PolitiFact: A fact-check of the debate in Las Vegas,
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had their say Wednesday night in the final presidential debate. Now we’ve checked the accuracy of debate claims. You can see all our work at politifact.com. A sampling:
Clinton: “What the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them.” Trump criticized Clinton for not agreeing with a Supreme Court decision upholding the individual right to bear arms. Clinton’s contention the district’s overruled handgun restrictions rested on protecting toddlers echoes a legal brief. Yet sparing toddlers was just one defense of the handgun ban, making this claim Half True.
Trump: Said Clinton “wants to have open borders.” Clinton’s plan would make it easier for undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation. But she has also said she supports border security. In a speech purportedly excerpted by WikiLeaks, Clinton said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable.” We lack greater context because Clinton hasn’t released the full speech. Clinton said in the debate she was talking about energy, particularly border spanning electricity grids. We found Trump’s claim Mostly False.
Clinton: Said that Trump “said as recently as a few weeks ago in Phoenix that every undocumented person would be subject to deportation.” Trump said Aug. 31 that anyone in the country illegally who wants lawful status has to go back home and apply for re-entry, and that those who came illegally are subject to deportation. Trump also said “then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain,” an indication he doesn’t intend to deport every undocumented person. We found Clinton’s claim Mostly True.
Trump: “I don’t know Putin.” We previously gave Trump a Full Flop on our Flip-O Meter per whether he has a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2013, he said, “I do have a relationship,” statements reaffirmed through 2015. More recently, Trump has said, “I never met Putin — I don’t know who Putin is,” and “I have no relationship with him.”
Clinton: Said that Trump “encouraged espionage against our people.” Trump said at a press conference in South Florida that he hoped Russia was able to find “the 30,000 emails that are missing.” That was a reference to Clinton’s emails, not broadly Americans’ emails. We rated this claim Half True.
Trump: “Just like when you ran the State Department, $6 billion was missing.” In March 2014, a State Department Inspector General alert looked at audits and warned that files for over $6 billion worth of contracts from 2008 to 2014 — spanning the entirety of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 —“were incomplete or could not be located at all.” That’s missing paperwork, not dollars. Pants on Fire!
Clinton: “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.” The Director of National Intelligence, which speaks for the country’s 17 federal intelligence agencies, released a statement saying the intelligence community is confident that Russia is behind recent hacks into political organizations’ emails. We rated this claim True.
Trump: The allegations of sexual assault against him “have been largely debunked.” Some accounts have been questioned, but none has been debunked. Five of the nine accounts remain undisputed. We rated this claim False.