RNC 2024 Day 4 updates: Trump pitches unity, but revives old grievances

“We got credit for the war and defeating ISIS and so many things, the great economy, the biggest tax cuts ever, the biggest regulation cuts Ever the creation of Space Force, the rebuilding of our military. We did so much," Trump said.

We’ll get to the tax cuts in a second. Here we’ll focus on the claim about ISIS. Trump rightly gets credit for shrinking the territory ISIS controlled. But it’s wrong to say ISIS was or is defeated.

According to data from IHS Markit, a private defense and security research firm, the area controlled by the Islamic State went from 90,800 square kilometers in January 2015 to 6,759 square kilometers in January 2018. That’s a 93 percent reduction in territory.

But the success Trump claims was built upon strategy and attacks that were launched under President Barack Obama.

The campaign to defeat ISIS took shape in September 2014 under the name of Operation Inherent Resolve. According to U.S. Air Force Central Command data, coalition forces engaged the enemy over 33,000 times between the launch of the operation and November 2017. (The Air Force includes strikes taking place in August 2014.) Counting only sorties in which at least one weapon was released, about three-fourths of the action took place during the Obama years. The Air Force reports over 104,000 missiles, bombs and other explosives dropped in the course of the campaign. About two-thirds of that came before Trump took office.

Though ISIS no longer holds territory, it continues to operate and has worked to expand its global presence through affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, according to the Congressional Research Service.

—PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman

The former president spent the first part of his speech delivering a dramatic retelling of his experience of being shot during an assassination attempt against him last weekend, an event that has loomed over the convention all week.

Though some polls show a growing share of Americans saying they’re OK with political violence, research shows those polls are likely overestimating that support. Polls with a lot of disengaged respondents (i.e., those who were not totally paying attention when taking a survey) are susceptible to overestimating support for violence, and vague questions that don’t specifically spell out what exactly is meant by “political violence” can also skew the results. I wrote more about that for 538 this week, showing that the vast majority of Americans reject political violence.

—538's Kaleigh Rogers

For most of the speech, Trump did not mention Biden by name until he brought up the "shame of this administration."

"I say it if you take the worst 10 presidents in the history of the United States, 10 worst, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done.

The crowd responded by shouting, "Fire him."

Trump claimed that was the only time he would refer to Biden.

1:06

Trump takes direct jab at Biden at RNC

The former president said the damage Joe Biden has done to the U.S. is "unthinkable."

ABCNews.com

Occasionally, Trump is undercutting his own pitch for unity by continuing to claim there was "cheating" in the 2020 election or calling Nancy Pelosi "crazy."

At these times, the teleprompter loaded with his speech is stopped as he makes off-the-cuff remarks.