By Chris Megerian
Los Angeles Times
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) It was a combative 1st debate in Cleveland where President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden didn’t hold anything back.
Washington
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off Tuesday night in Cleveland for their first of three debates. We’ve tracked where each candidate strays from the facts. What follows are checks on the candidates’ statements.
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No, Trump isn’t protecting coverage for preexisting conditions.
“We guaranteed preexisting conditions,” Trump said.
THE FACTS: This is one of Trump’s most common falsehoods. The 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, includes the provision that bars health insurance companies from refusing to cover people with preexisting medical conditions. Trump has been calling for the entire law to be eliminated, and his administration is allied with conservative states on a lawsuit to kill it. The case is now before the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments the week after the election.
Because assured coverage for preexisting conditions is so popular, Trump repeatedly says he is ready with a substitute healthcare program that would retain the guarantee if the court strikes down the law. Yet he said he had such a plan four years ago, and neither he nor congressional Republicans have agreed on an alternative. Last week, Trump signed an executive order declaring his intention to protect people with preexisting conditions, but it otherwise does nothing.
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No, Biden didn’t call Trump’s China travel ban “xenophobic.”
TRUMP: “I closed it, and you said, ‘He’s xenophobic.'”
THE FACTS: Whenever challenged about his mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, Trump points to one of his earliest decisions, restricting travel from China, where the pandemic began. However, it was not the ironclad ban that he describes. The Jan. 31 order applied only to mainland China, not Hong Kong, and it allowed tens of thousands of Americans there to return to the U.
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S., where screening of arrivals was spotty. Although the travel restrictions bought some time before the pandemic worsened here, public health experts say Trump squandered that by failing to prepare widespread testing and tracing to detect and isolate outbreaks.
Trump frequently claims that Biden opposed the restrictions and called them “xenophobic.” He distorts the former vice president’s comments. The day after Trump’s announcement, Biden tweeted that “we need to lead the way with science _ not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.” He did not mention the ban or travel from China.
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No, the economy isn’t back yet.
TRUMP: “We’re doing record business.”
THE FACTS:Trump often claims that the country is quickly rebounding from the coronavirus crisis, which forced tens of millions of people out of their jobs. He calls it a “V-shaped” recovery, sometimes upgrading it to a “super V”, suggesting a steep decline followed by a fast ascent.
There are definitely some signs that the economy is on the upswing. The unemployment rate reached 14.7% in April but has since fallen to 8.4%. However, that’s still nearly as high as the peak jobless rate, 10% , in President Obama’s first year, when the country was clawing out of the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Any recovery could be endangered by a renewed coronavirus outbreak, which could force additional restrictions on businesses and public gatherings. Trump has frequently dismissed the need for social distancing or masks, and he’s holding rallies where supporters are crowded together, most without protection.
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How much did Trump pay in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?
Trump: “Millions of dollars”
THE FACTS: It’s impossible for voters to judge because Trump broke with a decades-long tradition of White House candidates releasing their tax returns. He said again in the debate that he cannot make his returns public because they are under audit. But the Internal Revenue Service has said audits do not preclude taxpayers from releasing their own returns.
The New York Times reported this week, based on leaked copies of Trump’s returns, that the president paid only $750 in federal income taxes for the year he was elected and for his first year in office, a startlingly low amount for someone who claims to be a billionaire running a successful real estate business. For 10 of the previous 15 years, he paid no federal income taxes at all. Trump avoided taxes by reporting steep losses, and the returns show he’s facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debts that have placed him in a financial bind.
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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
