the gains for workers over age 65 that existed and ignoring the recession.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Darryl Glenn, Colorado Senate candidate): ‘Neighborhoods have become more dangerous under [Obama’s] watch’ THE FACTS: While there is some evidence of an increase in violent crime in some large American cities in the last few years, the national trend shows overall crime going down.”
  • NBC News:Donald Trump: “I wanted it to be in Ohio, I recommended Ohio, and people fought very hard that it be in Ohio.” The Facts: “The Republican National Committee’s Site Selection Committee announced in July 2014 its recommendation of Cleveland, Ohio, as the site of the convention. Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president nearly a year later, in June 2015.”
  • Star Ledger:“The facts: In actuality, she simply related others’ opinions. ‘There is a different leader in Syria now,” Clinton said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in 2011, according to Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site. “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.’”

 

RNC: A Compendium of Lies

Donald Trump, a shadowy figure, can’t win on “truth” of his policies or background, so he has to hide behind lies and deceptions to drive up Hillary Clinton;s negatives © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Donald Trump, a shadowy figure, can’t win on “truth” of his policies or background, so he has to hide behind lies and deceptions to drive up Hillary Clinton;s negatives © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland was all bluster, bombast, hyperbole and outright lies – designed to raise Hillary Clinton’s negatives and distract from Trump’s utter lack of policy, proposals, agenda, experience or temperament to be president – that demand to be corrected. (These references are supplied by the Hillary for America Campaign):

FBI’s Comey: Emails Reported as “Marked Classified” Were Improperly Marked and Could Be Reasonably Judged as Not Classified 

In a key development at today’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, FBI Director James Comey clarified an apparent inconsistency between his remarks earlier this week and Secretary Hillary Clinton’s long-running public statements.

Clinton has long stated that none of the emails she sent or received were marked classified at the time. Comey, however, said Monday that there was a “very small number” of emails that bore markings.

Moments ago, Comey reconciled this apparent contradiction. He acknowledged for the first time that there were only three such emails, and that in each case the emails contained only “partial” markings — meaning, he acknowledged, that they were improperly marked and that as a result, the materials could have been reasonably judged as not classified.

Comey’s statements add to the findings announced by the State Department yesterday. At a press briefing, a State Department spokesman said the markings on these emails were the result of “human error” and did not belong in these emails, as the underlying contents were not classified.

Below is the full exchange just now between Director Comey and Rep. Matt Cartwright:

KEY EXCHANGE WITH DIRECTOR COMEY AND REP. CARTWRIGHT

MATT CARTWRIGHT: You were asked about markings on a few documents, I have the manual here, marking national classified security information. And I don’t think you were given a full chance to talk about those three documents with the little c’s on them. Were they properly documented? Were they properly marked according to the manual?

JAMES COMEY: No.

MATT CARTWRIGHT: According to the manual, and I ask unanimous consent to enter this into the record Mr. Chairman

CHAIRMAN: Without objection so ordered.

MATT CARTWRIGHT: According to the manual, if you’re going to classify something, there has to be a header on the document? Right?

JAMES COMEY: Correct.

MATT CARTWRIGHT: Was there a header on the three documents that we’ve discussed today that had the little c in the text someplace?

JAMES COMEY: No. There were three e-mails, the c was in the body, in the text, but there was no header on the email or in the text.

MATT CARTWRIGHT: So if Secretary Clinton really were an expert about what’s classified and what’s not classified and we’re following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?

JAMES COMEY: That would be a reasonable inference.
There Has Never Been Any Evidence Clinton’s Server Was Hacked

Contrary to the baseless speculation and conspiracy theories, there has never been any evidence found to support the allegation that Hillary Clinton’s server was hacked:

NY Times:  “Security Logs of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server Are Said to Show No Evidence of Hacking.”

Reuters: “The two sources said the U.S. investigation of Lazar turned up no evidence to support the hacker’s claims that he had broken into Clinton’s private server.”

FBI Director James Comey: “We did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked.”

FBI Director James Comey: The hacker Guccifer “did not [gain access to Clinton’s server], he admitted that was a lie.”

Vox:  “Importantly, the [State Department IG] report doesn’t turn up any evidence that Clinton’s emails were successfully hacked or compromised.”

Factcheck.org: “Trump falsely claimed that the private server that Clinton used as secretary of state “was easily hacked by foreign governments.” Attempts were made to hack into Clinton’s server, but the identity of the hackers has not been determined and there has been no evidence to date that any of them were successful.”

However, the same can not be said for the State Department and other government email systems:

Reuters: State Department’s Unclassified Email Systems Hacked

CNN: Sources: State Dept. hack the ‘worst ever’

Washington Post: “The breach is the latest of a series of electronic intrusions first detected last month on government computer systems at a variety of agencies, from the White House to the U.S. Postal Service to the National Weather Service. The suspected hackers of the White House’s computer network were believed to be working for the Russian government.”

 

About Those “Classified” Emails: FBI Director’s Testimony to House Committee Backed Up Clinton’s Public Statements 

Comey: “Marked Classified” Emails Were Improperly Marked and Could Be Reasonably Judged as Not Classified; No Evidence Clinton Ever Knew She Had or Retained Classified Information

  • In key developments during FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, he clarified an apparent inconsistency between his initial remarks and Secretary Hillary Clinton’s long-running public statements.
  • During the hearing, Comey acknowledged for the first time that there were only three emails that were supposedly marked classified, and that in each case the emails contained only “partial” markings — meaning, he acknowledged, that they were improperly marked and that as a result, the materials could have been reasonably judged as not classified. A day earlier, a State Department spokesman said the markings on these emails were the result of “human error”and did not belong in these emails, as the underlying contents were not classified.

3 key pieces of Comey’s testimony:

1) Emails reported as “marked classified” were improperly marked.

MATT CARTWRIGHT:  I don’t think you were given a full chance to talk about those three documents with the little ‘C’s’ on them. Were they properly documented? Were they properly marked according to the manual? COMEY: No.

2) And those emails could be reasonably judged as not classified.
MATT CARTWRIGHT: If Secretary Clinton really were an expert at what’s classified and what’s not classified and we’re following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?  |  COMEY: That would be a reasonable inference.

3) There’s no evidence Clinton ever knew she had received classified information or intended to retain it on her server.
COMEY: There’s not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew she was receiving classified information or that she intended to retain it on her server.

 

 

Day One of Donald Trump’s Convention: Lies About Hillary Clinton

Following in the footsteps of every speech Donald Trump has ever delivered, the first day of the Republican Convention was filled with omissions, exaggerations and lies.  Here are a sample of the falsehoods told from the podium:

1. FALSE CLAIM: Former Gov. Linda Lingle: “Clinton and Obama have treated our allies as strangers, insulted their leaders, and ignored their advice and interests.”

TRUTH: America’s standing in the world drastically improved while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. 82 percent of countries surveyed by BBC had a more positive view of U.S. influence at the end of Secretary Clinton’s tenure than they did around its beginning (BBC 2009BBC 2013).

2. FALSE CLAIM: Sen. Pat Roberts: “Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have changed our government. They have taxed us. They have regulated us. They have destroyed our health care system. They have stunned our economy and killed new jobs. They have made our world and our country less safe.

TRUTH: 20 million more people have health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.  We’ve seen 72 months of job growth and 14.8 million private sector jobs.

3. FALSE CLAIM: Benghazi Video: “At a 7:30 meeting, Hillary Clinton’s State Department requested that the Marines go in civilian clothes, no military uniforms and no weapons – in a war zone, where Americans were under fire. Because they didn’t want to look like an invasion, because we didn’t want to offend anybody, really?”

TRUTH: PolitiFact: Mostly False: “The delay occurred after the surviving Americans and those who had been killed already had been evacuated to Tripoli.”

4. FALSE CLAIM: John Tiegen: “On three separate occasions, we got told to wait by the chief of base, and we told us to stand down.”

TRUTH: TPM: [M]ultiple fact-checking outlets have found no evidence that such an order was given by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In November 2014, the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee found the CIA properly responded to the Benghazi attacks, debunking residual claims that the CIA delayed its response or missed the opening for a possible rescue mission.

5. FALSE CLAIM: Sen. Pat Roberts: “Are we really ready to accept a different standard for the elites than for the rest of us? But that decision will no longer be made by a confused FBI or the administration’s Department of Justice.”

TRUTH: The FBI’s decision was not confused – it was unanimous. Republican FBI Director James Comey said unequivocally that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case.” And he made perfectly clear that Clinton did not receive preferable treatment – to the contrary, he said that pursuing charges against her would have been applying a double standard: “That would be celebrity hunting. That would be treating this person differently than John Doe.”

6. FALSE CLAIM: Rep. Mike McCaul: “And now Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same: open borders…”

TRUTH: Politifact: “This is a huge distortion of Clinton’s proposals.  Clinton has praised work already done to secure the border, and she said she supported a 2013 bill that would have invested billions more in border security while creating a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Her plan calls for protecting the border and targeting deportation to criminals and security threats. Her plan would make it easier for many undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation, but that’s not the same as ending all enforcement.  We rate this claim False.” (And they rated it false tonight too)

7. FALSE CLAIM: Rep. Mike McCaul: “When four Americans were murdered and Benghazi burned, it burned, she blamed it on a video.”

TRUTH: Washington Post Fact-Checker: There is “little support for [the] claim that Clinton told the American people that the attacks were because of a video. She certainly spoke about the video, but always in the context of the protests that were occurring across the Middle East.”

8. FALSE CLAIM:
 Rep. Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy on rules of their household: “And no lying. Especially to the FBI.”

TRUTH: Reuters: “FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers on Thursday that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did not lie to the FBI about her handling of emails as secretary of state and did not break the law.”

Politico: “Comey: Clinton did not lie to the FBI”

COMEY: “I don’t think the [FBI] agents assessed she was evasive [in their 3.5 hour interview with Hillary Clinton.]”

  1. FALSE CLAIM:Sen. Jeff Sessions: “Worst of all, they are now pushing the disastrous 5,000-page ‘Obamatrade’ – the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.”

    TRUTH:PolitiFact: “[Sessions is] painting Clinton’s position on free trade with an overly broad brush and is just plain wrong on her supporting for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.”

    10. FALSE CLAIM: Fmr. Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “[Hillary Clinton’s] dereliction of duty and failure to keep her people safe played a major role, as you heard tonight, in the horrific Islamic terrorist murders on September 11 and 12, 2012 in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four brave Americans.”

    TRUTH: Huffington Post: House Republicans Spent Millions Of Dollars On Benghazi Committee To Exonerate Clinton: “After spending more than two years and $7 million, the House Select Committee on Benghazi released a report Tuesday that found — like eight investigations before it — no evidence of wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or other members of the Obama administration.”

    11. FALSE CLAIM: Lt. General Michael Flynn: President Obama and Hillary Clinton pursued a strategy of “coddling and displays of empathy toward terrorists”

    TRUTH: New York Times: Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says

 

Allegations of “Stand Down” Order Have Been Widely Debunked

In their continued quest to politically damage Hillary Clinton, Republicans have falsely claimed that Clinton told former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and U.S military personnel to ‘stand down’ in the wake of the Benghazi attacks. This unfounded allegation has been widely debunked:

  • Multiple bipartisan investigations have concluded that no ‘stand down’ order was ever issued to U.S. military personnel in Tripoli.
  • Even Republicans from the House Armed Services Committee have refuted this claim.
  • The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no evidence of obstruction in mobilizing CIA security teams to respond to the attacks.
  • Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey have both confirmed Clinton did not in fact communicate with them on the night of the attacks. General Dempsey also stated that no limitations were placed on the military’s reaction to the attack.
  • AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham has said no one under his command received a “stand down” order from Clinton.
  • The Commander of Special Operations in Tripoli at the time, Rear Admiral Brian Losey, publically stated “there was never an order to stand down.”

In fact, contrary to the GOP’s erroneous allegations, military assets were allocated and mobilized to address the crisis.  The military’s ability to respond was limited—not because of Clinton or any official’s doing— but due to the status of U.S. forces that night and the speed of the attacks that unfolded:

  • The AFRICOM Command Center was given access to “every capability that was available and as quickly it could move.”
  • General Dempsey stated he was instructed “to use all available assets to respond to the attacks.”
  • Buck McKeon, Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the “military did what it reasonably could during a chaotic night.”
  • Admiral Mike Mullen, who was the only military member of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) concluded that the “U.S. did everything it could on the night of the attack.”
  • Even former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, claimed in an interview, “had I been in the job at the time of the Benghazi attacks…. I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were.”

The fact is, all of the numerous official sources analyzing the military response –from the countless interviews with military officials, to congressional reports, to the Independent Accountability Review Board—have concluded that the military did everything it could, given the circumstances, in their response to the attacks. Even Republicans have openly acknowledged DOD’s inability to “respond immediately to every conceivable global contingency.”

 

The House Benghazi Committee’s Investigation Was A Purely Partisan Exercise That Still Found No Wrongdoing By Hillary Clinton

The Select Committee on Benghazi was a taxpayer-funded attack vehicle targeting Hillary Clinton.  Despite spending two years and more than $7 million of taxpayer money, Republicans still were unable to find any evidence to back up their wild conspiracy theories and accusations against Hillary Clinton.

  • LA Times: Republicans release Benghazi report with no new evidence against Hillary Clinton
  • LA Times: Editorial: After two years and $7 million in tax dollars, the latest Benghazi report tells the same old story
  • Bloomberg: Benghazi Report Has No Major Revelations About Clinton’s Role
  • Miami Herald: Editorial: In effort to trap Hillary Clinton, Benghazi committee produces a dud
  • Huffington Post: House Republicans Spent Millions Of Dollars On Benghazi Committee To Exonerate Clinton

Even Republicans confirmed the partisan nature of the Committee.

  • House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? We put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
  • Republican Congressman Richard Hanna: “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”​
  • NYT: Senior Republican officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing confidential conversations, said that Mr. Boehner had long been suspicious of the administration’s handling of the attacks and that Mrs. Clinton’s emails gave him a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign.”  Even leading conservative voice Bill O’Reilly weighed in: “If you don’t think the Benghazi thing is political, of course it’s political.”

 

Chris Stevens’ Family: Don’t Blame Hillary Clinton For Benghazi

Rudy Giuliani just ran through a series of debunked conspiracy theories in order to put partisan blame on Hillary Clinton for the tragic attacks in Benghazi.  Here’s what Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens has said about it:

Whom do you fault for the lack of security that resulted in the death of your brother, in Benghazi?

“I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.” – Dr. Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

What did you think of Secretary Clinton’s conduct on Benghazi?

“She has taken full responsibility, being head of the State Department, for what occurred. She took measures to respond to the review board’s recommendations. She established better programs for a better security system. But it is never going to be perfect. Part of being a diplomat is being out in the community. We all recognize that there’s risk in serving in a dangerous environment. Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don’t see any usefulness in continuing to criticize here. It is very unjust.” – Dr. Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

 

The False Claim That Hillary Clinton Supports “Open Borders”

In an attempt to distract voters from his own divisive immigration policies, Donald Trump and his allies have falsely said Hillary Clinton wants to “create totally open borders.”

Politifact: “This is a huge distortion of Clinton’s proposals.  Clinton has praised work already done to secure the border, and she said she supported a 2013 bill that would have invested billions more in border security while creating a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Her plan calls for protecting the border and targeting deportation to criminals and security threats. Her plan would make it easier for many undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation, but that’s not the same as ending all enforcement.  We rate this claim False.”

 

Trump’s False Claim that Clinton Will Repeal the 2nd Amendment 

Chris Cox just parroted Donald Trump’s false claim that Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the 2nd Amendment. This debunked claim couldn’t be farther from the truth. In reality, Clinton believes that we can have common sense gun safety measures consistent with the Second Amendment and has repeatedly stated we can protect it while also protecting our families and communities

As President, Hillary Clinton will:

  1. Fight for comprehensive background checks:
  • She will advocate for comprehensive federal background check legislation.
  • She will close the “Charleston loophole,” which allows any gun sale to proceed if a background check is not completed within three business days.
  1. Hold dealers and manufacturers fully accountable if they endanger Americans:
  • She will repeal the gun industry’s unique immunity protection due to lobbying by the NRA.
  • She will revoke the licenses of bad dealers, such as those that supply guns to straw purchasers and traffickers.
  1. Keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists, domestic abusers, other violent criminals and the severely mentally ill.
  • Clinton said “If you are too dangerous to fly, you are too dangerous to buy a gun, period.” She will insist on comprehensive background checks prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns.
  • She will support legislation to prohibit all domestic abusers and individuals suffering from severe mental illnesses from buying and possessing guns.
  • She will make straw purchasing a federal crime.

FLASHBACK: Support For Libyan Intervention Was Widespread, Including Trump and Pence

Donald Trump and his allies love to attack Hillary Clinton over the Libyan intervention. Curiously, they never seem to mention that Trump himself supported it. Repeatedly. And on his own video blog. And his running mate, Mike Pence backed the intervention as well, publicly thanking then-Secretary Clinton for her efforts on Libya.

  • BuzzFeed: Trump Claims He Didn’t Support Libya Intervention — But He Did, On Video
  • Trump, 2011: “I can’t believe what our country is doing. Qaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people…. But we have go in to save these lives; these people are being slaughtered like animals. It’s horrible what’s going on; it has to be stopped. We should do on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively, and save the lives.”​
  • Trump, 2011: “at this point, if you don’t get rid of Gadhafi, it’s a major, major black eye for this country.”
  • BuzzFeed: Mike Pence Publicly Thanked Hillary Clinton In 2011 For Her Efforts On Libya. Pence: “I also want to thank you, specifically, for the efforts by the administration and your offices to further isolate Libya during a time of extraordinary tragedy in the streets, tragedy of which I think we’re probably only partially aware.”

Donald Trump’s lies and hypocrisy aside, the reality is that in 2011, support for the Libyan intervention was widespread, at home and abroad. There was strong bipartisan support from U.S. leaders at home for the administration’s effort to impede Qadhafi’s brutality, and our closest NATO allies, partners in the region, and Libyan people were all making urgent calls for U.S. action.

Top Republicans were making calls for bold American leadership in this international crisis:

Feb. 22, 2011 – John McCain and Joe Lieberman: “The horrific situation in Libya demands more than just public condemnation; it requires strong international action. … Some Libyan diplomats have bravely called for a no-fly zone to stop the Qaddafi regime’s use of airpower to attack Libyan civilians.  We support this course of action.”

Feb. 24, 2011 – Marco Rubio: “We should immediately engage willing partners to limit the regime’s ability to wage war against its own citizens.  These measures could include (but are not limited to) pressing bordering nations to stop the flow of mercenaries into Libya, finding ways to restore severed communications, imposing a no-fly zone to protect civilians against aircraft attacks, and mobilizing a humanitarian relief effort.”

Feb. 28, 2011 – Lindsey Graham: “What I would suggest is that we really keep implementing U.N. sanctions on the economic side, on the travel side, go after assets. And a no fly zone would make a lot of sense to me.”

Feb. 28, 2011 – Susan Collins: “I do believe our allies may be able to join together with us to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to help protect the people from Gadhafi,” she said. “Any actions that we take I believe should be in concert with our allies.”

March 1, 2011 – By unanimous consent, the Senate adopts a resolution urging the UN Security Council to take “further action to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory.”

March 7, 2011 – Newt Gingrich: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone … All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force…”

March 13, 2011 – John McCain: “First, the president [Barack Obama] should recognize Libya’s transitional national council, which is based in Benghazi but representative of communities across the country, as the sole legitimate governing authority of Libya, just as France has done.  Second, the president should take immediate steps to implement a no-fly zone in Libya with international support.”

March 30, 2011 – Marco Rubio, to Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid: “I am writing to seek your support for bringing a bi-partisan resolution to the Senate floor authorizing the President’s decision to participate in allied military action in Libya. Furthermore, this resolution should also state that removing Muammar Qaddafi from power is in our national interest and therefore should authorize the President to accomplish this goal. To that end, the resolution should urge the President to immediately recognize the Interim Transitional National Council as the legitimate government in Libya

 

Day Two of Donald Trump’s Convention: Lies About Hillary Clinton

Day two of the Republican Convention built on the litany of lies heard on day one and every day since the beginning of Donald Trump’s candidacy.  Once again, there were too many to count, but here are a sample of the falsehoods told from the podium:

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Donald Trump Jr.: “Mark [Geist] was one of the men who received frantic phone calls from his buddies at the compound [in Benghazi]. Calls that pleaded for help. Calls that he and his team tried to answer. But calls that didn’t save all his friends, because Secretary Clinton’s State Department had ignored their requests for help, both on the night in question and even in the weeks and months leading up to the attack.”

TRUTH: Washington Post: “[S]ecurity decisions were made well below Clinton’s level and no evidence has emerged that Clinton was aware of the requests or decided not to provide the requisite level of security.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Donald Trump Jr.: “Hillary Clinton is a risk Americans can’t afford to take. She said she’ll issue executive orders to take away Americans’ guns. She wants to appoint judges who will abolish the Second Amendment.”

TRUTH: PolitiFact: False. “We found no evidence of Clinton ever saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly that she wants to abolish the Second Amendment, and the bulk of Clinton’s comments suggest the opposite. She has repeatedly said she wants to protect the right to bear arms while enacting measures to prevent gun violence.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Donald Trump Jr.: “Rather than being energy independent, our country will be forced to remain beholden to her buddies in the Middle East.”

TRUTH: Hillary Clinton has released a comprehensive plan to invest in modernizing our energy infrastructure to make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century and continue to reduce our reliance on foreign oil.

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Donald Trump Jr.: “A president who will repeal and replace Obamacare without leaving our most vulnerable citizens without health care and who will do it without destroying Medicare for seniors, as Hillary Clinton has proposed.”

TRUTH: Hillary Clinton fought throughout her career to protect Medicare and has released plans to preserve and strengthen Medicare as president. The idea that she has put forth proposals that would destroy Medicare is ludicrous.

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Gov. Chris Christie: “In Syria, imagine this, imagine this, she called President Assad a ‘reformer.’”

TRUTH: Washington Post’s Josh Rogin: “Christie is wrong. Hillary did not call Assad a reformer. She referred to that Kerry did. Facts are stubborn things.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Gov. Chris Christie: “In Nigeria, Hillary Clinton amazingly fought for two years to keep an Al-Qaeda affiliate off of the terrorist watch list…. These Al-Qaeda terrorists abducted hundreds of innocent young woman two years ago. These schoolgirls are still missing today. And what was the solution from the Obama/Clinton team? A hashtag campaign! Now let’s figure it out, let’s decide. Hillary Clinton, as an apologist for an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria resulting in the capture of innocent young women, is she guilty or not guilty?”

TRUTH: This attack is very wrong on many levels:

  1. FALSE CLAIM:  Gov. Chris Christie: “She said there was no marked classified information on her server. The FBI Director said that’s untrue.”

TRUTH: FactCheck.org: “[FBI Director Comey] said three emails had ‘portion markings’ on them indicating that they were classified, but they were not properly marked”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: GOP Co-Chairman Sharon Day: “She repeatedly plays the gender card. In fact, she boasts, ‘deal me in.’ Well, Mrs. Clinton, consider yourself dealt in. Because as a Senator, you paid women less than the men in your office.”

TRUTH: PolitiFact: Florida’s Sharon Day misleads on Hillary Clinton and gender pay gap: “The data show a median salary of $40,000 for both men and women receiving official Senate pay over those seven years (excluding Clinton’s pay, since all senators have the same salary set by law.) The median salary remains equal if you factor in non-Senate work, too.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Gov. Asa Hutchinson: “Hillary Clinton’s radical attempts at so-called ‘reform’ of the nation’s healthcare system would have been more destructive than even Obamacare has been.”

TRUTH: 20 million more Americans have health care as a result of the Affordable Care Act. As First Lady, Clinton worked with Democrats and Republicans to help expand health care to 8 million children.  And as president, she’s vowed to strengthen and improve ACA, work with governors to expand Medicaid, and give states the opportunity to pursue a public option and a Medicare opt-in for adults over 55.

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Gov. Asa Hutchinson: “Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment, as you heard last night, left us four dead Americans in Benghazi.”

TRUTH: Huffington Post: “After spending more than two years and $7 million, the House Select Committee on Benghazi released a report Tuesday that found — like eight investigations before it — no evidence of wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or other members of the Obama administration.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Sen. Ron Johnson: “[Hillary Clinton] hatched her cover-up story and repeatedly lied to the American people” about what inspired the tragic attacks in Benghazi.

TRUTH: Washington Post Fact-Checker: There is “little support for [the] claim that Clinton told the American people that the attacks were because of a video. She certainly spoke about the video, but always in the context of the protests that were occurring across the Middle East.”

  1. FALSE CLAIM:  NRA’s Chris Cox: “In case you’re wondering where Hillary Clinton stands. She said, quote, ‘the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment.’ Think about that. All the Supreme Court said was that you have the right to protect your life in your own home.”

TRUTH: FactCheck.org: “Clinton’s gun violence prevention proposal would impose restrictions, including a ban on semi-automatic ‘assault weapons,’ but it does not call for banning all guns…. Asked about Clinton’s remarks about the Second Amendment, Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin confirmed that Clinton was referring to the Heller case. He said Clinton ‘believes Heller was wrongly decided in that cities and states should have the power to craft common sense laws to keep their residents safe.’”

  1. FALSE CLAIM: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “Once a backer of the Keystone pipeline, last year [Hillary Clinton] opposed it.”

TRUTH: PolitiFact, after Clinton announced her opposition to the Keystone Pipeline: “Clinton said, ‘I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone.’… We rate Clinton’s position a No Flip.”

 

Day Three of Donald Trump’s Convention: Lies About Hillary Clinton

Third time was not the charm for the speakers at the Republican National Convention trying to stick to the facts when talking about Hillary Clinton.  Once again, there were too many lies, distortions and exaggerations to count, but here are a sample of the falsehoods told from the podium.

But, to start, just for good measure, one lie from the stage about Donald Trump:

FALSE CLAIM:
 Businessman, Phil Ruffin: “He always pays his bills promptly. You won’t hear that. Promptly.”

TRUTH: PolitiFact: “ USA Today investigation found a large number of lawsuits — at least 60, plus hundreds of liens, judgments and other filings — because people have accused Trump of failing to pay for services rendered or products delivered. The complaints even come from law firms that had formerly represented Trump in these types of lawsuits. […] We rate the statement False.”

And now back to the lies about Hillary Clinton…

  1. FALSE CLAIM:Mike Pence: And it was Hillary Clinton who left Americans in harm’s way in Benghazi and after four Americans fell, said “What difference at this point does it make?”

    TRUTH:ABC News: “Claim: Clinton said that ‘what difference, at this point, does it make?’ in discussing the deaths of Americans in Benghazi. Rating: False.”

    2, FALSE CLAIM: VP Nominee Mike Pence: “You know, it was Hillary Clinton who helped to undo all the gains of the troop surge, a staggering failure of judgment”

    TRUTH:
     AP Fact Check: “And she had nothing to do with the ‘disastrous strategy’ of giving a departure date from Iraq. It was the George W. Bush administration that announced the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2008.”

    3. FALSE CLAIM: Laura Ingraham: “Hillary Clinton, she does not believe in borders.”

    TRUTH: PolitiFact, two days ago, on the claim, “Hillary Clinton is for open borders.” – False.

    4. FALSE CLAIM: Kentucky State Sen. Ralph Alvarado: “I have a message for one more person – Hillary Clinton, you failed the Hispanic community and you don’t deserve our vote.”

    TRUTH: Hillary Clinton has laid out a comprehensive plan to break down barriers for Latinos and she has fought for the Latino community her entire career. Donald Trump has a plan, too: create a deportation force to remove 11 million people.

    5. FALSE CLAIM: Oil mogul Harold Hamm: “Hillary Clinton would eliminate fossil fuel development in America, she would kill jobs, drive up gasoline prices and increase oil imports from her enemies”

    TRUTHHillary Clinton’s energy plan specifically calls for ensuring that fossil fuel production taking place today is safe and responsible, and for investing in clean energy technology to make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.

    6. FALSE CLAIM: Sen. Marco Rubio: “[Hillary Clinton] planted the seeds for the disaster we now know as Obamacare.”

    TRUTH: 20 million more Americans have health care as a result of the Affordable Care Act and Hillary Clinton will build on its success.

    7. FALSE CLAIM: Sen. Marco Rubio: “She was a key figure in implementing Barack Obama’s shameful foreign policy record of appeasing our enemies and betraying our allies and diminishing our role in world.”

    TRUTH: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “In a world that is ever more complex, turbulent and dangerous, Secretary Clinton….has made a singular contribution to strengthening this country’s relationships with allies”

    8. FALSE CLAIM: Former Speaker Newt Gingrich: “ We know that Hillary Clinton lied to us knowingly about the terror attack on  our Benghazi consulate.

    TRUTH:
     Washington Post Fact-Checker: There is “little support for [the] claim that Clinton told the American people that the attacks were because of a video. She certainly spoke about the video, but always in the context of the protests that were occurring across the Middle East.”

    9. FALSE CLAIM:
     Former Speaker Newt Gingrich: “We know that Hillary Clinton and President Obama lie to the American people when they say they can safely screen the Syrian refugees. They cannot.”

    TRUTH: CNN: “to say that there is no way to screen refugees or that Clinton believes that they should not be vetted is false.”

 

Independent Fact Checkers Weigh in on GOP Convention: “False,” “Simply Wrong,” “No Evidence,” “No Factual Basis,” Distorted” 

The Republican National Convention has reached its midway point and the number of lies, distortions and exaggerations has been staggering.  With positive words for Donald Trump few and far between, Republican speakers have resorted to their only real strategy – lie about Hillary Clinton.

Below are a sampling of the critical reports from independent fact checkers from just the last 48 hours:

“The Republican recipe: Take an ambiguous set of facts. Add in some innuendo. Arrange the facts in the most suspicious-seeming way. Then level an allegation that cannot be disproven.” – Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast

  • Politifact: “Trump said he liked having the convention in Cleveland and that he had recommended Ohio. […] The selection of Cleveland was conducted by the party in 2014, when it wasn’t known who would ultimately win the nomination. We rate Trump’s statement False.”
  • Politifact: “Donald Trump Jr. said Clinton is proposing ‘destroying Medicare for seniors.’ […] We rate the claim False.”
  • Politifact: “McConnell said that Clinton changed her views on allowing Iran to enrich uranium. […] We rate this claim Mostly False.”
  • Politifact: “Day said that as a senator Clinton ‘paid women less than the men in your office.’ […] We rate this claim Mostly False.”
  • Politifact: “Manafort said, ‘The Clinton camp was the first to get it out there and try to say there was something untoward about the speech that Melania Trump gave.’ […] We rate Manafort’s claim False.”
  • Politifact: “Duffy said: ‘Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have left us with $19 trillion in debt.’ […] Our rating is Mostly False.
  • Politifact: “Sabato said Obama is “absolutely” a Muslim. That’s wrong. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
  • Politifact: “Sessions said, ‘There are about 350,000 people who succeed in crossing our borders illegally each year.’ […] The number of immigrants illegally in the country is staying the same or getting smaller. We rate Sessions’ statement False.”
  • Politifact: “Geist said, “We defied the stand-down orders” during the Benghazi attack. […] Testimony in the House Select Committee on Benghazi report shows there was no stand-down order to defy because there was never an order to not intervene in the unfolding disaster. […] We rate it Mostly False.
  • Politifact: “Giuliani said, “Hillary Clinton is for open borders.” […] We rate this claim False.
  • Politifact: “Sessions said Clinton “has been a champion of globalist trade agreements. … Worst of all, they are now pushing the disastrous 5,554-page Obamatrade — the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.” […] We rate Sessions’ claim Mostly False.”
  • CNN: “While Clinton was head of the State Department at the time, Christie says she “fought” to keep [Boko Haram] off the list and there is no evidence that she herself was personally responsible for the delay in the designation. Our verdict: false.”
  • CNN: “Christie went on to add: […] “what was the solution from the Obama/Clinton team? A hashtag campaign.” […] Therefore we rate the claim that the “solution from the Obama/Clinton team” was a “hashtag campaign” as false.”
  • CNN: “Christie assumed the role of prosecutor on the RNC stage, arguing that Clinton’s policy in Libya made her “guilty” of “ruining Libya” and “creating a nest for terrorist activity by ISIS. […] because Clinton was neither the first to call for military intervention, nor the only one to plan the administration’s handling of the aftermath, we rate Christie’s claim false.”
  • CNN: “Donald Trump Jr. said his father would be “a President not beholden to special interests, foreign and domestic and one who funded his entire primary run out of his own pocket just to prove it.” […] His son’s claim is false.”
  • CNN: “We rate Donald Trump Jr.’s claim that Clinton has proposed destroying Medicare false, however you read the phrase — Clinton has not proposed to destroy Medicare, but to expand it.”
  • CNN: “So, is Cox correct in his claim that Clinton would abolish the Second Amendment? […] Verdict: False.”
  • CNN: “Our verdict on McConnell’s charge that Clinton changed positions on Keystone XL: false.”​
  • CNN: “‘Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same. Open borders, executive amnesty and the surge of Syrian refugees,’ said Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the Homeland Security Commission. […] Clinton’s proposed policies and past rhetoric do not reflect open borders. That’s false.”
  • CNN: “Therefore, Sessions’ statement that immigrants have taken all the jobs is false.”
  • CNN: “Glenn also said American neighborhoods have become more violent since Obama has been in office.  […]  Glenn’s assertion here is false.”
  • CNN: “Because Clinton’s role in the attack in Benghazi has been thoroughly investigated and she has been cleared of wrongdoing, we find Smith’s claim of culpability false.”
  • CNN: “Ernst said the terrorist group’s threat is not limited to the Middle East, but is spreading. “Terrorists from ISIS are in every one of our 50 states,” Ernst said. […] Therefore, we judge her statement false.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “But the security decisions were made well below Clinton’s level and no evidence has emerged that Clinton was aware of the requests or decided not to provide the requisite level of security.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “But, unlike the implication of Ernst’s statement, Comey did not say that the ISIS terror group was present in each state or that these troubled souls had already become terrorists.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump has made the same claim about Clinton recently, but Giuliani repeating it doesn’t make it any more correct. Giuliani exaggerates Clinton’s stance on border security and immigration enforcement.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “Recent data show the unauthorized immigrant population has leveled off, which does not support Sessions’s claim.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “But even so, Christie appears to not have been listening to Obama speak about the issue. He’s simply wrong that Obama has been silent on violence in Chicago.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “For example, homicides are a small percentage of the crimes committed by noncitizens, whether they are in the United States illegally or not.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “Our friends at FactCheck.org took an extensive look into the internal data from 2002 to 2008 and found that the median salary for men and women were the same. And the Clintons’ staff had roughly twice as many women as men.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “Christie grossly simplifies a complex debate at the State Department — which actually did not involve Clinton personally.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “This is a mysterious claim by Trump’s son that appears to have no factual basis. There is no specific proposal by Clinton that could be said to ‘destroy’ Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “We’ve looked at this number before, and it’s pretty bogus. […] The $15,000 figure has serious methodological problems — even the report admits it is “not scientific” and “back of the envelope” — and it is especially misleading when the benefit side of the equation is ignored.”
  • Washington Post Fact Checker: “Trump’s campaign manager tried to pin the blame on the Clinton campaign for the flap over allegations of plagiarism in Melania Trump’s prime-time address Monday night at the Republican National Convention. But no evidence has emerged that is the case; indeed, Manafort has offered no evidence.
  • New York Times: “Fact Check: He suggested Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server was a crime, something the F.B.I. director had concluded it was not.”
  • New York Times: “Fact Check: While Mrs. Clinton has said she supports President Obama’s executive actions to allow some illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States, she has not called for “open borders” and her support for accepting Syrian refugees has been limited to 65,000 people, far fewer than the number who were accepted by some European countries.”
  • New York Times: “Fact check: The Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton opposed the “Buy America” provision because, they said, it was a protectionist measure that could cause a trade war with China in the midst of an economic crisis.”
  • New York Times: “Fact check: Mrs. Clinton’s comments about Mr. Assad came in an interview in 2011, before much of the bloodshed, when she said that some members of Congress in both parties “believe he’s a reformer.” Some in the George W. Bush administration had also expressed hope that he would be a better leader than his father, Hafez al-Assad. And Mrs. Clinton did not “defend” the atrocities committed by Mr. Assad during the later period of the civil war.”New York Times: “Fact check: Mrs. Clinton was already gone from the administration when Mr. Obama pursued secret negotiations with Cuba, though she did express support for his efforts.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Donald Trump Jr. distorted Clinton’s gun control proposal, claiming, as his father did, that she wants to ‘take away Americans’ guns.’ Clinton’s gun control proposal doesn’t call for taking away guns.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Two speakers claimed that Clinton paid women less than men in her Senate office […] The Clinton campaign provided FactCheck.org a list of the names, titles and annual salaries of every full-time person employed in Clinton’s Senate office between 2002 and 2008. Those data show the median salary for men and women to be the same at $40,000. The data also show Clinton hired roughly twice as many women as men.”​​
  • Factcheck.org: “Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey both mentioned Clinton’s ‘what difference does it make’ quote on Benghazi, but left out the context of that remark. […] Republicans, like Mukasey, have portrayed the remarks as being uncaring toward the lives lost that night. Johnson himself went on to describe in his speech several victims of terrorists attacks, saying ‘it made a difference’ to them. But Clinton’s full remarks indicate she was concerned about the lives lost.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia took Clinton’s words on coal-mining jobs out of context. […]  Sullivan and Capito ignore her promise to create new jobs for communities hurt by the shift away from coal.”
  • Factcheck.org: Sen. Shelly Moore Capito “used a one-sided report … to claim that ‘the burden of government regulations in this country amounts to $15,000 a household.’ And she exaggerated the number of coal mining jobs that have been lost since 2011, putting the figure at 60,000, when it’s 36,700.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrongly said that Clinton was for the Keystone XL pipeline before she was against it. She did not take a position until she opposed the pipeline in 2015.”
  • Factcheck.org: Sen. Shelly Moore Capito said “the Obama ‘economic agenda’ has led to ‘the lowest workforce participation in decades,’ […] But Obama’s ‘economic agenda’ hasn’t caused the decline in the labor force participation rate, which actually started going down in the late 1990s, a full decade before he took office.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Sen. Jeff Sessions claimed that ‘respect for America has fallen,’ but the U.S. is viewed more favorably in many countries now than it was before President Obama took office. […] As we’ve written before, the U.S. is viewed more favorably now than it was before Obama took office in 2009.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Donald Trump Jr. also wrongly said that his father ‘funded his entire primary run out of his own pocket.’ Trump provided about 73 percent of the funding, but not all of it.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Two security contractors at the CIA annex in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, repeated their claim that they were told to ‘stand down’ and not help Americans under attack. But multiple official reports say such an order was never issued.”
  • Factcheck.org: “The sister of a slain Border Patrol agent said President Obama has left ‘border patrol agents thinly equipped,’ and undermanned. In fact, both funding and staffing have increased under Obama.”
  • Factcheck.org:  Darryl Glenn, Colorado Republican nominee for Senate, “wrongly suggested that violent crime in the United States had gone up during President Obama’s time in office. The violent crime rate has gone down 20 percent from 2008, the year before Obama was sworn in, and 2014, the most recent statistics available from the FBI.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Michael McCaul both wrongly claimed that Hillary Clinton supports ‘open borders.’ She supported a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally, but it also would have increased border security.”
  • Factcheck.org: Rudy Giuliani said that Hillary Clinton “‘advocated for the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya’ and should be ‘accountable’ for the country’s chaos. But he failed to mention that Trump, at the time, also supported the ouster of Gadhafi.”
  • Factcheck.org: “Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions claimed that wages ‘have fallen,’ when they’re up under Obama. He blamed immigration for a low labor force participation rate, when it’s mainly the result of demographics, including the aging of baby boomers.”
  • ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton is an “apologist” for Boko Haram. She and Obama responded to its mass kidnapping with a “hashtag campaign.” Rating: False.
  • ABC News: “Claim: Clinton said that “what difference, at this point, does it make?” in discussing the deaths of Americans in Benghazi. Rating: False.
  • ABC News: “Claim: Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy promises “open borders.” Rating: False.”
  • ABC News: “Claim: U.S. military responders were ordered to “stand down” during the 2012 Benghazi attack. Rating: Highly Questionable. Every investigation ever done on Benghazi concluded there was no “stand down order.”
  • ABC News: “Claim: ‘No one was ever held accountable’ for Fast & Furious. Rating: False.”
  • ABC News: Claim: ‘All security had been pulled from the embassy’ in Benghazi. Rating: False
  • NPR: “There’s been no evidence uncovered of a direct order to “stand down” from mounting a defense of the facilities.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Rudy Giuliani): ‘Hillary Clinton’s answer to Congress about the death of these four brave Americans [in Benghazi] because of her failures as Secretary of State was ‘what difference at this point does it make?’ […] THE FACTS: According to the video of Clinton’s congressional testimony, Clinton’s ‘what difference at this point does it make’ was over whether the violence in Benghazi was inspired by anti-Islam video or not.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Melania Trump): ‘Donald intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people. That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims, it includes Hispanics and African Americans and Asians, and the poor and the middle class.’ THE FACTS: In addition to the temporary Muslim travel ban that Trump first proposed in Dec. 2015, Trump has once talked about a ‘Muslim problem’ in a 2011 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Rudy Giuliani): ‘…Obama’s Nuclear Agreement with Iran that will eventually let them become a nuclear power and put billions of dollars back into a country that the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism.’ […] THE FACTS: The Iran Deal requires that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency continuously monitor Iran’s nuclear sites to verify that Tehran is keeping its enrichment activities within limits set out in the deal and that none of the fissile material is being moved to covertly build a bomb.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Jeff Sessions): ‘…From 2000 to 2014, while our existing population increased by millions, the number of jobs held by Americans actually declined. Amazingly, all the net job growth during that period went to immigrants.’ THE FACTS: Sessions is citing the research of the Center for Immigration Studies […] PolitiFact has checked out claims made from this study before and found that this reading of the data is misleading. The organization found that the study looks at jobs for workers 16-65, ignoring the gains for workers over age 65 that existed and ignoring the recession.”
  • NBC News: “CLAIM (Darryl Glenn, Colorado Senate candidate): ‘Neighborhoods have become more dangerous under [Obama’s] watch’ THE FACTS: While there is some evidence of an increase in violent crime in some large American cities in the last few years, the national trend shows overall crime going down.”
  • NBC News: Donald Trump: “I wanted it to be in Ohio, I recommended Ohio, and people fought very hard that it be in Ohio.” The Facts: “The Republican National Committee’s Site Selection Committee announced in July 2014 its recommendation of Cleveland, Ohio, as the site of the convention. Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president nearly a year later, in June 2015.”
  • Star Ledger: “The facts: In actuality, she simply related others’ opinions. ‘There is a different leader in Syria now,” Clinton said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in 2011, according to Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site. “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.’”

 

 

Hillary Clinton Details Initiative for Technology and Innovation

 

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton celebrates her New York State primary victory for the Democratic nomination for President, April 19, 2016.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has detailed her vision to promote technology and innovation © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has stated her commitment to building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.  Going way beyond rhetoric, sloganeering, she has put forward five major goals at the core of her vision for a stronger economy that helps us grow together:

1.  A 100 Days Jobs Plan to Break Through Washington Gridlock and Make the Boldest Investment in Good-Paying Jobs Since World War II.

2.  Make Debt Free College Available to All Americans.

3.  Rewrite the Rules So that More Companies Share Profits With Employees, and Fewer Ship Profits and Jobs Overseas.

4.  Ensure that Corporations, Super-Rich and Wall Street Pay Their Fair Share.

5.  Put Families First by Making Sure Our Policies Meet the Challenges They Face in the 21st Century Economy. 

Here are details from the Hillary for America campaign outlining the initiatives she is proposing to cultivate technology and innovation:

In setting forth this agenda, Hillary recognizes that technology and the internet are transforming nearly every sector of our economy—and she believes that with the right public policies, we can harness these forces so that they lead to widely-shared growth, good-paying jobs across the country, and immense social benefits in healthcare, education, public safety, and more.

Hillary laid out a comprehensive agenda for leveraging technology and innovation to create the jobs of the future on Main Street. These ideas are a core component of the jobs plan she will put forward in the first 100 days of her Administration, along with investments in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing.

Highlights of her technology and innovation agenda include:

  • Spurring entrepreneurship and innovation clusters like Silicon Valley across the country, by investing in incubators and accelerators, expanding access to capital for start-ups, and facilitating tech transfer to bring ideas to market.
  • Allowing young entrepreneurs to defer their federal student loans for up to three years, so they can get their ventures off the ground and help drive the innovation economy.
  • Connecting every household in America to high-speed internet by 2020, while hooking up more public places like airports and train stations to the internet and enable them to offer free WiFi to the public, and helping America deploy 5G and next generation systems that can offer faster wireless speeds and help unleash the Internet of Things.
  • Providing every student in America access to computer science education by the time they graduate, including through engaging the private sector to train 50,000 new computer science education teachers in the next decade.

In full, Hillary’s agenda for technology and innovation has five components, laid out below:

  1.     Building the Tech Economy on Main Street

Hillary’s technology agenda will be a catalyst for creating good jobs in communities across America.  She is committed to making entrepreneurship and participation in the digital economy widely shared—across regions, across classes, and across generations.

Hillary will:

  • Invest in Computer Science and STEM Education by:
    • Providing Every Student in America an Opportunity to Learn Computer Science:  To build on the President Obama’s “Computer Science Education for All” initiative, Hillary will launch the next generation of Investing in Innovation (“i3”) grants, double investment in the program, and establish a 50% set-aside for CS Education.
    • Engaging the Private Sector to Train up to 50,000 Computer Science Teachers:  Hillary will launch an initiative to expand the pool of computer science teachers—both through recruiting new teachers into the field, and through helping current teachers in other subjects gain additional training.
    • Encouraging Local STEM Education Investments:  Hillary’s Department of Education will support states and districts in developing innovative schools that prioritize STEM, implementing “makerspaces,” and build public-private partnerships.
  • Build the Human Talent Pipeline for 21st Century Jobs by:
    • Opening up the Higher Education and Job Training Landscape:  Hillary’s College Compact dedicates $10 billion in federal funding to enable students to participate in promising new programs—such as nanodegrees, accelerated learning programs for computer coding, and online learning.
    • Rebooting Job Training around Industry Needs and Job Credentials:  Hillary will create a grant program to support public-private partnerships to tailor job training opportunities to match labor demands in technology-driven industries.
    • Supporting Programs to Diversify the Tech Workforce:  We must break down the barriers to full and equal participation by all groups in the 21st century economy.
  • Spur Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clusters like Silicon Valley across the Country:  Hillary will support incubators, mentoring, and training for 50,000 entrepreneurs in underserved markets, while expanding access to capital for small businesses and start-ups.
  • Support Young Entrepreneurs:   Hillary will allow entrepreneurs to put their federal student loans into a special status while they get their job-creating ventures off the ground.  For millions of young Americans, this would mean no payments on their student loans for up to three years—zero interest and zero principal—during the start-up phase.  She’ll also give innovators who start social enterprises or new businesses in distressed communities the opportunity to apply for forgiveness of up to $17,5000 of their student loans after 5 years.
  • Attract and Retain the Top Talent from Around the World:  As part of comprehensive immigration reform, Hillary would “staple” a green card to STEM masters and PhDs from accredited institutions, and support visas that allow top entrepreneurs from abroad to come to the U.S., build companies, and create jobs for American workers.
  • Invest in Science and Technology R&D:  Hillary will grow the research and development budgets of entities like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and DARPA, so that we can tackle big challenges—like ensuring America continues to lead the world in High Performance Computing, green energy, and machine learning.   She will also devote more resources to technology transfer, so we get ideas to market.
  • Ensure Benefits are Flexible, Portable and Comprehensive: As the nature of work in America changes, the government must do all that it can to update the safety net and ensure that benefits are flexible, portable, and comprehensive.
  1.     Investing in World-Class Digital Infrastructure

Hillary understands that investing in high-speed broadband and next-generation wireless is a win-win for jobs:   it will put people to work in building out and upgrading our digital networks, and it will create millions of opportunities for people who can get online more easily, innovative, start companies, and sell their products.  Hillary will:

  • Close the Digital Divide:  Hillary will finish the job of connecting America’s households to the internet, committing that by 2020, 100 percent of households in America will have the option of affordable broadband with speeds sufficient to meet families’ needs.
  • Launch a “Model Digital Communities” Grant Program:  Hillary would create a competitive grant program to give cities, regions, and states incentives to create a “model digital community” with lower cost, world-class connectivity for homes, businesses, and public spaces.
  • Connect More Community Anchor Institutions to High-Speed Internet:  Similar to how the E-rate program, launched under President Bill Clinton, brought broadband to public schools and libraries, Hillary will invest new federal resources to hook up America’s anchor institutions—train stations, airports, and other public places—and enable them to provide free WiFi to the public.
  • Deploy 5G Wireless:  Hillary will help foster the evolution to 5G and other next-generation systems that can deliver much faster wireless connections and support the Internet of Things, smart factories, driverless cars, and much more.
  1.     Advancing America’s Global Leadership In Tech & Innovation

Hillary’s technology policy agenda will position American innovators to lead the world in the next generation of technology revolutions — from autonomous vehicles to machine learning to public service blockchain applications. Hillary will:

  • Fight for an Open Internet Abroad:   As Secretary of State, Hillary boldly elevated Internet Freedom to the top levels of American foreign policy.  She will continue this work as President — fighting for Internet Freedom, insisting nations respect human rights online, and opposing efforts to block internet access or shutdown social media.
  • Promote Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance:   Hillary believes that internet governance should be left to the global community of engineers, companies, civil society groups, and internet users, and not to governments.
  • Grow American Technology Exports:    Hillary will promote access to markets for U.S. technology companies and advance Export Control Reform.  She will also protect U.S. trade secrets, and resist calls for forced technology transfer or data localization.
  • Promote Cyber-Security:   Hillary will build on the U.S. Cybersecurity National Action Plan by empowering a federal Chief Information Security Officer and upgrading government-wide cybersecurity.
  • Safeguard the Free Flow of Information across Borders:  Hillary supports efforts like the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield to find alignment in national data privacy laws and protect data flows across borders.
  • Update Procedures Concerning Cross-Border Requests for Data by Law Enforcement:   Hillary will seek to modernize the MLAT system, and will pursue agreements with likeminded countries for compliance with requests for data by law enforcement, in a manner that respects privacy, security and human rights.
  1.     Setting Rules of the Road to Promote Innovation While Protecting Privacy

Hillary believes the government has an important role to play in laying a foundation for broad-based innovation and economic growth—by reducing regulatory barriers to entry, promoting healthy competition, and keeping the internet free and open.  She also believes we should be ensuring that these advances protect individual privacy and security.  She will:

  • Promote Healthy Competition at the Federal, State and Local Level:  Hillary believes that all governments have a role to play in laying down rules of the road that foster innovation, promote healthy competition, and protect consumers.
  • Defend Net Neutrality:  Hillary believes that the government has an obligation to protect the open internet, and she strongly supports the FCC decision under the Obama Administration to adopt strong network neutrality rules.
  • Improve the Patent System to Reward Innovators:  Hillary will enact targeted reforms to the patent system to reduce excessive patent litigation and strengthen the capacity of the Patent and Trademark Office, so that we continue to reward innovators.
  • Effective Copyright Policy:  The federal government should modernize the copyright system through reforms that facilitate access to out-of-print and orphan works, while protecting the innovation incentives in the system.  It should also promote open-licensing arrangements for copyrighted material supported by federal grant funding.
  • Commercial Data Protection:   Advances in computing like the rise of “big data” and the Internet of Things is yielding transformative benefits, but raising important questions about privacy.  Hillary’s approach to privacy will be to encourage high standards—and affirm strong consumer protection—through regulatory enforcement in an adaptive manner that doesn’t stifle innovation.
  • Protect Online Privacy as well as Security:  Hillary supports creating a national commission on digital security, so that the technology and public safety communities can work together on solutions that address law enforcement needs while preserving individual privacy and security​
  1.      Engineering a Smarter and More Innovative Government

Hillary believes that, beyond enabling innovation and technology-driven economic growth, we should look technology and data to improve the way that government serves the American people. Hillary will:

  • Make Government Simpler and More User Friendly:  Hillary will make the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and other digital services a permanent part of the executive branch.   She will charge the USDS with transforming the top 25-citizen facing government services. She will streamline government procurement, get rid of unnecessary red tape, and make it easier for the federal government to use innovative technology—including open source software.
  • Open up More Government Data for Public Uses:  Hillary would accelerate the Obama Administration’s open data initiatives, including in areas such as health care, education, and criminal justice.  She would fully implement the DATA Act to make government spending more transparent and accountable to the American people, improving USASpending.gov so that Americans can more accurately see how and where their taxpayer dollars are spent.

Fact Check: 15 Biggest Lies in Trump’s Speech Attacking Hillary Clinton

Donald J. Trump goes on the attack after a very bad week in which, gasp, his poll numbers fell © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Donald J. Trump goes on the attack after a very bad week in which, gasp, his poll numbers fell © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Donald Trump’s 45 minute attack on Hillary Clinton on June 22 – a rebuttal of sort to her scathing attack on Trump as someone who would crash the economy rather than create jobs –  sounds like a desperate reaction to the building negatives his presidential campaign is facing as reporters begin to expose his hypocrisies and failures.

The New York Times today reported how he is funneling millions of dollars of campaign spending back to his own businesses and relatives: In May, the biggest-ticket item was Mr. Trump’s use of the Mar-a-Lago Club, his Florida resort, which was paid $423,000. The campaign paid $350,000 to TAG Air for his private airplanes, $125,000 to Trump Restaurants and more than $170,000 to Trump Tower, the Manhattan skyscraper that houses the campaign’s headquarters….” And said, “the presumptive Republican nominee, who points to his business acumen as a case for his candidacy, is trying to do what he has suggested he would in 2000 when he mulled making an independent run: ‘It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.’” (Donald Trump’s Self-Funding Includes Payments to Family and His Companies).

The New York Times, in an article fact-checking Trump’s speech on June 22, said, “Donald J. Trump has had a rough week, overseeing a shake-up of his campaign staff and reporting a dismal fund-raising total. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tried to refocus his campaign on Wednesday with a speech attacking his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. But he took liberties with the truth, delivering a series of inaccurate and misleading statements.”

The Hillary for America Campaign also offered its own fact-checking.

Fact Check: 15 Biggest Lies in Trump’s Speech Attacking Hillary Clinton

In his speech attacking Hillary Clinton Wednesday, Donald Trump — Politifact’s reigning ‘Liar of the Year’ — resorted to a litany of hypocritical attacks, nutty conspiracy theories and outright lies.

Many of the most outrageous attacks were long ago discredited by independent fact checkers, but Trump is still peddling them.

Here is a breakdown of 15 of Trump’s biggest lies about Clinton in his Wednesday speech:

LIE: “Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds of requests for security. Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all.”
FACT CHECK: Trump made a similar allegation before, and the Washington Post Fact Checker called it a “whopper.”

LIE: “Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth – with no way to screen who they are or what they believe.”
FACT CHECK: Hillary Clinton has called for being “vigilant in screening and vetting refugees from Syria.” Moreover, Politifact has rated the claim that there was no way to screen refugees from the Middle East as “false.”

LIE: “For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America.”
FACT CHECK:  To date, the only financial commitment Hillary Clinton has specified along these lines is $15 million to broadly support the integration of immigrants, including refugees. And an independent analysis of the potential cost associated with resettling an additional 70,000 refugees–as Clinton proposed last year–has pegged the price tag at $582 million. By comparison, the cost to rebuild the city of Detroit alone is $1.25 billion, according to the city’s emergency manager.

LIE: “Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and on the road to nuclear weapons.”
FACT CHECK: Politifact rated the claim that Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons “false,” saying, “the terms of the deal expressly forbid pursuing a militarized nuclear program.”

LIE: “Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while 9 investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”
FACT CHECK: According to Factcheck.org, “the author of ‘Clinton Cash’ falsely claimed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had ‘veto power and ‘could have stopped’ Russia from buying a company with extensive uranium mining operations in the U.S.” In fact, the State Department was just one member of a nine-agency panel that reviewed this transaction. The panel was led by the Treasury Department, not State, and Hillary Clinton was never personally involved in the consideration of the deal.

LIE: “Hillary’s Wall Street immigration agenda will keep immigrant communities poor, and unemployed Americans out of work.”
FACT CHECK: Comprehensive immigration reform would boost economic growth and increase the size of the labor force.

LIE: Hillary Clinton “has even deleted this record of total support [for TPP] from her book.”
FACT CHECK: According to NBC News, “The cuts were part of 96 pages of cuts made to account for the paperback’s smaller size, according to a publisher’s note. But not all of them were cut: there’s still two pages praising the deal, or at least the idea of it.”

LIE: “Among the victims is our late Ambassador, Chris Stevens. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed — that’s right, when the phone rang at 3 o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping.”
FACT CHECK: According to Factcheck.org, “Trump is certainly entitled to his opinion, but the evidence shows Clinton was fully engaged in the immediate response, and subsequent congressional investigations concluded the government response to the attack — including Clinton’s — was appropriate.”

LIE: “She has pledged to grant mass amnesty and in her first 100 days, end virtually all immigration enforcement, and thus create totally open borders in the United States.”
FACT CHECK: While Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for comprehensive immigration reform in her first 100 days, Politifact has given a ruling of “Pants on Fire” to the claim that such a plan would equal “mass amnesty.” In fact, in her memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton wrote that she supported the 2013 Senate immigration bill, which included unprecedented investments in border security, along with a path to citizenship.

LIE: “To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death.”
FACT CHECK: According to the Washington Post Fact Checker, “Clinton says that in speaking with the families, she did not blame the Benghazi attacks on the video. Most participants we interviewed (four out of six) back up her version, saying they do not recall her mentioning a video.”

LIE: “She helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.”
FACT CHECK: According to the New York Times, “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned on Sunday that removing President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt too hastily could threaten the country’s transition to democracy.”

LIE: Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy has “unleashed ISIS across the world.”
FACT CHECK: Politifact looked at a similar claim Jeb Bush made and rated it “Mostly False.”

LIE: “To cover-up her corrupt dealings, Hillary Clinton illegally stashed her State Department emails on a private server.”
FACT CHECK: Independent experts like Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists have said there was no criminal aspect to her use of a private email server.  Additionally the Wall Street Journal reported that federal officials do not expect criminal charges to be filed as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing review of the private email system.

LIE: “Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments – perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China – putting all of America in danger.”
FACT CHECK: The New York Times reported that security logs show no evidence of foreign hacking.

LIE: “Hillary Clinton appointed a top donor to a national security board with top secret access – even though he had no national security credentials.”
FACT CHECK: Contrary to Trump’s claim, the appointee in question actually serves on the Board of Directors of the American Security Project, the Foreign Policy Program Leadership Committee at the Brookings Institution, and on the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney, a member of the national security board to which Fernando was appointed, said Fernando’s “expertise in cyber-security is a great asset to our national security.” Brookings executive vice president and former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said of Fernando: “I’ve always valued his foreign policy insights.”

Hillary Clinton Eviscerates Myth of Donald Trump as Businessman, Warns Trump Would Blow Up Economy

Plaza Hotel, New York: “The myth of Donald Trump reached its zenith in 1988, the year that his book, The Art of the Deal, was published. That year, Trump bought the Plaza Hotel, a crown jewel of New York real estate; he also bought a 282-foot yacht, and a fleet of airplanes owned by Eastern Air, which he renamed the Trump Shuttle,” The New York Times reported. By December 1990, as all of his ventures neared collapse, he filed for bankruptcy on the Plaza (© 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com).
Plaza Hotel, New York: “The myth of Donald Trump reached its zenith in 1988, the year that his book, The Art of the Deal, was published. That year, Trump bought the Plaza Hotel, a crown jewel of New York real estate; he also bought a 282-foot yacht, and a fleet of airplanes owned by Eastern Air, which he renamed the Trump Shuttle,” The New York Times reported. By December 1990, as all of his ventures neared collapse, he filed for bankruptcy on the Plaza (© 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com).

On the same day as Donald Trump, who during the primary boasted that he was not accepting outside funding so would be unbeholden to anyone, issued his first email soliciting campaign contributions, declaring it will be “the most successful introductory fundraising email in modern political history,” Hillary Clinton delivered a speech detailing why “Donald Trump Is Unfit To Manage The U.S. Economy” and then followed up with “Here’s Why, Literally” documenting Trump’s actual record.

At the same time, his sycophants – the so-called Angry Voters who are desperate to look outside the “professional political class” for a new Leader of the Free World – point to his business acumen, thinking that would somehow translate into growing the economy (which is now the strongest in the world, even at the slow pace of growth) and creating jobs (“I’m going to be the greatest jobs president God ever created,” he boasted.)

Indeed, Trump’s entire record has consisted of doing whatever it takes to benefit himself, no matter who he hurts, from wealthy stockholders, to working class people just trying to get by, to the stooges he bilked out of thousands of dollars thinking Trump University would be their ticket to riches. Trump’s entire campaign so far has been one long advertorial for his businesses – he holds his press conferences in his hotels where he actually takes reporters on tour, holds up Trump steaks (not actually Trump steaks, of course), Trump wine, Trump water. But while he singular campaign strategy has been to “brand” Clinton as “Crooked Hillary,” he has time and again been shown to be the crook, the conman. (The New York Times reports how he was mentored in his tough-guy style by none other than the attorney Roy Cohn, who worked for Sen. Joe McCarthy and later for gangsters.)

Following Clinton’s major economic policy address, the Hillary for America Campaign issued an annotated release, documenting her core proposition:

“If Donald Trump were to get behind the wheel of the American economy, he would very likely drive us off a cliff, and working families would bear the brunt of the impact of lost jobs, lost savings, and lost livelihoods.

“That’s the natural conclusion when you look at Trump’s policy proposals, his rash and reckless temperament, and his record in the private sector of doing harm to working families and small businesses. Need proof? Just this week former McCain economic policy adviser Mark Zandi released a report saying that if Trump got his way he would lead our economy into a ‘lengthy recession’ that would cost millions of jobs, reduce growth, stagnate middle class incomes, and explode the debt.”

“See for yourself how the lines from Hillary’s Clinton’s speech today compare with Trump’s record:”

A few weeks ago, I said his foreign policy proposals and reckless statements represent a danger to our national security.

Hillary Clinton: He is not just unprepared — he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability, and immense responsibility

The Briefing: Trump Literally Said All Those Things
Liberals and conservatives say Trump’s ideas would be disastrous. The Chamber of Commerce and labor unions… Mitt Romney and Elizabeth Warren… and economists on the left, right and center all agree: Trump would throw us back into recession.
Politico: Economists savage Trump’s economic agenda

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Does a recession sound ‘great’ to you? Does 7 million lost jobs sound like ‘winning?’ No probably, not. And yet, that’s exactly where our country would be headed under Trump’s trade policies, according to an analysis released last week.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Trump’s policies would make life exponentially worse for those who count on a paycheck.

Mitt Romney: If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.

Elizabeth Warren: When the economy is in this kind of trouble, calling on Donald Trump for help is like if your house is on fire calling an arsonist to come help out.

One of John McCain’s former economic advisers actually calculated what would happen to our country if Trump gets his way.  He described the results of a Trump Recession: we’d lose 3.5 million jobs, incomes would stagnate, debt would explode, and stock prices would plummet.  And you know who’d be hit hardest:  the people who had the hardest time getting back on their feet after the 2008 crisis. 

Moody’s Analytics report by Mark Zandi, economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign: By the end of [Trump’s] presidency, there are close to 3.5 million fewer jobs and the unemployment rate rises to as high as 7% … the average American household’s after-inflation income will stagnate, and stock prices and real house values will decline.

One of the leading firms that analyzes the top threats to the global economy – the Economist Intelligence Unit – comes out with a new list every month.  It includes things like terrorism and the disintegration of Europe.  And this month, #3 on the list is Donald Trump becoming president.  Just think about that. 

Politico: A Donald Trump presidency poses a top-10 risk event that could disrupt the world economy, lead to political chaos in the U.S. and heighten security risks for the United States, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Economist: July 2016 – Trump has a score of 16 on the same list as a Eurozone breakup (15) and the “rising threat of jihadi terrorism destabilises the global economy” (12)

Every day, we see how reckless and careless Trump is.  He’s proud of it

TRUMP: I want to be unpredictable.

Donald Trump actually stood on a debate stage in November and said that wages are too high in this country.  He should tell that to the mothers and fathers working two jobs to raise their kids. 

The Week: Donald Trump kicks off GOP debate by saying American wages are ‘too high’

TRUMP: Our wages are too high

He said – quote – “having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country” – at a time when millions working full-time are still living in poverty.

TRUMP: I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country.

Center for Poverty Research of University of California, Davis: In 2013, 4.4 million people who usually work full-time were working poor

Back in 2006, before the financial crash, he said, quote, “I sort of hope” that the housing market crashes, because he’d make money off all of the foreclosures. 

TRUMP: I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy

Over the years, he said all kinds of things about women in the workforce.  He called pregnant employees – quote – “an inconvenience.”  

TRUMP: Well you know, pregnancy…it’s certainly an inconvneince for a business. And whether people want to say that or not, the fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business.

He says women will start making equal pay as soon as they do as good a job as men – as if we aren’t already.  

QUESTION: So if you become president will a woman make the same as a man and will I get to choose what I do with my body? 
TRUMP: You’re going to make the same if you do as good a job. And I happen to be pro-life. OK? I’m pro-life.

And he clearly doesn’t know how much of our growth over the last 40 years is thanks to women.

McKinsey & Company: Since women’s participation in the workforce took off, in the 1970s, their productivity has accounted for about a quarter of current GDP

And he wants to end Obamacare, but he has no credible plan to replace it or to help keep costs down.  It wouldn’t be good for our economy if 20 million people lost their health insurance.  And it would be devastating to all those families. 

DonaldJTrump.com: On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.

TRUMP: Repeal and replace with something terrific

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: Trump’s health care plan “would nearly double the number of uninsured, causing almost 21 million people to lose coverage.”

What would Trump do?  He said he wants to wipe out the tough rules we put on big banks.

TRUMP: Dodd-Frank has made it impossible for bankers to function…[My plan] will be close to dismantling of Dodd-Frank.

He said they created – quote – “a very bad situation.” 

TRUMP: The regulators under Dodd-Frank have made it virtually impossible for the banks to lend money to those people, which is a very bad situation to be in.

He also wants to repeal the new consumer watchdog that Senator Warren helped create to protect families from unfair and deceptive business practices.  That new agency has already secured billions of dollars for people who’ve been ripped off.  He wants to get rid of it.

TRUMPOn repealing Dodd-Frank, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: “absolutely”  

Donald Trump would take us back to where we were before the crisis.  He’d rig the economy for Wall Street again. 

TRUMP: [My plan] will be close to dismantling of Dodd-Frank.

He calls himself the “King of Debt,” 

TRUMP: I am the king of debt. 

And his tax plan sure lives up to the name.  According to the independent Tax Policy Center, it would increase the national debt by more than 30 trillion dollars over 20 years.  That’s “trillion” with a “t.”  

Tax Policy Center: Trump’s plan “would add $11.2 trillion to the national debt by 2026 and $34.1 trillion by 2036”

It’s much, much more than any nominee of either party has ever proposed. 

Estimates of reducation of federal revenues under Republican candidates’ tax plans:

Trump Plan: $9.5 trillion

Romney Plan: $5 trillion

McCain Plan: $600 billion

Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama: This is the most risky, restless and regressive tax proposal ever put forward by a major presidential candidate

Economists describe it with words like “simply dangerous” and “not even in the universe of the realistic.”

Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush: Described Trump’s ideas on taxes and the budget as “unrealistic” and “simply dangerous”

Marc Goldwein, Center for a Responsible Federal Budget: “It’s not even in the universe of the realistic.

And how would he pay for all this debt?  He said, quote, “I would borrow, knowing if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.  It’s like, you know, you make a deal before you go into a poker game.” 

TRUMP: I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal. And if the economy was good it was good so therefore you can’t lose. It’s like, you know, you make a deal before you go into a poker game, and your odds are so much better.

The full faith and credit of the United States is something we can just gamble away.  That would cause an economic catastrophe worse than anything we experienced in 2008.  

Michael Strain, economics fellow at American Enterprise Institute: When asked about Trump’s suggestion to default on the debt: “There are no merits to it. The extent to which U.S. Treasurys are kind of the  foundation on which the global financial system is built is really hard to overstate.”

Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama: Called Donald Trump’s idea of not fully repaying investors in U.S. Treasuries “borderline insane”

You don’t have to take it from me.  Ronald Reagan said, “We have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility – two things that set us apart from much of the world.”

President Ronald Reagan: The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility—two things that set us apart from much of the world.

Maybe Donald feels differently because he made a fortune filing bankruptcies and stiffing his creditors.  

New York Times: How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

Boston Globe: The Atlantic City savior who came up snake eyes

Trump also says, we can just print more money to pay our debt down

TRUMP: You never have to default because you print the money

The American dollar is the safest currency on the planet.  Why would he want to mess with that?

PolitiFact: The current system has secured the United States’ position as the world’s safest harbor for global money

Finally, the Trump campaign said that, if worst came to worst, we could just sell off America’s assets.

Trump senior campaign advisor Barry Bennett: The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else. We can get rid of government buildings we’re not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold.

First, really?  And second, even if we sold all our aircraft carriers and the Statue of Liberty – even if he let some billionaire turn Yosemite into a private country club – we still wouldn’t even get close.  That’s how much debt he’d run up.

Government Accountability Office: The federal government’s reported assets totaled about $3.2 trillion as of September 30, 2015.

Washington Post: Trump’s nonsensical claim he can eliminate $19 trillion in debt in eight years

Maybe this is what he means when he says “I love playing” with debt. 

TRUMP: I do love debt. I love debt. I love playing with it.

He’d give millionaires a three-trillion-dollar tax cut.  Corporations would get two trillion dollars.  He’s giving more away to the 120,000 richest American families than he would to 120 million hard-working people. 

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Millionaires Would Gain Trillions Under Trump and Cruz Tax Plans 

Tax Policy Center: An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan

The Briefing: The Trump Tax Plan – By the Billionaire, For the Billionaires

Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley and Garbiel Zucman of the London School of Economics: Wealth Inequality In The United States Since 1913

Now, before releasing his plan, Trump said, “Hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.” And, “They’ll pay more.”

TRUMP: Hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.

TRUMP: The hedge fund guys won’t like me as much as they like me right now. I know them all, but they’ll pay more. 

Then his plan came out.  And it actually makes the current loophole even worse.  It gives hedge-fund managers a special tax rate that’s lower than what many middle-class families pay.  I had to look twice because I didn’t believe it.  Under Donald Trump’s plan, these Wall Street millionaires will pay a lower tax rate than many working people.

Josh Barro, New York Times: The usual fee structure for a hedge fund is called “2-and-20”: a flat management fee (often 2 percent) on all assets, plus a performance fee (often 20 percent) on profits above a set threshold. Currently, the management fee is taxed at ordinary rates up to 39.6 percent, while the performance fee enjoys a preferential rate of 23.8 percent. Under Mr. Trump’s plan, all this income would be taxed at a maximum of 25 percent. The performance fee would be subject to a small tax increase, but that effect would be dwarfed by the large tax cut on ordinary management fees

Tax Policy Center: The highest-income 1.0 percent would get an average tax cut of over $275,000 (17.5 percent of after-tax income), and the top 0.1 percent would get an average tax cut worth over $1.3 million, nearly 19 percent of after-tax income. By contrast, the lowest-income households would receive an average tax cut of $128, or 1 percent of after-tax income. Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of about $2,700, or about 5 percent of after-tax income.

And of course, Donald himself would get a huge tax cut from his own plan.  But we don’t know exactly how much – because he won’t release his tax returns. 

TRUMP: There’s nothing to learn from them

TRUMP: It’s none of your business, you’ll see it when I release. But I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible

Every major presidential candidate in the last four decades has shown the American people their taxes. 

Washington Post: Trump “would be the first major-party nominee in 40 years to not release his returns.”

Donald actully told Mitt Romney to do it.  

TRUMP: On Romney’s tax returns: “I think it probably be better off just to release them now

And he said that if he ever ran for President, he’d release his.

TRUMP: If I run, you’ll see what a great job, because I’ll do a full disclosure of finances. … Maybe I’m going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate… I’d love to give my tax returns

TRUMP: Said he would “certainly” release his tax returns, saying he had “no objection” to the idea

What’s he afraid of?  That we’ll learn he hasn’t paid taxes on his huge income? We know that happened for at least a few years – he paid nothing, or close to it.  

Politico: Trump appears to have paid no taxes for two years in early 1990s

Daily Beast: New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes

PolitiFact: Public records show that Trump did not pay federal income taxes in two years — 1978 and 1979

Or maybe he isn’t as rich as he claims… 

Fortune: Why Donald Trump’s Tax Returns May Prove He’s Not That Rich

or hasn’t given away as much as he brags about.

Washington Post: Missing from Trump’s list of charitable giving: His own personal cash

The Republican primary featured the Trump immigration plan: round up and deport more than 11 million people – almost all of whom are employed or are children going to school – then build a wall across our border and force Mexico to pay for it.

TRUMP: We have many illegals in the country, and we have to get them out

CNN: Trump has called for deporting all of the undocumented immigrants in the United States

TRUMP: I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me —and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

This policy is both un-American and very bad economics.  Kicking out 11 million immigrants would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and it would shrink our economy significantly.  Some economists argue that just this policy alone would send us into a Trump Recession.  

American Action Forum: The federal government would have to spend roughly $400 billion to $600 billion to address the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the United States.

Mark Zandi, economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign: If Trump’s policies were enacted it would be some form of disaster for the economy. If you force 11 million undocumented immigrants to leave in a year, you would be looking at a depression.

Interestingly, Trump’s own products are made in a lot of countries that aren’t named America.  Trump ties are made in China; Trump suits, in Mexico; 

WALLACE: Your Trump Collection clothing line, some of it is made in Mexico – 
TRUMP:  It’s true.
WALLACE:  — and China.
TRUMP:  That’s true.

CNN: Donald Trump suits and ties are made in China

Trump furniture, in Turkey; 

Trump Home Press Release: The entire production process, from the moment the raw wood is cut until the product is finished or upholstered, occurs in Dorya’s Izmir, Turkey.

Trump picture frames in India; 

Donald Trump Park Avenue Collection picture frame 4 x 6: Origin: India

and Trump barware in Slovenia.

Trump Home by Rogaska: We preserve the art of almost 350 years of making crystal ware in Slovenia

I’d love him to explain how all that fits with his talk about America First. 

TRUMP: America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.

TRUMP: #AmericaFirst

TRUMP: #AmericaFirst

On the other hand, Donald Trump never misses a chance to say that  Americans are losers and the rest of the world is laughing at us.  

CNN: Donald Trump thinks pretty much everyone is a loser

Washington Post: Losers: A list by Donald Trump

TRUMP: The world is laughing at us.

Just the other day, he told a crowd that America is – quote – “not going to survive.”

TRUMP: It’s amazing that our country can continue to survive, but you know? Eventually it’s not going to survive. Just so you understand. Eventually it’s not.

The King of Debt has no real plan for making college debt free or addressing the student debt crisis that has people in their 40s and 50s still paying off loans. 

Trump campaign Co-Chair Sam Clovis: When asked whether Trump would have a plan to ensure debt-free college: “Unequivocally no…It’s absurd on the surface.”

He has no credible plan for rebuilding our infrastructure, apart from his wall.

Positions” listed on Donald Trump’s website: 

No ideas for how to strengthen Medicare and expand Social Security – in fact, his tax plan would endanger them. 

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Under [Trump’s] plan, balancing the budget in 2026 would require cutting all government programs — including Social Security, Medicare and defense — by about two-fifths if all programs were cut by the same percentage.  Balancing the budget without cutting Social Security, Medicare, and defense would require eliminating essentially the rest of government under both plans. 

No real strategy for creating jobs, just a string of empty promises.

TRUMP: We’re going to save that coal industry, believe me.

Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy: The U.S. coal industry has been in structural decline for decades, recently driven by things like weak global demand and cheap natural gas. And eliminating environmental rules protecting air and water is not going to bring those jobs back.

Maybe we shouldn’t expect better from someone whose most famous words are, “You’re fired.” 

TRUMP: You’re fired

He has no clean energy plan, even though that’s where many of the jobs of the future will come from and it’s the key to a safer planet.  He just says that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.  

TRUMP: The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive

TRUMP: Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and … a lot of it’s a hoax. It’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.

And he has no plan for helping urban and rural communities facing entrenched poverty and neglect. 

Positions” listed on Donald Trump’s website: 

Donald Trump says he’s qualified to be president because of his business record. 

TRUMP: I’ve been a world-class businessman…That’s the thinking that our country needs

A few days ago, he said, quote, “I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.”  

TRUMP: I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.

He’s written a lot of books about business – but they all seem to end at Chapter 11. 

PolitiFact: Trump’s four bankruptcies were Chapter 11 reorganizations

Over the years, he intentionally ran up huge amounts of debt on his companies and then defaulted.  He bankrupted those companies – not once, not twice, but four times. 

New York Times: His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out.

Hundreds of people lost their jobs.  

Chris Wallace: In that case alone lenders to your company lost over $1 billion and more than 1,100 people were laid off.

Shareholders were wiped out.  Lenders lost money.  

Forbes: In the case of his casinos, Trump has screwed his shareholders three consecutive times by wiping out their investment.

Contractors – many of them small businesses – took heavy losses.  Many went bust.  But Donald Trump always came out fine. 

USA Today: Trump [offered] as little as 30 cents on the dollar to some of the contractors

New York Times: Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Mr. Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy.

Here’s what he said about one of those bankruptcies: “I figured it was the bank’s problem, not mine.  What the hell did I care?”

TRUMP: I figured it was the bank’s problem, not mind. What the hell did I care?

He also says, “I play” with bankruptcy.

TRUMP: I play with the bankruptcy.

Just look at what he did in Atlantic City.  He put his name on buildings – his favorite thing to do.  He convinced other people that his properties were a great investment, so they would go in with him. But he arranged it so he got paid no matter how his companies performed.  So when his casino and hotel went bankrupt because of how badly he mismanaged them, he still walked away with millions.  Everyone else paid the price.  Today, his properties are sold, shuttered or falling apart.   So are a lot of people’s lives.  

New York Times: How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

USA Today: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills

And here’s what he says about that: “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”

TRUMP: Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.

Those promises you’re hearing from him at his campaign rallies?  They’re the same promises he made to his customers at Trump University.  Now they’re suing him for fraud.  

CNN: Donald Trump still battling lawsuits from defunct Trump University


Fortune: How Bad Are the Charges Against Trump University? Really Bad

The New Yorker: Trump University: It’s Worse Than You Think

The Daily Beast: Maddings, an ex-marine now 32, who told The Daily Beast that he racked up around $45,000 in credit card debt to buy Trump University seminars and products. … “It was a con. I’m 25-years-old, barely making $3,000 a month and they told me to increase my credit limit. I just maxed out three credit cards and I’m supposed to be able to qualify for loans to buy real estate? Those stupid principles have led me to borrow $700,000 of other people’s money and lose it all. I’m still paying off some of that debt to this day.”

He’s been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits in the past 30 years.

USA Today: Trump’s 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential nominee

A large number were filed by ordinary Americans and small businesses that did work for Trump and never got paid – painters, waiters, plumbers – people who needed the money, and didn’t get it – not because he couldn’t pay them, but because he could stiff them. 

USA Today: At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters.

USA Today: Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, in South Florida, has been waiting more than two years to get paid for his work at the Doral. The Paint Spot first filed a lien against Trump’s course, then filed a lawsuit asking a Florida judge to intervene.

Sometimes he offered them 30 cents on the dollar for projects they had already completed.  

USA Today: Trump [offered] as little as 30 cents on the dollar to some of the contractors

Hundreds of liens have been filed against him by contractors, going back decades.  They all tell a similar story:  I worked for him, I did my job, he wouldn’t pay me what he owed.

USA Today: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills

He says, he’s a businessman, and this is what businessmen do. 

TRUMP: Every major business leader, has used the – I never went bank bankrupt, by the way, as you know, everybody knows. But – hundreds of companies, hundreds of deals, I used the law four times and made a tremendous thing. I’m in business. I did a very good job.

Well, CNN pointed out that no major company has filed Chapter 11 more often in the last 30 years than Trump’s casinos.

CNN: No major U.S. company has filed for Chapter 11 more than Trump’s casino empire in the last 30 years

Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office the next time America faces a crisis. Imagine him being in charge when your jobs and savings are at stake.  Is this who you want leading us in an emergency? 

TRUMP: Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! 

_________________________________

© 2016 News & Photo Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. For editorial feature and photo information, go towww.news-photos-features.com,  email krubin723@aol.com. ‘Like’ us on facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures, Tweet @KarenBRubin

 

Clinton in Major Foreign Policy Speech, Draws Contrast with Trump as ‘Unprepared, Misguided and Tempermentally Unfit’ for Commander-in Chief

America’s newest warplane, the F35. Hillary Clinton, in a major foreign policy speech, raises questions about Donald Trump’s fitness to be Commander-in-Chief: ‘Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.’ © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
America’s newest warplane, the F35. Hillary Clinton, in a major foreign policy speech, raises questions about Donald Trump’s fitness to be Commander-in-Chief: ‘Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.’ © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

In a major speech on Thursday, Hillary Clinton painted a clear picture for the American people of the choice they will face this November — a choice between steady, principled American leadership, and a dangerously uncertain future governed by an unprepared, misguided and temperamentally unfit commander-in-chief.

Here are highlights from her remarks:

On Monday, we observed Memorial Day – a day that means a great deal to San Diego, home of so many active-duty and former military and their families.  We honor the sacrifice of those who died for our country in many ways – by living our values, by making this a stronger and fairer nation, and by carrying out a smart and principled foreign policy.

That’s what I want to speak about today – the challenges we face in protecting our country, and the choice at stake in this election.

It’s a choice between a fearful America that’s less secure and less engaged with the world, and a strong, confident America that leads to keep our country safe and our economy growing.

As Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady, I had the honor of representing America abroad and helping shape our foreign policy at home.  As a candidate for President, there’s nothing I take more seriously than our national security. I’ve offered clear strategies for how to defeat ISIS, strengthen our alliances, and make sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.  And I’m going to keep America’s security at the heart of my campaign.

Because as you know so well, Americans aren’t just electing a President in November.  We’re choosing our next commander-in-chief – the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death.

And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job.

Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different – they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.

He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.

This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands.  We cannot let him roll the dice with America.

This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.

This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO – the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.

He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008.

He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists – even though those are war crimes.

He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors and other high officials, because he has – quote –’a very good brain.’

He also said,  ​

‘I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.’​ ​

You know what? I don’t believe him.

He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and he has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.

Exactly.

He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope.

He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.

And to top it off, he believes America is weak.  An embarrassment.  He called our military a disaster.  He said we are – and I quote – a ‘third-world country.’​ ​

And he’s been saying things like that for decades.

Those are the words my friends of someone who doesn’t understand America or the world.

And they’re the words of someone who would lead us in the wrong direction. Because if you really believe America is weak – with our military, our values, our capabilities that no other country comes close to matching – then you don’t know America.

And you certainly don’t deserve to lead it.

That’s why – even if I weren’t in this race – I’d be doing everything I could to make sure Donald Trump never becomes President – because I believe he will take our country down a truly dangerous path.

Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world.

And I have, I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced.

So I’m not new to this work.  And I’m proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear.

I believe in strong alliances; clarity in dealing with our rivals; and a rock-solid commitment to the values that have always made America great.  And I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country – that we’re still, in Lincoln’s words, the last, best hope of earth.  We are not a country that cowers behind walls.  We lead with purpose, and we prevail.

And if America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum – and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void.  Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety – and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit.

That is not an outcome we can live with.

As I see it, there are some important things our next President must do to secure American leadership and keep us safe and our economy growing in the years ahead.  These are all areas in which Donald Trump and I profoundly disagree.  And they are all critical to our future.

First, we need to be strong at home.

That means investing in our infrastructure, education and innovation – the fundamentals of a strong economy.  We need to reduce income inequality, because our country can’t lead effectively when so many are struggling to provide the basics for their families.  And we need to break down the barriers that hold Americans back, including barriers of bigotry and discrimination.

Compare that with what Trump wants to do.  His economic plans would add more than $30 trillion – that’s trillion with a ‘t’ – $30 trillion to our national debt over the next 20 yearsHe has no ideas on education.  No ideas on innovation.  He has a lot of ideas about who to blame, but no clue about what to do.

None of what Donald Trump is offering will make America stronger at home.  And that would make us weaker in the world.

Second, we need to stick with our allies.

America’s network of allies is part of what makes us exceptional.  And our allies deliver for us every day.

Our armed forces fight terrorists together; our diplomats work side by side.  Allies provide staging areas for our military, so we can respond quickly to events on the other side of the world.  And they share intelligence that helps us identify and defuse potential threats.

Take the threat posed by North Korea – perhaps the most repressive regime on the planet, run by a sadistic dictator who wants to develop long-range missiles that could carry a nuclear weapon to the United States.

When I was Secretary of State, we worked closely with our allies Japan and South Korea to respond to this threat, including by creating a missile defense system that stands ready to shoot down a North Korean warhead, should its leaders ever be reckless enough to launch one at us.  The technology is ours.  Key parts of it are located on Japanese ships.  All three countries contributed to it.  And this month, all three of our militaries will run a joint drill to test it.

That’s the power of allies.

And it’s the legacy of American troops who fought and died to secure those bonds, because they knew we were safer with friends and partners.

Now Moscow and Beijing are deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them.  They’d love for us to elect a President who would jeopardize that source of strength.  If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin.  We cannot let that happen.

That’s why it is no small thing when he talks about leaving NATO, or says he’ll stay neutral on Israel’s security.

It’s no small thing when he calls Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. We’re lucky to have two friendly neighbors on our land borders.  Why would he want to make one of them an enemy?

And it’s no small thing when he suggests that America should withdraw our military support for Japan, encourage them to get nuclear weapons, and said this about a war between Japan and North Korea – and I quote –​ ​

‘If they do, they do. Good luck, enjoy yourself, folks.’

I wonder if he even realizes he’s talking about nuclear war.

Yes, our friends need to contribute their fair share. I made that point long before Donald Trump came onto the scene – and a number of them have increased their defense spending.  The real debate here is whether we keep these alliances strong or cut them off.  What he says would weaken our country.

Third, we need to embrace all the tools of American power, especially diplomacy and development, to be on the frontlines solving problems before they threaten us at home.

Diplomacy is often the only way to avoid a conflict that could end up exacting a much greater cost.  It takes patience, persistence and an eye on the long game – but it’s worth it.

Take the nuclear agreement with Iran. When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb. Some called for military action.  But that could have ignited a broader war that could have mired our troops in another Middle Eastern conflict.

President Obama chose a different path.  And I got to work leading the effort to impose crippling global sanctions.  We brought Iran to the table.  We began talks. And eventually, we reached an agreement that should block every path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon.

Now we must enforce that deal vigorously. And as I’ve said many times before, our approach must be ‘distrust and verify.’​ ​

The world must understand that the United States will act decisively if necessary, including with military action, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.  In particular, Israel’s security is non-negotiable.  They’re our closest ally in the region, and we have a moral obligation to defend them.

But there is no question that the world and the United States, we are safer now than we were before this agreement.  And we accomplished it without firing a single shot, dropping a single bomb or putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.

Donald Trump says we shouldn’t have done the deal.  We should have walked away.  But that would have meant no more global sanctions, and Iran resuming their nuclear program and the world blaming us.  So then what?  War?  Telling the world, good luck, you deal with Iran?

Of course Trump doesn’t have answers to those questions.  Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about Iran or its nuclear program.  Ask him.  It’ll become very clear, very quickly.

There’s no risk of people losing their lives if you blow up a golf-course deal.

But it doesn’t work like that in world affairs. Just like being interviewed on the same episode of “60 Minutes” as Putin was, is not the same thing as actually dealing with Putin.

So the stakes in global statecraft are infinitely higher and more complex than in the world of luxury hotels. We all know the tools Donald Trump brings to the table – bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets – I’m willing to bet he’s writing a few right now.

But those tools won’t do the trick. Rather than solving global crises, he would create new ones.

He has no sense of what it takes to deal with multiple countries with competing interests and reaching a solution that everyone can get behind. In fact, he is downright contemptuous of that work. And that means he’s much more likely to end up leading us into conflict.

Fourth, we need to be firm but wise with our rivals.

Countries like Russia and China often work against us. Beijing dumps cheap steel in our markets. That hurts American workers. Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATO’s doorstep. Now I’ve gone toe-to-toe with Russia and China, and many other different leaders around the world. So I know we have to be able to both stand our ground when we must, and find common ground when we can.

That’s how I could work with Russia to conclude the New START treaty to reduce nuclear stockpiles, and with China to increase pressure on North Korea. It’s how our diplomats negotiated the landmark agreement on climate change, which Trump now wants to rip up.

The key was never forgetting who we were dealing with – not friends or allies, but countries that share some common interests with us amid many disagreements.

Donald doesn’t see the complexity.  He wants to start a trade war with ChinaAnd I understand a lot of Americans have concerns about our trade agreements – I do too.  But a trade war is something very different. We went down that road in the 1930s. It made the Great Depression longer and more painful. Combine that with his comments about defaulting on our debt, and it’s not hard to see how a Trump presidency could lead to a global economic crisis.

And I have to say, I don’t understand Donald’s bizarre fascination with dictators and strongmen who have no love for America. He praised China for the Tiananmen Square massacre; he said it showed strength.  

He said, ‘You’ve got to give Kim Jong Un credit’ for taking over North Korea – something he did by murdering everyone he saw as a threat, including his own uncle, which Donald described gleefully, like he was recapping an action movie. And he said if he were grading Vladimir Putin as a leader, he’d give him an A.

Now, I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants.

I just wonder how anyone could be so wrong about who America’s real friends are. Because it matters. If you don’t know exactly who you’re dealing with, men like Putin will eat your lunch.

Fifth, we need a real plan for confronting terrorists.

As we saw six months ago in San Bernardino, the threat is real and urgent. Over the past year, I’ve laid out my plans for defeating ISIS.

We need to take out their strongholds in Iraq and Syria by intensifying the air campaign and stepping up our support for Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground. We need to keep pursuing diplomacy to end Syria’s civil war and close Iraq’s sectarian divide, because those conflicts are keeping ISIS alive.  We need to lash up with our allies, and ensure our intelligence services are working hand-in-hand to dismantle the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists. We need to win the battle in cyberspace.

And of course we need to strengthen our defenses here at home.

That – in a nutshell – is my plan for defeating ISIS.

What’s Trump’s?  Well he won’t say. He is literally keeping it a secret. The secret, of course, is he has no idea what he’d do to stop ISIS.

Just look at the few things he’s actually said on the subject.

He’s actually said – and I quote –’maybe Syria should be a free zone for ISIS.​’  

Oh, okay – let a terrorist group have control of a major country in the Middle East.

Then he said we should send tens of thousands of American ground troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS.

He also refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS, which would mean mass civilian casualties.

It’s clear he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. So we can’t be certain which of these things he would do. But we can be certain that he’s capable of doing any or all of them. Letting ISIS run wild. Launching a nuclear attack. Starting a ground war. These are all distinct possibilities with Donald Trump in charge.

And through all his loose talk, there’s one constant theme: demonizing Muslims and playing right into the hands of ISIS’. His proposal to ban 1.5 billion Muslims from even coming to our country doesn’t just violate the religious freedom our country was founded on.  It’s also a huge propaganda victory for ISIS.  And it alienates the very countries we need to actually help us in this fight.

A Trump Presidency would embolden ISIS. We cannot take that risk.

This isn’t reality television – this is actual reality.

And defeating global terrorist networks and protecting the homeland takes more than empty talk and a handful of slogans. It takes a real plan, real experience and real leadership. Donald Trump lacks all three.

And one more thing. A President has a sacred responsibility to send our troops into battle only if we absolutely must, and only with a clear and well-thought-out strategy. Our troops give their all. They deserve a commander-in-chief who knows that.

I’ve worked side-by-side with admirals and generals, and visited our troops in theaters of war.  I’ve fought for better health care for our National Guard, better services for our veterans, and more support for our Gold Star families. We cannot put the lives of our young men and women in uniform in Donald Trump’s hands.

Sixth, we need to stay true to our values.

Trump says over and over again, ​ ​

‘The world is laughing at us.’​ ​

He’s been saying this for decades, he didn’t just start this year. He bought full-page ads in newspapers across the country back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was President, saying that America lacked a backbone and the world was – you guessed it – laughing at us. He was wrong then, and he’s wrong now – and you’ve got to wonder why somebody who fundamentally has so little confidence in America, and has felt that way for at least 30 years, wants to be our President.

The truth is, there’s not a country in the world that can rival us. It’s not just that we have the greatest military, or that our economy is larger, more durable, more entrepreneurial than any in the world. It’s also that Americans work harder, dream bigger – and we never, ever stop trying to make our country and world a better place.

So it really matters that Donald Trump says things that go against our deepest-held values.  It matters when he says he’ll order our military to murder the families of suspected terrorists.  During the raid to kill bin Laden, when every second counted, our SEALs took the time to move the women and children in the compound to safety. Donald Trump may not get it, but that’s what honor looks like.

And it also matters when he makes fun of disabled people, calls women pigs,
proposes banning an entire religion from our country, or plays coy with white supremacists.  America stands up to countries that treat women like animals, or people of different races, religions or ethnicities as less human.

What happens to the moral example we set – for the world and for our own children – if our President engages in bigotry?

And by the way, Mr. Trump – every time you insult American Muslims or Mexican immigrants, remember that plenty of Muslims and immigrants serve and fight in our armed forces.

Donald Trump, Donald Trump could learn something from them.

That brings me to the final point I want to make today – the temperament it takes
to be Commander-in-Chief.

Every President faces hard choices every day, with imperfect information and conflicting imperatives.  That’s the job.

A revolution threatens to topple a government in a key region, an adversary reaches out for the first time in years – what do you do?

Making the right call takes a cool head and respect for the facts.  It takes a willingness to listen to other people’s points of view with a truly open mind.  It also takes humility – knowing you don’t know everything – because if you’re convinced you’re always right, you’ll never ask yourself the hard questions.

I remember being in the Situation Room with President Obama, debating the potential Bin Laden operation. The President’s advisors were divided.  The intelligence was compelling but far from definitive. The risks of failure were daunting. The stakes were significant for our battle against al Qaeda and our relationship with Pakistan.  Most of all, the lives of those brave SEALs and helicopter pilots hung in the balance.

It was a decision only the President could make. And when he did, it was as crisp and courageous a display of leadership as I’ve ever seen.

Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States.  Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle.  Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.

Do we want him making those calls – someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism?  Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?

I have a lot of faith that the American people will make the right decision.  This is a country with a deep reservoir of common sense and national pride.  We’re all counting on that.

Because making Donald Trump our commander-in-chief would be a historic mistake. It would undo so much of the work that Republicans and Democrats alike have done over many decades to make America stronger and more secure. It would set back our standing in the world more than anything in recent memory. And it would fuel an ugly narrative about who we are – that we’re fearful, not confident; that we want to let others determine our future for us, instead of shaping our own destiny.

That’s not the America I know and love.

So yes, we have a lot of work to do to keep our country secure. And we need to do better by American families and American workers – and we will. But don’t let anyone tell you that America isn’t great.  Donald Trump’s got America all wrong. We are a big-hearted, fair-minded country.

There is no challenge we can’t meet, no goal we can’t achieve when we each do our part and come together as one nation.

Every lesson from our history teaches us that we are stronger together. We remember that every Memorial Day.

This election is a choice between two very different visions of America.

One that’s angry, afraid, and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline.

The other is hopeful, generous, and confident in the knowledge that America is great – just like we always have been.

Let’s resolve that we can be greater still. That is what I believe in my heart.

I went to 112 countries as your Secretary of State.  And I never lost my sense of pride at seeing our blue-and-white plane lit up on some far-off runway, with ‘The United States of America’  emblazoned on the side.  That plane – those words – our country represents something special, not just to us, to the world.  It represents freedom and hope and opportunity.

I love this country and I know you do too. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve America and I’m going to do everything I can to protect our nation, and make sure we don’t lose sight of how strong we really are.

Clinton Lays Out Plan to Support Veterans, Troops, and Their Families

Brigadier General John Douglass: “Hillary Clinton knows how things work internationally, how the elements of national security work together - much more complicated than people realize – balancing the views of State, Defense, CIA, etc. – national security very complex – she is ready to serve as commander in chief, far more so than Sanders or Trump.” © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Brigadier General John Douglass: “Hillary Clinton knows how things work internationally, how the elements of national security work together – much more complicated than people realize – balancing the views of State, Defense, CIA, etc. – national security very complex – she is ready to serve as commander in chief, far more so than Sanders or Trump.” © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

“Hillary Clinton believes that supporting our veterans is a sacred responsibility. By fulfilling that responsibility, we not only ensure that veterans receive the opportunity, care, and support they earned by serving our country.  Prioritizing their reintegration also ensures that they bring their unique skills and experience to the success of their communities and our nation after their service is over.  Yet too often, we as a nation failed to uphold our end of the bargain.  As Commander-in-Chief, she will personally commit to fulfilling America’s promise to our veterans, our troops, and their families – a commitment driven by her recognition not just of the extraordinary sacrifices they make, but also of how essential that promise is to our long-term national security and our vitality and prosperity at home.

“Secretary Clinton has fought for our veterans throughout her career.  This issue is deeply personal for her, and her approach is rooted in her upbringing as the daughter of a World War II veteran and decades of experience working with military members and their families.  As First Lady, she fought to have Gulf War Syndrome recognized.  As Senator on the Armed Services Committee, she fought to establish new services for military members and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress (PTS) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI).  She regularly worked across the aisle to expand military benefits, including to ensure that all members of the Reserves and National Guard and their families had access to health benefits; to expand benefits afforded to surviving spouses; and to broaden protections afforded by the Family and Medical Leave Act to the family members of wounded service members.  And as Secretary of State, she was at the table in the Situation Room, providing advice to the President on the most grave decision a Commander-in-Chief makes: whether and how to send our military personnel in to harm’s way.

“Secretary Clinton is committed to a strong and resilient military, built by the extraordinary men and women who volunteer to serve and the families who serve alongside them.  And she believes that issues affecting current service members and veterans are inseparable.  As President, she’ll continue to support the needs and talents of all who have served and who serve us still, whether Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen, including active duty, reserve, and National Guard, and every race, creed, gender, and sexual orientation.  And she will have no tolerance for failure to put veterans first.”

Secretary Clinton’s comprehensive plan will:

  • Fundamentally reform veterans’ health care to ensure veterans’ access to timely and high quality health care and block efforts to privatize the VHA
  • Modernize and refocus the full spectrum of veterans’ benefits across the federal government
  • Overhaul VA governance to create a new veteran-centric model of excellence
  • Empower veterans and strengthen our economy and communities by connecting their unique skills to the jobs of the future
  • Sustain and strengthen the all-volunteer force
  • Strengthen services and support for military families

Veterans Agenda

The systemic failures of the VA to uphold its core mission underscore the need for fundamental reforms and focused leadership.  Long wait times for health care, crippling claims backlogs, and lack of coordination among agencies represent government at its worst.  Secretary Clinton recognizes the gravity of these challenges, and as President will pursue a veteran-centric reform agenda that tackles problems head-on and revitalizes the VA.  She will end the excuses and ensure our veterans receive the timely health care they deserve. She will oppose the privatization of the VA system, which would undermine our veterans’ ability to get the unique care that only the VA can provide while leaving them vulnerable to a health care market poorly suited to their needs.  And she will lead a national effort to invest in and empower veterans to apply their considerable skills in their communities.

ENSURE VETERANS’ ACCESS TO TIMELY AND HIGH QUALITY HEALTH CARE

Veterans must have access to a system that puts their needs first. But in order to build such a system, prepared for the unique and growing needs of the twenty-first century, we cannot simply throw more money at the problem or tell veterans to go get private care, as the VA’s implementation of the Veterans’ Choice Act has shown.  We also cannot throw our veterans at the mercy of the private insurance system without any care coordination, or leave them to fend for themselves with health care providers who have no expertise in the unique challenges facing veterans. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) must embrace comprehensive process and systems integration across its health care enterprise to ensure a fully-networked and financially-sustainable organization that is dedicated to best practices and continual improvement in everything it does. Specifically, Secretary Clinton will:

Create a new framework for VHA health care delivery by refocusing, reorganizing, and streamlining the VHA to best serve veterans in the 21stcentury.  The VHA must be transformed from primarily a provider of services into an integrated health care system that responsibly balances its role as health care provider, partner, and payer for veteran-directed care.  And it must have the health care providers necessary to ensure it is able to provide quality and timely care.  At the same time, the VA must maintain the ultimate responsibility of coordinating and ensuring comprehensive and quality health care for every veteran and the specialized services that they deserve – critical functions that would disappear if the VA were privatized.  The VHA must:

  • Refocus as a veteran-centric provider of service-connected care. The VHA should focus its resources on what it can do best, particularly health care for service-connected conditions. This is especially important in areas where veterans lack access to the necessary care outside of the VHA, such as prosthetics and traumatic brain injury.
  • Synchronize and coordinate VHA care with other available programs, including coverage already provided to veterans, such as private or employer-provided insurance, TRICARE, Medicare, federally-qualified health centers, Indian Health Service, and the Affordable Care Act, to ensure the most responsible use of taxpayer dollars;
  • Strategically purchase private-sector care when it makes sense to do so, such as for some specialty inpatient or surgical procedures, expanded access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, or when the VA cannot provide timely access to necessary care.  Secretary Clinton would present and advocate for legislation that allows the VA to pursue provider agreements to do this in the most effective and efficient manner;
  • Establish a VHA Strategic Oversight and Governance Board of health care and management leaders. In line with the best practices of modern hospital systems across the country, the board will be empowered to provide oversight of VHA management processes, monitor accountability, promulgate best practices, and ensure the VHA remains true to its mission of putting veterans first.  This Board would include strong veterans representation.

Personally convene the Secretaries of Veterans Affairs and Defense regularly in the Oval Office and direct them to develop, execute, and report on an effort that integrates their health care operations to create a more efficient and a sustainable system. She will direct them to:

  • Streamline the DoD-VA health care footprint by identifying opportunities to co-locate and better coordinate inpatient services across federal health delivery programs, while stripping out costly and redundant bureaucratic functions, and developing a plan to ensure the VA has the facilities needed to provide 21st century care;
  • Synchronize procurement to find cost savings by negotiating and procuring a single formulary of pharmaceuticals along with medical and office supplies and information systems to ensure compatibility and eliminate waste and redundancy;
  • Streamline VA and DoD IT, ending the years of delay in developing an electronic health record (EHR) system that is fully interoperable. The VA has over 100 different versions of its own EHR system, making it difficult enough to communicate between different VA clinics, let alone with DoD.  DoD and VA must also eliminate bureaucratic barriers to seamless coordination and information-sharing.  And the new system must also link to private sector providers to enable full information sharing, care coordination, and integrated billing and payments.

Improve health care for women at the VHA to ensure all veterans are fully and equally supported after serving our nation. Women veterans are the fastest growing population served by the VA, highlighting the importance of proactively addressing the VHA’s ability to meet their needs. Secretary Clinton would work to pass bipartisan legislation that requires VA medical facilities to meet the health care needs of women veterans. In addition, Secretary Clinton calls for:

  • New funding to ensure women equal and respectful, going beyond simply modifying facilities and increasing the number of OBGYNs employed by the VHA, to include expanding provider training, ensuring culturally-competent VHA staff and policies, and providing other gender-specific health services – including mental health services;
  • Requiring the provision of reproductive services across the VHA to ensure women have access to the full spectrum of medical services they need;
  • Broadening initiatives to provide childcare at VA medical facilities so that parents, particularly single mothers, don’t have to choose between taking care of their child and taking care of their health.

End the veteran suicide epidemic and ensure that every veteran has access to world-class medical and counseling services whenever and wherever they are needed. To do this, Secretary Clinton will:

  • Increase funding for mental health providers and training to ensure timely and ongoing identification and triage of mental health issues, and ongoing access to quality mental health care and substance abuse treatment, particularly for alcohol and opiate abuse, including private-sector care when necessary.
  • Expand programs targeted at providing effective mental health treatment for veterans that have participated in classified or sensitive missions without compromising non-disclosure requirements,working with Congress to pass needed legislation;
  • Promote better prescriber and treatment practices by promulgating guidelines that recommend treatments for pain management other than opioids, so that prescribers can consider those alternatives, particularly for patients without chronic physical pain;
  • Ensure that Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is acknowledged as a valid form of PTS, setting a burden of proof for MST that is no higher than for any form of trauma, and that men and women who suffer from it are uniformly eligible for disability compensation and treatment;
  • Educate and encourage state veterans affairs departments to include veteran mental health programs in state requests for federal grants as part of Secretary Clinton’s initiative to combat drug and alcohol addiction;
  • Provide proper legal assistance to review and upgrade other-than-honorable discharge categorizations for service members who were improperly separated from service due to service-connected mental health and cognitive issues, such as TBI, PTS, and addiction.

Continue efforts to identify and treat invisible, latent, and toxic wounds of war that continue to affect veterans, family members, and caregivers long after their service.  This includes Agent Orange, Gulf War syndrome, burn pits, and – two issues that Secretary Clinton has long worked to better address – PTS and TBI. Secretary Clinton will:

  • Maintain presumptions of service-connection for latent and invisible wounds from the Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq war, and Afghanistan war while directing the VA to consider additional presumptions of service connection for disabilities arising from toxic exposure;
  • Expand the current VA burn pit registry to become a comprehensive registry for all post-9/11 deployment veterans exposed to environmental dangers, toxic hazards, and other conditions.
  • Dedicate research funding and provide mechanisms for collaborative efforts to facilitate the development and expansion of evidence-based diagnostic tools and treatments for veteran-centric conditions, including mental health issues and other invisible, latent, and toxic wounds of war, and direct the VA, HHS, and DoD to collaborate and integrate portfolios when it makes sense to do so.

MODERNIZE AND REFOCUS THE FULL SPECTRUM OF VETERANS BENEFITS ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM BY IMPLEMENTING A “NEW BRADLEY PLAN”

In the years following World War II, 16 million returning service members were able to rely on the health care and educational opportunities afforded by an adaptable VA organization, headed at the time by General Omar Bradley. General Bradley worked effectively with Congress and stakeholders to build the system that cared for those returning troops. In a similar spirit, aimed at address the VA’s current limitations, Secretary Clinton will direct a national, multi-sector effort to streamline and modernize the veterans’ benefits system. The “New Bradley Plan” will address the shortcomings of today, while ensuring the nation can meet the needs of tomorrow’s veterans. To implement this plan, Secretary Clinton will:

End the disability benefits and appeals backlog through overtime work, productivity improvements, and new initiatives. Secretary Clinton will:

  • Streamline and simplify the claims process by integrating DoD and VA medical evaluations, using “fully developed claims” from private providers, allowing rules-based automatic adjudication for the simplest of applications, and by ensuring veterans have an effective appeals process to make sure the VA gets it right.
  • Improve the VA’s partnership with DOD to anticipate and prepare for future waves of VA claims across the government, and surge resources to the system before claims backlogs grow out of control.
  • Launch an Innovation Initiative led by a team with diverse backgrounds and expertise to connect the VA with leaders in the nation’s leading businesses, universities, and non-profits to develop innovative solutions for sustainably managing the claims and appeals process and to address unforeseen challenges.

Bring Sustained and Focused White House Leadership and Attentionto coordinate the programs supporting our veterans across the U.S. government, ensure continued consultation and engagement with the veteran community, and leverage the private sector to ensure the entire nation is mobilized to meet this challenge.  To do so she will:

  • Create a standing President’s Council on Veterans, coordinated by a Senior White House official responsible for Veterans Integration. The council will be an all-of-government approach to supporting veterans, comprised of the heads of all 17 agencies involved in this mission to synchronize and integrate the patchwork of programs and benefits.
  • Conduct an end-to-end evaluation to optimize the full scope of benefitsafforded to our veterans and provide recommendations to ensure that greater investments in services and support for veterans are smart, effective, and will best meet the needs of veterans today and for generations to come;
  • Convene a White House Summit on Veterans to personally address progress on veterans’ issues with all stakeholders directly, meet early and regularly with a cross-section of veterans to understand their needs and ensure we meets our promises, and work with state governors to ensure that veterans and National Guard issues are addressed at the state level given their important role;
  • Continue to engage private and philanthropic sectors with this effort by ensuring that companies know the value of hiring veterans and by amending federal ethics and acquisition regulations to allow VA, DoD, and other federal agencies to effectively partner with the private and nonprofit sectors, including better data sharing, more open access to federal facilities, and sharing of resources.

EMPOWER VETERANS BY CONNECTING THEIR UNIQUE SKILLS TO THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE

Secretary Clinton recognizes that America’s veterans are an enormous asset for the future of the country and our economic growth.  Veterans bring unique skills from their time in the military that can move America’s economy forward.  From their commitment to service and teamwork to specific job skills from computer science to welding, investment in our veterans can power a workforce for the future.  Secretary Clinton is committed to the programs and supports that will strengthen pipelines of veterans and service members into higher education and industry.  Specifically, Secretary Clinton will:

Support and broaden initiatives that provide educational benefits, job training, and support for veteran entrepreneurs.  Secretary Clinton will build on First Lady Michelle Obama’s Joining Forces Initiative with a national push to improve the pipeline of our nation’s veterans into the workforce.  To do this, she will:

  • Make the Post-9/11 GI Bill a lasting part of the nation’s social contract with those who serve, working with Congress to pass legislation that solidified existing benefits, preserves and extends family transferability (including to non-traditional families), and expands qualified uses for use in the 21st century economy, such as at approved coding academies, entrepreneurship programs, and apprenticeship programs with America’s leading companies and labor organizations;
  • Expand tax credits for veterans’ employment through reauthorizing and making permanent the Work Opportunity Tax Credit for veterans and expanding it to provide credits to businesses that hire disabled veterans.
  • Improve concurrent certification and credentialing programs by increasing funds available to state and local governments to process military certificates, and by expanding the concurrent credentialing program to all appropriate military career fields, to ensure that our veterans can seamlessly transfer their skills from the military to the community;
  • Strengthen veteran entrepreneurship programs, including expanding the efforts of the Interagency Task Force on Veterans Small Business Development to provide entrepreneurship training and counseling and small business loan guarantees;
  • Create pathways and platforms for service members to enter growing career fields, including jobs in clean energy, cyber, and information technology, and areas of critical need by improving integration between these opportunities and the military’s Transition Assistance Program;

Protect veterans from discrimination and predatory companies that unfairly target veterans and their families, in the spirit of Secretary Clinton’s broader efforts to protect consumers and bolster the middle class, she will:

  • Fight back against schools that prey on veterans, including through legislation that closes the 90-10 loophole exploited by for-profit schools, and by banning schools from receiving federal student aid (including DoD tuition assistance and VA GI Bill funding) if they are found guilty of fraudulently recruiting students;
  • Enforce zero tolerance for firms that overcharge service members and veterans by banning bill collectors and loan servicers from contracts to service federal loans, and help defrauded students discharge debt from fraudulent schools;
  • Strengthen non-discrimination laws protecting veterans and military families by expanding the Uniformed Services Reemployment and Readjustment Act (USERRA) and Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), adding veteran status to the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to protect veterans from discrimination in the housing market.

Move decisively to end veteran homelessness by building on successful initiatives and expanding programs that help ensure long-term success.

  • Increase funding for reducing homelessness while expanding public-private partnerships, with an emphasis on regions with the greatest need. Leverage federal resources to support community-based organizations, including by reallocating excess and unused federal property for use by veteran-focused non-profit organizations;
  • Expand complementary programs and services including outreach, especially in locations involving high densities of homeless veterans, and programs that prepare veterans for independent living to prevent recidivism, such as counseling, job training, disability benefits, and transportation;
  • Address the needs of homeless women veterans and homeless veteran families by clarifying language in the Fair Housing Act that removes ambiguities in the law regarding gender and family-specific housing, and providing shelter options that account for local demographic conditions.

Support Veterans Treatment Courts nationally using block grants to state and local governments while also directing the VA to expand its current pilot programs for “medical legal partnerships” to offer space to community legal organizations in VHA clinics.  Veterans Treatment Courts provide an alternate to the traditional criminal justice system for veterans with minor offenses aggravated by mental health or substance abuse issues, ensuring these veterans are rehabilitated while getting the treatment they need.

Recognize the honorable service of LGBT veterans by proactively reviewing and upgrading discharge records for veterans who were discharged because of their sexual orientation; and honoring their service by continuing efforts to improve the support and care they receive at the VHA to ensure respectful and responsive health care.

OVERHAUL VA GOVERNANCE TO CREATE NEW VETERAN-CENTRIC MODEL OF EXCELLENCE

Fulfilling the nation’s duty of taking care of our veterans requires effective performance by the VA and other federal agencies that support veterans. As part of a broader effort to promote good governance, Secretary Clinton will reform management within the Department of Veterans Affairs, ensure fair and transparent accountability, and set us on a path to excellence for our nation’s veterans for generations to come. Secretary Clinton will:

Create a culture of accountability, service, and excellence at the VA.Secretary McDonald has done a commendable job of refocusing the VA on its core mission: putting veterans first. But Secretary Clinton believes more must be done to reform and improve the VA from the top-down, and from the bottom-up. Secretary Clinton supports legislation that will:

  • Hold every employee accountable for their performance and conduct. From the top leadership to mid-level managers to entry-level employees, everyone at the VA must embody the highest workplace standards. Supervisors must be empowered to suspend or remove underperforming employees in accordance with due process not only for the good of the organization, but in service of our nation’s veterans.
  • Revamp the performance evaluation system to recognize and advance high-performing employees to create a thriving, effective, and sustainable organizational culture, while also establishing processes to ensure managers are held accountable for taking action to deal with poorly performing employees.
  • Bolster critical whistleblower protections. Individuals who sound the alarm over wasteful programs or question inefficient practices embody the spirit of reform and management excellence that the VA must champion. Whistleblower protections are key to ensuring these employees are empowered and their voices heard, not silenced.

Provide budgetary certainty to facilitate reforms and enable long-term planning. The recent budget deal reached between the Congress and the White House is a promising first step in providing government agencies with much needed fiscal stability. But we must go further by ending the sequester for both defense and non-defense spending in a balanced way, and prioritizing full-funding and advance appropriations for the entire Department of Veterans Affairs.

Ensure our veterans are buried with the honor, distinction, and integrity they deserve, directing the VA to clean up problems that have led to unacceptable indignities for our veterans and their families.

Military Personnel and Families Agenda

Our obligation to our veterans cannot be separated from our broader commitment to take care of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen –active duty, reserve, and National Guard – and their families. Our men and women in uniform have volunteered to put their lives on the line to serve our country in operations that keep our people safe and ensure peace and security across the globe.  As President, Secretary Clinton will make sure the United States supports the men and women who make the US military the best-trained, best-equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known.

Secretary Clinton believes that no individual should have to choose between serving their country and taking care of their family, while on active duty or afterward.  She will continue to work with civilian and military national security leaders to ensure that our nation’s armed forces are trained, equipped, and ready for the full spectrum of challenges they will face, including those still over the horizon.

SUSTAIN AND STRENGTHEN THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE

The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) has been stressed by fourteen years of continuous combat and is endeavoring to rebuild and reset, while facing growing instability and complexity around the world, reduced end-strength, and an uncertain fiscal environment.  Secretary Clinton is developing a broad strategy on DOD budget and reform measures grounded in permanently ending the damaging sequester while making smart reforms in both defense and non-defense spending.  Included in that plan will be military personnel policies that support and promote total force readiness by:

Supporting smart compensation and benefits reform that attracts the best and brightest new recruits to the AVF. Secretary Clinton’s unwavering commitment to our military men and women includes policies that will:

  • Ensure reforms to military compensation and retirement benefits improve readiness and quality-of-life, and working with Congress and the services to ensure that ongoing improvements to the system, such as plans to modernize the commissary system, are accomplished in a smart and comprehensive manner, guaranteeing the strength and sustainability of the force for generations to come.
  • Modernize the military health system by ensuring service members, military retirees, and their families robust access to health care by changing the incentive structure of the TRICARE contracts to produce better health outcomes with better patient satisfaction, expanding access to mental health care through telemedicine and non-traditional treatments, and ensuring the health needs of military women – including reproductive health care – are fully supported.

Adopting modern and inclusive personnel policies that serve to bolster and enhance the finest fighting force the world has ever seen. Secretary Clinton’s plan will both take advantage of America’s strengths while embodying its values. This includes:

  • Attracting millennials to military service by building on ‘force of the future’ initiatives, to include emphasizing military opportunities in science and technology and promoting smarter and more flexible DoD policies on tour lengths and assignments, which give military families greater stability and increase retention.
  • Aggressively Combat Military Sexual Assault and Harassment by strengthening protections to ensure that our women and men in uniform can serve without fear of sexual assault or harassment, and without fear of retaliation for reporting.
  • Welcoming women to compete for all military positions provided they meet the requisite standards, in line with the ongoing DoD policy review. From piloting fighter jets to serving on submarines to earning respect as an Army Ranger, merit and performance should determine who serves in the military’s combat specialties and units, not gender.
  • Supporting the DoD policy review on transgender service, anticipating that transgender people will soon be allowed to serve openly alongside their comrades in arms in a military where everyone is respected enough to let them serve with dignity.

STRENGTHEN MILITARY FAMILY SERVICES AND SUPPORT

Secretary Clinton recognizes that military family readiness is a critical part of total force readiness, and she understands that military families face unique concerns and challenges, especially after fourteen years of continuous deployments. To tackle these challenges, Secretary Clinton will:

Promote family policies that provide military families with additional opportunities and much-needed flexibility in juggling multiple challenges. This includes:

 

  • Increasing access to child care both on- and off-base, including options for drop-in services, part-time child care, and the provision of extended-hours care, especially at Child Development Centers, while streamlining the process for re-registering children following a permanent change of station (PCS);
  • Creating flexibility around military moves by allowing families to continue receiving their housing allowance for up to six months after a military member’s PCS move under common-sense circumstances; for example, when the service member has a spouse enrolled in a degree-granting program or one or more children enrolled in a local school;
  • Expand military spouse employment initiatives by developing resources and high quality portable or work-from-home positions for spouses while expanding public hiring preferences and credentialing programs to assist military spouses.

Champion efforts to care for our military members and families, and ensure that our nation honors and respects them throughout their service and beyond. Secretary Clinton will:

 

  • Ensure continued focus on mental health for military members and families by enhancing DoD programs to help remove the stigma of mental health issues and by developing a comprehensive whole-of-life approach with the DoD Suicide Prevention Office that includes education, training, counseling resources, and family outreach;
  • Remain committed to extended leave policies that are critical to military families, whether preparing for a service member’s deployment or caring for a wounded warrior, and expanding paid maternity and paternity policies across all of the services;
  • Continue to support Gold Star Families and recognize their sacrifice through enhanced gratuity payments to surviving spouses and ongoing access to benefits in recognition of their sacrifice.

 

 

Memorial Day Spotlights Trump, Clinton Differences on Veterans, Military Families

Veterans march in the Great Neck Memorial Day Parade. Trump and Clinton offer starkly different proposals for how America should care for veterans and military families © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Veterans march in the Great Neck Memorial Day Parade. Trump and Clinton offer starkly different proposals for how America should care for veterans and military families © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

There is nothing more disgusting than the scene of Donald Trump headlining the Rolling Thunder rally in Washington DC over Memorial Day weekend– a rally that ostensibly supports veterans. A man who used his wealth and position to obtain five deferments from serving in Vietnam when so many others without privilege were sent into that hell hole- 2.7 million served in that terrible war,  58,000 never returning home, another 75,000 severely disabled. In all, some 42 million Americans have served in the military since the American Revolution, more than 1.1 million making the ultimate sacrifice.

This is a man who has shown nothing but disrespect for the military and veterans, even as he fear-mongers the lie that the American military is weak and, he crows, we need Trump to restore its greatness. To the extent that defense spending – still the biggest chunk of the budget, amounting to more than the rest of the world spends on its military – has been cut, it is because of the Sequester that was put into place because Republicans in Congress refused to accept Obama’s budget compromise. Trump’s fight is with Congress, not Obama, but that does not stop him (or his supporters) from misdirecting the blame.

In fact, Obama has done more for veterans – and the military and their families – than any other president, including passing the post 9/11 GI Bill, Michele Obama and Jill Biden’s Joining Forces campaign, an all-out drive to improve employment opportunities for veterans and military families, improving services at the Veterans Administration hospitals.

This week, with great fanfare, Trump held a press conference to explain where the $6 million he claimed to have raised for veterans groups in a fundraiser (his excuse for skipping out on a GOP presidential debate), was allocated, including, he said, $1 million of his own money.

He tried to weasel out of paying up – only being forced by media attention.

Let’s consider Trump’s actual record (something that his minions fail to do):

He has indicated he would not support the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which the VA has said has benefited more than 700,000 veterans and their family members who have so far received $20 billion in benefits, saying : “No. I want to bring jobs back to our country.”

He has advocated privatizing the VA when the vast majority of veterans appreciate the specialized services they obtain.

He showed contempt for prisoners of war, as when he dissed Sen. John McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam (refusing the opportunity to be freed until his men also were freed), saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, ok? I hate to tell you.”

Who does Trump consider a war hero? Trump, as when he referred to his sex life and the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases as his “personal Vietnam,” and that though he never actually served in the military, he wrote that he “always felt that I was in the military” because he was sent to a military-themed boarding school. And last year, he downplayed the dangers of war with modern technology, claiming that if an armored Humvee is hit with an explosive, our soldiers just “go for a little ride upward and they come down.” He also has called for expanding the use of torture, which would put US servicemembers at severe risk.

While Trump thinks he can buy veterans’ affection by throwing a few million dollars in their direction, in contrast, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who as Senator served on the Armed Services Committee, has an actual record of supporting the military, veterans, and military families and has shown time and time again that she understands their needs.

  • Joined efforts to build veterans rehabilitation center. Senator Clinton joined with Republican Senator John McCain to personally raise money for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund which led to building the Center for the Intrepid, a $50 million state-of-the-art physical rehabilitation facility in San Antonio, Texas, designed specifically to help seriously wounded service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Expanded health care coverage for Reservists and National Guard members. Senator Clinton worked with Senator Lindsey Graham to expand veterans’ access to military health insurance, ensuring that all members of the Reserves and National Guard—and their families—had access to military health benefits even when they were not deployed.
  • Protected family members caring for wounded warriors. Senator Clinton collaborated with Senator Chris Dodd to author and introduce new legislation that aimed to broaden protections afforded by the Family and Medical Leave Act to the family of wounded service members. The legislation was enacted as part of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act.

[You can read the full, 12-page veterans plan and her new, expanded agenda to support military families.]

On Tuesday, as Trump was holding his mock press conference listing where $6 million in contributions for veterans were allocated and spending more time bashing Clinton and the press, Hillary Clinton released wide-ranging set of proposals to better support military families:

  • Ensuring that family leave policies meet the needs of our military families and increasing access to child care for all service members in the Active Duty and Reserve who need it, both on- and off-base.
  • Enhancing opportunities for military spouse employment and breaking down antiquated rules, such as onerous state credentialing, that lead to military spouse under-employment. A recent study showed that unemployment and under-employment of military spouses costs the U.S. economy almost $1 billion per year.
  • Creating flexibility around military moves by allowing families to continue receiving their housing allowance for up to six months after a military member’s Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move under common-sense circumstances.
  • Standing side-by-side with families through transition out of the military, making jobs services and transition programs more widely available to loved ones during the months and years after a service member leaves the service.
  • Establish “Joining Forces,” launched by the Obama administration, as a permanent part of the Executive Office of the President, to continue building partnerships between the public, private and nonprofit sectors in support of the military and veteran community.
  • Ensuring military children receive a high-quality education and the resources to succeed. This includes preserving and protecting the Post-9/11 GI Bill, making it a lasting part of the nation’s social contract for those who serve and their families, including its provisions for transfer of educational benefits to spouses and children of military personnel.

You can read the full fact sheet for Hillary Clinton’s military families agenda.

 

 

 

Clinton: Trump’s Economic Policies are ‘Too Big a Risk’ for Women & Families

Hillary Clinton, who says “women’s issues are economic issues” has proposed limiting the cost of child care to 10% of income, and blasts Donald Trump’s economic policies as steering even more money to the wealthiest while adding trillions to the national debt and adversely impacting women and families © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Hillary Clinton, who says “women’s issues are economic issues” has proposed limiting the cost of child care to 10% of income, and blasts Donald Trump’s economic policies as steering even more money to the wealthiest while adding trillions to the national debt and adversely impacting women and families © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

 

At a rally in Blackwood, New Jersey, Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for his reckless tax plan that would hand trillions in tax breaks to billionaires and corporations at the expense of working families and seniors. Clinton also questioned why Trump refuses to release his own tax returns – a standard disclosure that’s been made by every major presidential candidate in the last forty years.

“He has released what he calls his tax plan, and it very clearly is his plan, because Donald Trump’s tax plan was written by a billionaire for billionaires,” Clinton said. “He wants to spend $3 trillion – that’s with a T – $3 trillion on tax cuts for people like him who make over a million dollars.  That is $100,000 every month for multi-millionaires.  Now, to put that in perspective, $3 trillion is enough money to make Social Security and Medicare solvent for the next 75 years. It’s enough money to put millions of Americans to work to repair and modernize all of our country’s infrastructure up to world-class standards…

“Now, think about this.  The typical family in America earns $54,000 a year.  It would take that family 24 years of work to earn what Donald Trump’s tax plan will hand out to people like him in just one year.  That is no way to create good jobs with rising incomes for the vast majority of Americans, is it? And the gentleman who called out, what about his tax plan, I hope you’ll keep asking that.

“And what about his taxes?  So we’ll get around to that, too, because when you run for president, especially when you become the nominee that is kind of expected.  My husband and I have released 33 years of tax returns.  We got eight years on our website right now.  So you got to ask yourself, why doesn’t he want to release them?  Yeah, well, we’re going to find out.”​

Clinton has released her tax returns every year since 1977.  The last eight years of Clinton’s tax returns are available on her website, here

Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, participated in a Hillary for America press call to criticize how Donald Trump’s economic policies are too big a risk for American women and families. From his plan to give massive tax breaks to millionaires to his opposition to a federal minimum wage floor, Donald Trump is the wrong choice for women and families, they insisted.

 

“Make no mistake: Trump’s divisive comments about women’s health are a direct threat to our dignity and economic security. But these ideas are not the only risk a Trump presidency would pose for the economic future of women and families around this country,” said Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Trump’s tax plan “gives $3 trillion to millionaires, that’s enough to make Social Security and Medicare solvent for 75 years. Women, who rely disproportionately on Social Security, can’t afford such an irresponsible giveaway.”

Donald Trump still opposes raising the minimum wage because he has maintained, “wages are too high,” and recently said he doesn’t favor a federal floor for the minimum wage, which could leave many workers subject to a lower minimum wage. At a time when two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, this issue is critical to working families.

The trillions in tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires and corporations laid out in Donald Trump’s tax plan would be an enormous boon for the top one percent of earners, made at the expense of working families, seniors and the health of our economy. His plan would give $3 trillion over 10 years or more than 35% of its tax breaks to millionaires. That giveaway represents enough money which could go to ensure Medicare and Social Security’s solvency for the next 75 years, repair our ailing infrastructure, or raise every person now living in poverty up to the poverty line. Trump would give multi-millionaires in the top 0.1% like himself a raise of $1.3 million a year, or $100,000 a month, Tanden noted.

They offered a clear contrast between Donald Trump’s tax plan “by a billionaire for the billionaires” and Hillary Clinton’s plan, including calling for limiting child care expenses to 10% of income.

“I’m with Hillary because I know that she’s the only candidate who will make fighting for women and families her priority. I’ve worked with her on the macro issues, and I’ve worked with her on the macaroni and cheese issues, and I know she will be a great president. She’s already a great champion for women. The presumptive Republican nominee offers a different vision,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski.

Clinton has continually maintained ““Women’s issues are family issues, economic issues, and crucial to our future competitiveness.

“Too often, these are called women’s issues. Well, I am a proud lifelong fighter for women’s issues, because I firmly believe what’s good for women is good for America. … As far as I’m concerned, any issue that affects women’s lives and futures is a women’s issue.”

Clinton has pledged to:

  • Ensure equal pay for women.
  • Defend women’s health and reproductive rights against attacks.
  • Fight for paid family leave and affordable child care.

America has taken tremendous strides when it comes to expanding opportunity for women—but our fight is far from over. Women still earn less than men on the job. Many women still face barriers to entering and advancing in the workforce, and the ability of women to make their own health decisions is under assault. Hillary believes that issues that affect women’s lives are not just “women’s issues”—they are family issues, they are economic issues, and they are crucial to our future competitiveness. She has been fighting for women and girls her entire career, and she’s just getting started.

Read: This is what it looks like when a presidential candidate truly understands reproductive rights.

As president, Clinton pledges to:

  • Work to close the pay gap.Women earn less than men across our economy—and women of color often lose out the most. Hillary will promote pay transparency across the economy and work to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act—a bill she introduced as senator—to give women the tools they need to fight workplace discrimination.
  • Fight for paid family leave.No one should have to choose between keeping their job and taking care of a sick family member, and no parent should have to go back to work right after they welcome their newborn baby. A quarter of all women in America return to work within ten days of having a child because they have no paid leave. The United States is the only country in the developed world without guaranteed paid leave of any kind. That has to change.
  • Make quality, affordable childcare a reality for families.We need to recognize that quality, affordable child care is not a luxury—it’s a growth strategy. Women are now the primary or co-breadwinners in two-thirds of families with children. But out-of-pocket child care costs have soared by nearly 25 percent during the past decade. We need to make investing in child care a national priority—including supporting on-campus child care and scholarships to meet the needs of the nearly 5 million American college students who are also parents.
  • Increase the minimum wage.The current minimum wage isn’t enough for Americans to meet their basic needs. Because women represent nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers, many women are living that reality every day. A higher minimum wage will help close the gender pay gap, lift millions of women out of poverty, and have a ripple effect across our economy. While we work to raise the federal minimum wage, Hillary will also support state and local efforts to go above the federal floor.
  • Defend and enhance Social Security.Hillary believes Social Security is an American success story. She is committed to defending it from Republican attacks and enhancing it to meet new realities—especially for women. The poverty rate among widowed and divorced women who are 65 years or older is nearly 70 percent higher than for the elderly population as a whole. This unacceptably high poverty rate is partly due to an unfair policy: Two-breadwinner families can face steep reductions in their benefits when a spouse dies. It’s time to change that.
  • Protect women’s health and reproductive rights.Women’s personal health decisions should be made by a woman, her family, and her faith, with the counsel of her doctor. Hillary will stand up to Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, which would restrict access to critical health care services, like cancer screenings, contraception, and safe, legal abortion. She will fight to protect the Affordable Care Act, which bans insurance companies from discriminating against women and guarantees 47 million women and counting access to preventive care.
  • Confront violence against women.One in five women in America is sexually assaulted while in college. Twenty-two percent of women experience severe physical violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime. American women are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other high-income countries. It’s time to address violence against women—and Hillary will put forward bold plans to do that.
  • Promote women’s rights around the globe.As secretary of state, Hillary made it a priority to advance the rights of women and girls around the globe. In far too many parts of the world, women are still held back by social, economic, and legal barriers. One in every three girls in developing countries is married before the age of 18, and laws in 79 countries still restrict the type of work women can do. Hillary knows these laws hold societies back, and that promoting gender equality around the world—from ensuring that girls have equal access to education, to making women safe from sexual violence, to promoting equal economic opportunity—will promote a more just, secure, and prosperous global community.

Clinton has a record of fighting for women and girls throughout her career:

  • After graduating from Yale Law School, Hillary chose not to take a prestigious job at a law firm. Instead, she became an advocate for women, families, and children. She went to work at the Children’s Defense Fund, where she helped expand access to education for children with disabilities.
  • As first lady of Arkansas, she helped start Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
  • As first lady of the United States, Hillary was a staunch advocate for women and children’s issues. She led the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where she proclaimed that “women’s rights are human rights.” She also advocated for the Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides leave for new parents or those with a sick loved one, and she worked to increase funding for child care.
  • As senator from New York, Hillary championed access to emergency contraception and voted in favor of strengthening a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions. She also championed the Paycheck Fairness Act and co-sponsored the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in an effort to achieve equal pay and help close the wage gap. She fought for legislation to guarantee paid sick leave and paid parental leave for all federal employees.
  • As secretary of state, Hillary made women’s rights a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. She created the now-permanent position of ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues and helped launch the first U.S. strategy on women, peace, and security. She also advanced women’s economic empowerment, championed programs to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, and spearheaded public-private partnerships to improve the status of women and girls.

 

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate Universal Health Care, Social Security, Supreme Court & Women’s Reproductive Rights

Democratic Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders meet for a debate moderated by CNN at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, ahead of the April 19 New York State primary © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Democratic Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders meet for a debate moderated by CNN at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, ahead of the April 19 New York State primary © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Ahead of the April 19 New York State Primary, the gloves came off between the two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, at what is being called “The Brooklyn Brawl” – the Democratic Debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

The confrontation was the most contentious to date, but still substantive with both candidates making strong arguments on major issues. 

Here are annotated highlights from the “Brooklyn Brawl” – the debate between Democratic contenders for the nomination for president, former Secretary of State and New York State Senator Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, based on a transcript provided by CNN, the news organization that hosted the debate, April 14. 

In this section, the candidates debate universal health care, free college, the US Supreme Court, and for the first time in all the debates, what the Supreme Court means for women’s reproductive rights. 

Universal Health Care, Free College, Supreme Court

Senator Sanders, you’re promising health care and free college for all, and those plans would be met with both political and practical challenges. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says your initiatives would cost up to $28 trillion and, even after massive tax increases, that would add as much as $15 trillion to the national debt. How is this fiscally responsible? 

SANDERS: Well, first of all, I disagree with that study. There are many economists who come up with very, very different numbers.

For example, we are the only country, major country on Earth, that does not guarantee health care to all people, and yet we end up spending almost three times what the British do, 50 percent more than the French. My proposal, a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program, will save (APPLAUSE) will save middle-class families many thousands of dollars a year in their health care costs. Public colleges and universities tuition free? Damn right. That is exactly what we should be doing. (APPLAUSE)

“And I’d pay for that — I’d pay for that by telling Wall Street that, yeah, we are going to have a tax on Wall Street speculation, which will bring in more than enough money to provide free tuition at public colleges and universities and lower the outrageous level of student debt.

“Wolf, we have seen in the last 30 years a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 0.1 percent. The establishment does not like this idea, but, yes, I am determined to transfer that money back to the working families of this country. (APPLAUSE)

Former Secretary of State and NYS Senator Hillary Clinton © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Former Secretary of State and NYS Senator Hillary Clinton © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

CLINTON: Well, again — again, I absolutely agree with the diagnosis, the diagnosis that we’ve got to do much more to finish the work of getting universal health care coverage, something that I’ve worked on for 25 years. Before there was something called Obamacare, there was something called Hillarycare. And we’re now at 90 percent of coverage; I’m going to get us to 100 percent.

“And with respect to college, I think we have to make college affordable. We are pricing out middle-class, working, and poor families. There’s no doubt about that.

But I do think when you make proposals and you’re running for president, you should be held accountable for whether or not the numbers add up and whether or not the plans (APPLAUSE) are actually going to work.

“And just very briefly, on health care, most of the people who have analyzed what Senator Sanders put out — remember, he had a plan for about, I don’t know, 18, 20 years. He changed in the middle of this campaign. He put out another plan. People have been analyzing the new plan. And there is no doubt by those who have analyzed it, progressive economists, health economists, and the like, that it would pose an incredible burden, not just on the budget, but on individuals. In fact, the Washington Post called it a train-wreck for the poor. A working woman on Medicaid who already has health insurance would be expected to pay about $2,300.  

“The same for free college. The free college offer — you know, my late father said, if somebody promises you something for free, read the fine print. You read the fine print, and here’s what it says.  

“The fine print says this, that it will — the federal government will cover two-thirds of the cost and require the states, even those led by Republican governors to carry out what the remaining one-third of the cost.”

SANDERS: We are not a country that has the courage to stand up to big money and do what has to be done for the working families of the country. (APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: We have a difference of opinion. We both want to get to universal health care coverage. I did stand up to the special interests and the powerful forces, the health insurance companies and the drug companies. (APPLAUSE)

“And perhaps that’s why I am so much in favor of supporting President Obama’s signature accomplishment with the Affordable Care Act, because I know how hard it was to get that passed, even with a Democratic Congress. So rather than letting the Republicans repeal it or rather starting all over again, trying to throw the country into another really contentious debate, let’s make the Affordable Care Act work for everybody let’s get to 100 percent coverage, let’s get the cost down, and let’s guarantee health care.”

Social Security

BLITZER: Secretary, let’s talk about Social Security, another critically important issue. Senator Sanders has challenged you to give a clear answer when it comes to extending the life of Social Security and expanding benefits. Are you prepared to lift the cap on taxable income, which currently stands at $118,500? Yes or no, would you lift the cap? 

CLINTON: I have said repeatedly, Wolf, I am going to make the wealthy pay into Social Security to extend the Social Security Trust Fund. That is one way. If that is the way that we pursue, I will follow that.

“But there are other ways. We should be looking at taxing passive income by wealthy people. We should be looking at taxing all of their investment.

“But here’s the real issue, because I — I’ve heard this, I’ve seen the reports of it. I have said from the very beginning, we are going to protect Social Security. I was one of the leaders in the fight against Bush when he was trying to privatize Social Security.

“But we also, in addition to extending the Trust Fund, which I am absolutely determined to do, we’ve got to help people who are not being taken care of now. And because Social Security started in the 1930s, a lot of women have been left out and left behind.

“And it’s time that we provide more benefits for widows, divorcees, for caregivers, for women who deserve more from the Social Security system and that will be my highest priority.” (APPLAUSE)

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

SANDERS: Now, we’ve got — here is the issue. Your answer has been the same year after year. In fact, the idea that I’m bringing forth, I have to admit it, you know, it wasn’t my idea. It was Barack Obama’s idea in 2008, the exact same idea. (APPLAUSE)

“He called for lifting the cap, which is now higher — it’s at 118 — and starting at 250 and going on up. If you do that, you’re going to extend the life of Social Security for 58 years. You will significantly expand benefits by 1,300 bucks a year for seniors and disabled vets under $16,000 a year. What’s wrong with that? Are you prepared to support it?

CLINTON: I have supported it. You know, we are in vigorous agreement here, Senator.

‘You know, we’re having a discussion about the best way to raise money from wealthy people to extend the Social Security Trust Fund. Think about what the other side wants to do. They’re calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. They still want to privatize it. In fact, their whole idea is to turn over the Social Security Trust Fund to Wall Street, something you and I would never let happen.

“I’ve said the same thing for years. I didn’t say anything different tonight. We are going to extend the Social Security Trust Fund. There is still something called Congress. Now, I happen to support Democrats and I want to get Democrats to take back the majority in the United States Senate so a lot of — a lot of what we’re talking about can actually be implemented when I am president.”

SANDERS: — maybe I’m a little bit confused.

“Are you or are you not supporting legislation to lift the cap on taxable income and expand Social Security for 58 years and increase benefits…”

CLINTON: I am…

SANDERS: — yes or no?

CLINTON: I have said yes, we are going to pick the best way or combination…

SANDERS: Oh, you — ah. (APPLAUSE) (BOOS)

SANDERS: OK.

CLINTON: — or combination of ways… (BOOS)

CLINTON: — you know… (BOOS)

CLINTON: — it — it’s all — it’s always a little bit, uh, challenging because, you know, if Senator Sanders doesn’t agree with how you are approaching something, then you are a member of the establishment. Well, let me say then…

SANDERS: Well, look (APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: — let me say this (APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: — we are going to extend the Social Security Trust Fund. We’ve got some good ideas to do it. Let’s get a Congress elected that will actually agree with us in doing it. 

SANDERS: Yes, Secretary Clinton (CROSSTALK) you are a member of the establishment. 

Supreme Court

Secretary Clinton, regarding President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme  Court. President Obama said earlier this week that he would not withdraw the nomination, even after the presidential election. If elected, would you ask the president to withdraw the nomination? 

CLINTON: I am not going to contradict the president’s strategy on this. And I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals. I fully support the president. (APPLAUSE)

“And I believe that the president — the president is on the right side of both the Constitution and history. And the Senate needs to immediately begin to respond. So I’m going to support the president. When I am president, I will take stock of where we are and move from there.” 

SANDERS: Well, there is no question. I mean, it really is an outrage. And it just continues, the seven-and-a-half years of unbelievable obstructionism we have seen from these right-wing Republicans.

“I mean, a third-grader in America understands the president of the United States has the right to nominate individuals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Apparently everybody understands that except the Republicans in Congress.

LOUIS: So, Senator Sanders, would you ask him to withdraw the nomination? 

SANDERS: Yes, but here is the point, and obviously i will strongly support that nomination as a member of the Senate. But, if elected president, I would ask the president to withdraw that nomination because I think — I think this.

“I think that we need a Supreme Court justice who will make it crystal clear, and this nominee has not yet done that, crystal clear that he or she will vote to overturn Citizens United and make sure that American democracy is not undermined.” (APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: You know, there is no doubt that the only people that I would ever appoint to the Supreme Court are people who believe that Roe V. Wade is settled law and Citizens United needs to be overturned. 

“And I want to say something about this since we’re talking about the Supreme Court and what’s at stake. We’ve had eight debates before, this is our ninth. We’ve not had one question about a woman’s right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care, not one question. (APPLAUSE)  

“And in the meantime we have states, governors doing everything they can to restrict women’s rights. We have a presidential candidate by the name of Donald Trump saying that women should be punished. And we are never asked about this.  

“And to be complete in my concern, Senator Sanders says with respect to Trump it was a distraction. I don’t think it’s a distraction. It goes to the heart of who we are as women, our rights, our autonomy, our ability to make our own decisions, and we need to be talking about that and defending Planned Parenthood from these outrageous attacks.”  

SANDERS: You’re looking at a senator and former congressman who proudly has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record, who will take on those Republican governors who are trying to restrict a woman’s right to choose, who will take on those governors right now who are discriminating outrageously against the LGBT community, who comes from a state which led the effort for gay marriage in this country, proudly so. (APPLAUSE)  Who not only thinks we are not going to — not defund Planned Parenthood, we’ve got to expand funding for Planned Parenthood. (APPLAUSE)

See also:

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate Qualifications, Credibility 

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate Gun Violence & Criminal Justice

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate Climate Change, Energy & Environment

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate National Security & Foreign Policy

Brooklyn Brawl: Democrats Clinton & Sanders Debate US-Israel Relations

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