VETERANS
TRUMP on the Veterans Administration: "For 44 years they try to get accountability. ... I said, you know ... I have an idea, such a great idea. You are going to go out private, you're going to pick up a doctor, you are going to get yourself fixed up, we're going to pay the bill, right? And you know what happened? And I said how — how brilliant is that? They say sir, we've been working on that for 48 years but we've never been able to get it approved. So I was very, very disillusioned but you know what I'm good at, getting things approved and we got it approved." — to cheers at Toledo rally
THE FACTS: He did not think up the idea and get it approved. Obama got it approved. Obama signed into law the Choice program that lets veterans go to a private doctor at public expense under some circumstances. Trump routinely ignores that and says presidents have tried to get it done for 44 years. He only expanded the program.
As for accountability, Trump claims that his law means bad VA employees are swiftly fired. But a report released in October by the VA inspector general found "significant deficiencies" in the accountability office established by the law, such as poor leadership, shoddy training of investigators and failure to push out underperforming senior leaders.
Also at the rally, Trump claimed that "44 years" of failure preceded his success in getting the "right to try" initiative into law. That initiative, aimed at giving terminally ill patients more access to unapproved drugs, only goes back five or so years.
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CANCER
TRUMP: "U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration." — tweet Thursday
THE FACTS: The news came from the American Cancer Society, not the administration, and it does not reflect Trump's record.
The group said the death rate from cancer has declined by nearly 30% since 1991 and took its sharpest one-year drop in 2017. But the data did not reflect cancer-research spending under the Trump administration.
Trump proposed cutting spending at the National Institutes of Health but Congress ignored the effort and raised spending in a bill the president signed. That is not reflected in the cancer society report.
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ENVIRONMENT
TRUMP: "We have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water on earth, and for our country the air is right now cleaner than it's been in 40 years." — remarks Thursday
THE FACTS: No, air quality has worsened under the Trump administration. And it's a stretch to say the United States is among the countries with the cleanest air. Dozens of nations have less smoggy air. Trump made the remarks as he proposed the latest enforcement rollbacks for the bedrock environmental acts credited with beginning the cleanup of U.S. air and water a half century ago.
As to water quality, one measure, Yale University's global Environmental Performance Index, finds the United States tied with nine other countries as having the cleanest drinking water.
But after decades of improvement, progress in air quality has stalled.
There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in the United States in 2017 and 2018 than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when the U.S had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980, according to an AP analysis of EPA data.
A recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that deadly air particle pollution increased by 5.5% in the United States between 2016 and 2018 after declining by 24.2% from 2009 to 2016.
"The increase was associated with 9,700 premature deaths in 2018," the study by Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller said. "At conventional valuations, these deaths represent damages of $89 billion."
The Obama administration set records for the fewest air-polluted days.
Trump's proposal would greatly cut back on the National Environmental Policy Act's requirement that federal agencies consider whether a big construction project would hurt the environment before they approve the project. Other Trump proposals would roll back restrictions on major sources of air and water pollution, including coal-fired power plants and autos.
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ISLAMIC STATE GROUP
TRUMP: "Three months ago, after destroying 100% of ISIS and its territorial caliphate ..." — address Wednesday on Iran's missile strike on two Iraqi bases
THE FACTS: His claim of a 100% defeat is misleading, as the Islamic State group still poses a threat.
ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, then lost the last of its land holdings in Syria in March, marking the end of the extremists’ self-declared caliphate. Still, extremist sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria and are believed to be responsible for targeted killings against local officials and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
U.N. experts and King Abdullah of Jordan have warned that ISIS leaders are seeking a resurgence. Last week Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the fight against the group was continuing in Syria.
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ENERGY
TRUMP: "We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil." — address Wednesday
THE FACTS: That’s incorrect. The United States still needs plenty of oil from the Mideast.
The volume of U.S. oil imports from the Persian Gulf alone — 23 million barrels in October — would not be easy to make up elsewhere without major changes in U.S. demand or production.
Technological advances such as fracking and horizontal drilling have allowed the United States to greatly increase production, but demand remains brisk and the country still imports millions of barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iraq and other countries. Moreover, much of what the United States produces is hard for domestic refiners to convert to practical use. So the United States exports that production and imports oil that is more suitable for U.S. refineries to handle.
On energy more broadly, the United States is indeed close to parity on how much energy it produces and how much it consumes. In some months, it produces more than it consumes. But it has not achieved self-sufficiency. In the first nine months of last year, it imported about as much energy as it exported.
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MILITARY
TRUMP: "The American military has been completely rebuilt under my administration, at a cost of $2.5 trillion." — address Wednesday
THE FACTS: That's an exaggeration.
It's true that his administration has accelerated a sharp buildup in defense spending, including a respite from what the U.S. military considered to be crippling spending limits under budget sequestration.
But a number of new Pentagon weapons programs, such as the F-35 fighter jet, were started years before the Trump administration. And it will take years for freshly ordered tanks, planes and other weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.
The Air Force's Minuteman 3 missiles, a key part of the U.S. nuclear force, for instance, have been operating since the early 1970s and the modernization was begun under the Obama administration. They are due to be replaced with a new version, but not until later this decade.
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