Fact check: A look at claims of both candidates.
In the final presidential debate, held Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton attacked each other on immigration policy, the Supreme Court, economic policy and other points. Sometimes they stuck close to facts and sometimes they left the facts behind:
Clinton said her fiscal plan “doesn’t add a penny to the debt.”
Wishful thinking: Independent experts do not agree with Clinton’s assessment. The nonpartisan Center for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Clinton’s plans would increase the federal debt by $200 billion over the next decade.
That would raise the ratio of debt to gross domestic product to 86 percent in 2026 from 77 percent today.
Trump said Clinton once “wanted the wall” on the Mexican border.
A fence, not a wall: While Trump has made his call to build a formidable wall along the 2,000-mile length of the United States border with Mexico, Clinton did vote as a senator for a border barrier.
But the Secure Fence Act of 2006 she voted for authorized a fence rather than a wall along about 700 miles of the border. Trump said that Clinton’s stand on abortion would allow the procedure “just prior to the birth of the baby.”
Misleading: Clinton strongly supports abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that defined such rights.
She has said that there can be restrictions on abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy but that they must take account of the life and health of the woman.
Clinton said the Citizens United decision allowed “dark money” to stream into politics.
The floodgates opened: The 2010 Supreme Court decision is best known for allowing unlimited contributions by corporations and labor unions to super PACs, which are publicly disclosed.
But it also opened the floodgates to tax-exempt “dark money” donated to groups that are not required to disclose donors.
Trump said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was forced to apologize for negative comments about him.
Nobody forced her: After receiving criticism for her comments in an interview with The New York Times in which she said, “I can’t imagine what the country would be” if Trump won, Ginsburg issued a statement saying that her comments had been ill-advised.
But she was not forced to make the statement; it was voluntary.
Clinton said that Trump’s economic plan “might lose 3.5 million jobs.”
That’s one estimate: Hillary Clinton didn’t specify where her number came from, but she was most likely referring to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics that found Donald Trump’s economic strategy — including tax changes and a more aggressive stance toward trade — would reduce employment by 3.5 million people and cause a recession.
Trump’s allies have noted that the analysis was led by Mark Zandi, an economist who has donated to Clinton’s campaign. But her comments are an accurate description of the forecast by a credible firm, and Zandi has advised politicians in both parties.
Clinton said Trump used undocumented workers to build Trump Tower.
Not quite: In an exchange over immigration, Hillary Clinton went a step too far in her claim that Trump used undocumented workers to build Trump Tower.
While it’s true that undocumented Polish workers had worked on the project, the laborers were used to demolish the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue to make way for the tower, not to construct it.
“We’ve lost our jobs,” Trump said. “We’re not making things anymore.”
Quite the opposite: Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the past seven years, one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history. About 10 million more Americans have jobs today than when President Barack Obama took office.
And America has never made more things. The nation’s manufacturing output is at a record high.