Fact-checking Trump’s SOTU address Abortion
President Donald Trump delivered the 2019 State of the Union address Tuesday, addressing the topics of the economy, immigration, foreign policy and more.
Here are some of his comments, factchecked or with additional explanation or context.
Immigration
“In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall — but the proper wall never got built. I will get it built.”
This lacks context. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorized 700 miles of southwest border fencing, but it was different from the wall Trump promised to build on the campaign trail.
The 2006 law earned the support of just over half of Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But many House Democrats, including current Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted against it.
Trump initially said his wall would be made of “hardened concrete,” as tall as “95 stories” with a “very big, very beautiful door.” (He now promotes a seethrough barrier of slats.) Trump derided the 2006 fence as too modest during the 2016 campaign — he said it was a “little fence” that could be scaled with a ladder.
— Amy Sherman
“Year after year, countless Americans are murdered by criminal illegal aliens.”
We can’t specifically document how many U.S. citizens have been killed because there is no national database on murders committed by immigrants in the country illegally. There also is no national data or study tracking the nationality of the victims, experts have also told us.
And while some immigrants here illegally have committed murders, research indicates that immigrants are less likely to engage in criminal behavior than the native-born population.
— Miriam Valverde
“One in three women is sexually assaulted on the long journey north.”
This is Half True. The number isn’t necessarily representative of the entire migrant population traveling through Mexico.
The number comes from a 2017 Doctors Without Borders report. The report found that 31.4 percent of women had been sexually abused during their transit through Mexico. That 31.4 percent figure came from a 2015 survey of more than 400 migrants in shelters and other places where migrants seek help. (The majority of people surveyed were men.)
Doctors Without Borders said its report provided a “snapshot in time,” drawing from a population that was accessible to the medical group.
— Miriam Valverde Economy
“All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before.”
This is wrong. It’s also not very meaningful: Just counting the number of women (or men, or both) who are working, or are in the labor force, is driven by the size of the population, which is typically growing over time.
A better measure is the civilian labor force participation rate for women, which refers to the percentage of women who are either working or looking for work. The rate has been rising since late 2015, but the level for that today — 57.5 percent — is below what it was from about 1995 to the Great Recession, when it was typically in the 59-percent to 60percent range.
Looking at sheer numbers, both the number of women who are employed and the number of women who are in the labor force (meaning they’re working or looking for work) dropped modestly during the most recent month for which data is available — December 2018 to January 2019. Women’s employment fell from 73.9 million to 73.6 million, while women in the labor force fell from 76.8 million to 76.7 million.
— Louis Jacobson
“Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades.”
Wages are indeed rising, but they began their upward trajectory under President Barack Obama, and wages actually rose a bit faster under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
One common measurement of wages is median usual weekly real earnings for full-time wage and salary workers 16 years and older, an inflation-adjusted figure.
During Trump’s presidency, this figure has risen from $351 to $355, an increase of 1.1 percent over the better part of two years.
But the current wage increase began in earnest in the second half of 2014, when Obama was still more than two years away from leaving the White House. Overall, wages increased by 7.5 percent over that period, from $330 to $355.
This rise in wages wasn’t as steep as the country saw in the 1990s. Between the fourth quarter of 1997 and the first quarter of 2002, wages rose from $314 to $341, an increase of 8.6 percent.
— Louis Jacobson
“African-American, HispanicAmerican and Asian-American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.”
This was accurate in 2018 but is out of date. Unemployment levels for each group reached record lows under Trump’s watch.
African-American unemployment fell to a record of 5.9 percent in May and is at 6.8 percent as of January. Asian unemployment fell to 2 percent in May and is now at 3.2 percent. Hispanic unemployment reached 4.4 percent in December 2018 and is now at 4.9.
But these trends began under Obama, and economists say presidents don’t deserve either full credit or full blame for the unemployment rate on their watch.
— Manuela Tobias
“We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs.”
Trump is close on overall job creation but less accurate on manufacturing jobs.
The United States has added 5.3 million jobs since Trump was elected in November 2016. Counting from when he took office in January 2017 makes the figure a bit smaller, at 4.9 million.
As for manufacturing jobs, the number rose from about 12.4 million in January 2017 to 12.8 million in January 2019, or an increase of 454,000. We should add that the increase in manufacturing jobs under Trump followed a rise under Obama that began in 2010, when the worst of the Great Recession had passed.
— Louis Jacobson Health care
“It is unacceptable that Americans pay vastly more than people in other countries for the exact same drugs, often made in the exact same place.” This is generally accurate.
In 2015, Bloomberg compared the prices, after discounts, of eight common medications. All but one cost substantially more in the United States. For example, the cholesterol-lowering pill Crestor cost $86.50 in the United States but cost $40.50 in Germany. An Advair asthma inhaler cost $154.80 in America, but cost $74.12 in Canada.
The International Federation of Health Plans found similar disparities in its 2015 drug pricing report.
— Jon Greenberg
“Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”
This distorts the circumstances covered by the law signed Jan. 22 by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Previously, women in New York could only get abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy if their lives were threatened. Under the new law, women can also get an abortion after 24 weeks if their health is threatened or the fetus isn’t viable.
The law codifies for New York the same standards established by the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
Jen Villavicencio, an OB-GYN in the Midwest who provides abortions, told PolitiFact recently that late-term abortions are rare and usually due to medical crises. The Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both report that slightly more than 1 percent of all abortions occur after 21 weeks.
“Abortions are not performed at 40 weeks on healthy, viable pregnancies,” Villavicencio said. “Overwhelmingly, abortions that occur at this point in pregnancy are pregnancies where lethal fetal anomalies have been diagnosed.”
— Jon Greenberg and Ciara O’Rourke
“We had the case of the governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth.”
In an interview with a Washington radio station, Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, talked about what would happen if doctors determined that a woman in labor carried a child that was nonviable or severely deformed.
“The infant would be delivered,” Northam said. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
The proposed law would lift a current mandate that at least three doctors agree that a third trimester abortion is necessary for the protection of the mother’s physical or mental health.
— Jon Greenberg Energy
“We have unleashed a revolution in American Energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world.”
This is mostly accurate. The United States ranks first in both, but that’s only new for crude oil.
In 2017, the United States ranked first in the total production of petroleum and other liquid fuels as well as natural gas. Within the subset of crude oil production, the United States edged past Russia and Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2018, according to the Energy Information Administration, the federal office that collects energy statistics.
But the United States has been the world’s largest oil producer since 2012 and the largest natural gas producer for years.
— Manuela Tobias
“And now for the first time in 65 years we are a net exporter of energy.” That is on track to happen by 2020. Being a net exporter means that, on an annual basis, exports exceed imports for all energy types. That has not been the case in the United States since 1953. That is projected to change in the next year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Becoming a net exporter hinges on increasing natural gas and oil exports. The United States has for decades exported more coal than it imports. It only began exporting more natural gas than it imports in 2017, and the country still imports more petroleum and other liquids than it exports.
“We are very close,” said Jason Bordoff, who directs Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “It was true for one week in November and will be occasionally for a week here or week there. On an annual basis, we will be a net exporter of energy in 2020.”
— Manuela Tobias Foreign policy
“For years, the United States was being treated very unfairly by friends of ours, members of NATO — but now over the past couple of years, we have secured a $100 billion increase in defense spending from NATO allies.” This could be true two years from now. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that’s what the European members expect to spend and he credited Trump’s “clear message.”
“By the end of next year, NATO allies will add 100 — 100 billion extra U.S. dollars for defense,” Stoltenberg said on Fox News Jan. 27.
In constant dollars, NATO member defense spending has gone up about $24 billion since 2016. In current dollars, the amount is $48 billion. While we don’t know Stoltenberg’s starting point, $100 billion requires a steep rise, and we won’t know if it comes true until many months from now.
— Jon Greenberg