Trump Coming to WI, Some Pre-Fact-Checking

Based on typical rallies, two-thirds of Trump’s claims are not based in fact.

UpNorthNews correspondent Jonathon Sadowski will be reporting from outside President Trump’s Milwaukee rally tonight as his crowd of supporters mingles with fans heading into the nearby Fiserv Forum for the Milwaukee Bucks game.

We’re keeping Jonathon outside because we already have a pretty good idea of what’s going to be said inside. And much of that has already been fact-checked. We’ve collected a sample of some likely statements and what independent fact-checkers have to say about them.

“A Better Dairy Deal with Canada” – The new USMCA trade agreement gives US dairy producers access to 3.59 percent of Canada’s dairy market, according to a Merrill Lynch economist, not much more than the 3.25 percent that was in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And US dairy exports will go up by 0.0003 percent of GDP. Ditto farm exports with Japan.

“China Used to Pay Us Nothing” – Tariffs on Chinese imports were first established under George Washington in 1789 and collected upwards of $14 billion per year prior to Trump’s election.

“Spent More Than Anyone Else on the Military” – George W. Bush and Barack Obama spent more on the military in inflation-adjusted terms, with spending only dipping due to the Great Recession. 

“Military Ran Out of Ammunition Under Obama” – A single type of smart bomb was running low due to the high number of strikes against ISIS, but stockpiles were already being built back up. There were still plenty of bullets and grenades.

“Greatest Economy Ever” – By almost any significant measure, the US economy was better under several former Presidents.

“Impeachment Nullifies 2016” – Impeachment is the Constitutional remedy for Congress to determine if a duly elected President has committed ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ while in office. A conviction does not mean the runner-up becomes President. (This isn’t a pageant.) It means the duly elected Vice President becomes the new Chief Executive.

Rather than posting the full list, we offer you a link to one of the more recent rally fact-checks in the Washington Post that weighed 179 statements –at a single December rally– and found 67 percent of them were false, mostly false or unsupported. Other analyses found 70 to 76 percent of Trump’s statements to be in those categories.