AP FACT CHECK: Shutdown produces lots of overblown rhetoric
WASHINGTON—The weeklong drama over the hourslong government shutdown set loose overblown rhetoric from both parties while President Donald Trump wrestled inartfully with turmoil in the stock market, one of his favorite bragging points until it tanked.
On the sidelines of the budget battle, Trump pitched his campaign against the MS-13 gang. He seemed to overstate the reach of the violent organization in his determination to link immigrants with criminal behavior and to justify money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Meantime his EPA chief misrepresented the science on global warming, some of it coming from his own agency.
A review of some statements by Trump and other public figures during a week of turbulence on multiple fronts:
TRUMP: “We’re here to discuss the tremendous threat of MS-13, one of the most violent and vicious gangs anywhere in the world. We’ve really never seen anything quite like this.”— remarks Tuesday at a law enforcement meeting.
THE FACTS: The group is unquestionably violent, but its overall numbers are somewhat limited. Federal prosecutors believe MS-13 now has thousands of members across the country, yet statistics show they account for less than 1 percent of total U.S. gang membership.
Formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s by El Salvador refugees and more recently expanded in Central America, the group is indeed linked to big number of homicides in certain parts of the U.S., including 25 killings on New York’s Long Island in the past two years. Even so, an FBI report put the group well behind other gangs for crimes on the southwest border with the Surenos, Barrio Azteca and Tango Blast ranked in the top three.
Despite Trump’s contention that “MS-13 recruits through our broken immigration system, violating our borders, and it just comes right through,” the gang has many U.S.-born members at this point—people who by virtue of U.S. citizenship can’t be denied entry based on their nationality, or deported. The government has not said recently how many members it thinks are citizens and immigrants.
TRUMP: “In the ‘old days,’ when good news was reported, the Stock Market would go up. Today, when good news is reported, the Stock Market goes down. Big mistake, and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!”—tweet Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It’s not that simple, and it’s not true that a positive economic indicator necessarily means a rise in stocks. The opposite can happen, depending on what sort of chain reaction is anticipated by investors.
The market dive was prompted in part by the news that wages are rising at the best pace in eight years after a prolonged bout of sluggish gains. Higher wages can lead to more inflation. The Federal Reserve could try to restrain inflation by raising interest rates, which would hurt corporate profits and limit the pace of economic growth. That’s how good news for workers can come with a downside for investors.
Likewise, bad news can make the market rise. In 2016, for example, the Labor Department initially reported that employers added a mere 38,000 jobs in May. After slipping that day, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed the next trading day. A weak jobs report can cause stocks to dip briefly, then surge the following days on the belief that the Fed will hold off on rate increases.
TRUMP: “The ones that don’t want security at the Southern border, or any other border, are the Democrats. They don’t care about the security of our country. They don’t care about MS-13 killers pouring into our country. … Nobody was bringing them out before us.”—speech Monday in Ohio.
THE FACTS: Recent history does not show such indifference. The U.S. carried out record deportations during the Obama administration and, on MS-13 specifically, conducted raids of the group and announced a freeze on its U.S. assets.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at the meeting Tuesday that MS-13 is “the first gang dangerous enough to be classified as a transnational criminal organization.” That’s true, but it was the Obama administration that took that unprecedented action.
Trump’s Justice Department has indirectly credited the Obama administration, in its early years, with putting heavy pressure on the gang. It said, “Through the combined efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, great progress was made diminishing or severely (disrupting) the gang within certain targeted areas of the U.S. by 2009 and 2010.” That was not enough to crush MS-13 and Trump is taking extra steps toward that goal. But he is not the first to go after the gang.
REP. NANCY PELOSI, Democratic House leader: “What it accomplished was to say, we have our beliefs and we are willing to fight for them, and we are willing to fight for them on the floor of the House. It was a simple question to the speaker, why can’t we have a vote in the House of Representatives?”— telling reporters Thursday why she staged an eighthour speech to press House Republicans to allow a vote on protecting those young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are living here illegally.
THE FACTS: Her speech generated headlines for its record length, but was it really a fight for her party’s beliefs? Despite her rhetoric, many House Democrats said they weren’t pushed by Pelosi’s leadership team to oppose the Senate budget deal without the immigration protections. Her performance also had no immediate impact on Republican leaders, who declined to schedule a vote on the young immigrants even though they needed Democratic support for the budget pact to end a second government shutdown.
Ultimately, 73 House Democrats voted in favor of the budget bill, allowing it to pass 240-186.
Pelosi’s speech seemed more aimed at liberals in the Democratic Party who were furious that Senate Democrats cut a budget deal without the protections for about 800,000 young people brought to the U.S. as children and now living in the country illegally. Pelosi has been stressing since late last year that those protections should be tied to spending bills as a way to force action on the issue.
Her reference to fighting for “our beliefs” glosses over her party’s divisions on the matter.