During Thursday’s debate between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, the two candidates offered no shortage of false claims and claims without context.
Here’s a look at the evening’s most memorable lines that were outright false or left out important facts and context.
Trump on abortion
As he has done throughout his campaign, Trump made several false claims during the debate.
For example, on abortion he said the following about some states with a Democratic regime: “They are radical because they will end the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, even after birth.”
That is a completely evidence-free claim. Killing a person after birth is illegal in every state in the United States.
Trump also claimed that “everyone” agreed with his appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, which protected women’s right to get an abortion nationwide. The court’s decision sent the issue of whether to ban or restrict abortions back to the states.
“What I did was, I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court and they happened to vote to kill Roe v. Wade and bring it back to the states. This is something that everyone wanted,” Trump said.
Polls conducted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe consistently show that a majority of Americans disagree with the court’s decision.
Trump on the criminal cases against him
Without providing any evidence, Trump regularly states that the only reason he has been criminally charged is because Biden tried to prevent him from winning a second term. He did it again on Thursday.
“I wouldn’t be charged because I wouldn’t have been his political opponent. He charged me because I was his opponent,” Trump said.
Two of the criminal cases against Trump were filed in state courts not overseen by the Justice Department. Although special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump in the classified documents and Jan. 6 election interference cases, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, there is no evidence that Biden is involved in the decision to to file charges.
Trump says there was “no terror at all” during his presidency
On the topic of terrorism, Trump offered a revisionist history of his time in office.
“You had no fear at all during my administration. This place — the whole world is blowing up under him,” Trump claimed.
This is not the first time Trump has falsely claimed that there were no terrorist attacks in the US during his presidency. In reality, there were several incidents that qualified:
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In 2017, Trump’s Justice Department alleged that a mass murder in New York City that left eight people dead was a terrorist attack in support of ISIS.
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In 2018, the Justice Department claimed there was evidence of a “domestic terrorist attack” when a Trump supporter sent homemade explosives to Democratic officials and CNN offices.
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In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department alleged that an attack that killed three U.S. service members and injured others at a military base in Florida was motivated by an al-Qaeda “ally.”
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Also in 2019, a gunman who the Justice Department said targeted Latinos killed 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
Biden: Trump wants to get rid of social security
While Trump has not spoken about his plans to secure Social Security for future generations, he has repeatedly said he has no plans to cut it. Biden claimed otherwise on Thursday.
“He wants to get rid of Social Security. He thinks there are enough cuts to be made to Social Security,” he said.
Trump has said there may be some room to cut Social Security spending and has proposed a budget that included some cuts to the program, but has not indicated any intention to eliminate it.
Biden on Approval of US Border Patrol
During the debate, Biden made a claim about an official endorsement by a government agency that simply doesn’t make it.
“By the way, the Border Patrol supported me, supported my position,” the president said in an apparent reference to his recent executive order aimed at limiting the rise in the number of migrants seeking asylum in the US.
However, the Border Patrol Union, which sometimes makes political endorsements, has not endorsed Biden, saying in a post on X during the debate: “To be clear, we have never endorsed Biden and never will.”
Biden on ‘15% unemployment’ when he took office
Biden presented a false unemployment statistic as he defended his own record and criticized the state of the economy that Trump left him.
“When I became president, there was no inflation. You know why? Because the economy was down, 15% unemployment,” Biden said.
In reality, the unemployment rate was 6.4% in January 2021. It has since fallen to 4%.
Trump says Biden ‘allows’ China to dominate the US
Trump attempted to blame Biden for China’s continued economic rise, but left out some notable details.
“China is going to own us if you continue to allow them to do what they’re doing to us as a country. They’re destroying us as a country, Joe. And you can’t let that happen — you’re destroying our country,” Trump said.
Trump omitted Biden’s May 14 imposition of tariffs on a number of Chinese goods, including electric vehicles, solar panels, steel, aluminum and medical equipment. In his first three years in office, Biden also chose to leave many of the tariffs Trump had imposed on China in place.
Trump praises ‘best environmental records ever’
In a dubious list of claims, Trump portrayed himself as having joined the fight against climate change.
“I want absolutely pristine clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had that. We had H2O,” Trump said, presumably meaning CO2, a greenhouse gas that scientists say helps warm the planet. “We had the best numbers ever, and we did that. We used all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet during my four years I had the best environmental numbers ever.”
While greenhouse gas emissions fell during Trump’s tenure, they fell even more during Barack Obama’s presidency. Experts also note that the modest decline during Trump’s presidency was helped by the drop in economic activity caused by the coronavirus pandemic, not by specific actions of the Trump administration. Trump has promised oil executives that he will eliminate regulations on oil production and fight to dismantle the clean energy transition that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act helped accelerate.
Biden says Trump wants to get rid of Affordable Care Act
“[Trump] will of the [Affordable Care Act] again. And they’re going to try again if they win,” Biden exclaimed during the debate on Thursday.
Although Trump did indeed attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s signature health care law, he was unsuccessful and has since proclaimed that he is now “not joining in to end the law.” Instead, Trump has said he wants to make it “much better than it is now and much less expensive for you.”
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 45 million Americans are now enrolled in coverage under the ACA, and that percentage continues to grow each year.
Biden and Trump blame each other for inflation
When it comes to inflation, Biden and Trump both felt the need to blame each other for the problem.
“He caused this inflation. I gave him a country where there was essentially no inflation,” Trump said of Biden, adding, “He destroyed it.”
Biden countered that Trump was “the cause of his enormous malfeasance in the way he handled the pandemic.”
But inflation is mainly the result of macroeconomic trends over which presidents have little influence. Economists blame two recent factors, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, for recent price increases.
— with reporting from Katie Mather, Michael Bebernes and Kate Murphy
