Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president as the four-day convention of the Democrats came to an end, bringing the star-studded event to a close. There was a lot of fun and kudos for Harris and Tim Walz, his running companion, at the celebration. While the majority of presenters stayed to their prepared remarks and presented only the facts, there were a few who spread misinformation or made assertions that needed further background.
Take a look at the evidence supporting some of those assertions.
The pro-choice stance of President Trump
Trump would “ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress,” according to VICE PRESIDENT Kamala Harris.
WHOLE STORY: On Thursday morning’s Fox & Friends, Trump contradicted his previous statements to say, “I would never” in support of a nationwide ban on abortion. Federal prohibition is not going to happen. The rightful place for this is in the United States once again.
In a video posted to his Truth Social platform in April, he stated that he would let the states decide on the matter.
Trump shook his head and responded “no” when a reporter asked him, upon his arrival in Atlanta a few days later, if he would sign a nationwide ban on abortion.
However, Trump hinted a month ago that he would back a nationwide ban on abortions performed at or after the fifteenth week of gestation. Additionally, he frequently boasts about the Supreme Court justices he appointed who repealed Roe v. Wade, thereby removing the constitutional right to an abortion.
A federal prohibition on abortions performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy has Trump’s prior support. During his 2016 campaign, Trump wrote to anti-abortion leaders and promised to sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, demonstrating his dedication to this viewpoint.
During the 2018 March for Life event in Washington, the Republican presidential candidate once again spoke out in favor of the measure. The House of Representatives passed the bill in 2017, but it never made it out of the Senate. The law’s provisions allowed for exceptions such as protecting the life of a pregnant woman or victims of rape or incest.
On Monday, Trump told CBS News that he would not implement the Comstock Act, which limits the selling of abortion medicine over mail. More than half of all abortions in the United States include the drug mifepristone, which was the impetus for reviving the legislation, which had been passed in 1873.
Trump and the 2025 Initiative
“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would abandon our troops, our veterans, our allies and our principles,” said Colorado Representative Jason Crow.
A number of convention speakers have made connections between Trump and Project 2025. With repeated social media claims that he is unaware of the conservative initiative and has not read it, Trump has consistently distanced himself from it. During a speech in Michigan, he made the claim that Project 2025 was authored by individuals with strong conservative views and had ideas that are “seriously extreme.” Even if he did know who was planning the scheme, he has denied it.
Additionally, Project 2025 has said that it is not affiliated with any one political party or candidate. Still, there are a lot of connections to Trump’s orbit. Former high-ranking Trump administration officials are among those working on Project 2025. Paul Dans, who was Trump’s chief of staff in the US Office of Personnel Management, is working on the project as its director.
One of the movies from Project 2025 featured Karoline Leavitt, who was a spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign. A senior advisor, John McEntee was formerly the head of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump. Project 2025’s team will merge a lot of its work with the campaign once Trump announces his transition team in the summer, according to McEntee, who earlier this year informed the conservative news site The Daily Wire.
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, which established Project 2025, wrote a book that has not been released yet; Sen. JD Vance, who is running with Trump, wrote the forward.
Trump intends to follow Putin’s orders by cutting ties with NATO and withdrawing support from Ukraine, according to CROW once again. In chapters two and three, he lays out his plans to remove our military and national security experts and replace them with followers to MAGA.
THE FACTS: Project 2025 lays out three schools of thinking regarding U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, and one of them is that it shouldn’t continue. Nonetheless, it remains neutral on the matter.
It’s plausible that Trump supporters will oust experts in national security and the military, as Crow claims. Senior CIA leaders “must commit to carrying out the President’s agenda and be willing to take calculated risks,” according to one of its suggestions. Also mentioned is the need for “personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to the President’s declared national security policy priorities” on the National Security Council.
Supposed remarks made by Trump on service members who were captured or killed
“Stucks and losers” is Trump’s view of Americans who have given the ultimate sacrifice, according to Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.
THE FACTS: Kelly made the same or similar assertions as numerous other DNC speakers. The accusation that Trump had insulted American servicemen and women, including calling them “suckers” and “losers” in 2018, as well as making derogatory comments about them at a World War I cemetery outside of Paris, was first published in The Atlantic on September 3, 2020.
However, the fact remains that neither side has provided conclusive evidence that Trump actually said these things.
The Republican contender for president stated on the same day that the Atlantic article appeared that it is “completely false,” describing it as “a disgraceful situation” published by a “terrible magazine.”
Nearly immediately after leaving a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told reporters upon his return to Washington that he would “swear on anything” not to have spoken anything negative about our nation’s fallen heroes. They are more revered than everybody else. Absolutely not one single animal would ever utter such a remark.
Still, following the publication of the Atlantic story, two senior military officers and a defense department official with direct knowledge of the events verified to The Associated Press that Trump had indeed said certain things, including that he had called people “suckers” and “losers.”
achievements during Walz’s tenure as governor
“Tim has delivered — paid leave, school lunches and the biggest tax cut in Minnesota history,” Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar said, praising Tim Walz’s achievement as governor of the state.
THE REALITY: In the past two years, Walz has really signed into law measures that would establish a paid family and medical leave program in Minnesota, as well as ensure that all students, regardless of their financial situation, will have access to free breakfast and lunch programs at school.
Along with the two-year budget that was enacted last year, Walz also signed what his administration and Democratic legislative leaders have hailed as the biggest tax decrease in state history, amounting to almost $3 billion. Those filing as individuals were eligible for a $260 refundable tax credit, while families with three children may receive up to $1,300. Additionally, it set income restrictions for a child tax credit that lower-income families can claim, up to a maximum of $1,750 per child.
His claim that it is the largest tax decrease in the state’s history, however, has been disputed by his detractors. Given that low-income Minnesotans do not contribute to the state income tax, conservative think tank The Center of the American Experiment argues that providing them with tax credits is more akin to welfare and income redistribution than tax cuts.
Democrats took control of the legislature and prioritized targeted relief over Republican demands for universal, permanent tax cuts.
Is it true that Trump advocated criminal penalties for abortion?
Thursday, ALEXIS MCGILL JOHNSON asked, “Do we want a president who said women should be punished for having abortions?”
WHOLE STORY: “The states are going to say,” Trump stated in an April interview with Time magazine when asked if he would be okay with states electing to punish women who get abortions after the procedure is banned. Whether or not I feel comfortable is of little consequence. The states will make those decisions, thus it doesn’t matter at all.
While running for president in 2016, Trump was very clear that women who have abortions illegally should face “some form of punishment.” At a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the remark came amid an angry confrontation with Chris Matthews, a host on MSNBC.
However, Trump promptly reversed his stance. Hours later, his campaign issued a second and third statement attempting to retract his earlier comment, in which he stated that he thinks the people who should be penalized are abortion doctors and not their patients.
The first utterly rejected the notion that a woman should be punished for having an illegal abortion, while the second stated that he thought the matter ought to be handled by state governments.
“The doctor or anyone else performing this illegal act upon a woman would be legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump stated in his second statement if Congress were to pass a law criminalizing abortion and the federal courts upheld it or if any state were allowed to ban abortion under both federal and state law. “In this case, both the woman and the life she carries within her are victims.”
According to the Associated Press, Trump was met with opposition from both pro- and anti-abortion groups.