Fact-checking Donald Trump's RNC speech on immigration, the economy, world affairs and more
Our teams analyzed his comments to separate fact from fiction.
Former President Donald Trump closed out the final night of the 2024 Republican National Convention with a 92-minute speech that addressed a host of issues on Americans' minds.
The economy under the Trump and Biden administrations, events in the Middle East and immigration were just some of the topics the official GOP nominee addressed as he made his case to voters.
The ABC News politics team, 538 and the PolitiFact team analyzed his comments to separate fact from fiction.
IMMIGRATION
Border crossings
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump argued there was "a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land."
FACT CHECK: This is false. There is no evidence of a major surge in crime caused by recent arrivals and Trump's claims ignore the fact that crime is down across the country overall.
Violent crimes were down 6% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the same time frame last year, according to the latest FBI statistics. There was a 13% decline in murders and a 4% drop in property crimes across the country, the data showed.
That declining trend followed unprecedented spikes in 2019 and 2020, Trump’s last two years in office, stats showed.
U.S. citizens also commit crimes at higher rates than undocumented immigrants.
A 2020 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that U.S.-born citizens "are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes" than undocumented immigrants.
-ABC News
The border wall
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump said he would end the immigration crisis "by closing our border and finishing the wall, most of which I have already built.
FACT CHECK: False. Contrary to Trump’s claim that he built more than 500 miles of border wall, by the end of his term, and after various funding fights in Washington, he had actually implemented roughly 450 miles of barriers – much of which was just upgrading existing barriers that already existed, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Of that, roughly 50 miles were new walls constructed where no barriers previously existed, roughly 30 miles were "secondary walls" built along existing walls and roughly 370 miles were upgrading previous barriers.
-ABC News' Armando Garcia
Undocumented immigration and crime
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump argued dangerous criminals "are coming from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and terrorists at levels never seen before."
FACT CHECK: Needs context. Trump was likely referring to the latest statistics released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
-ABC News' Armando Garcia
'Catch and release'
TRUMP CLAIM: While discussing the border and immigration, Trump said his administration "ended all catch-and-release."
FACT CHECK: False, needs more context. Though Trump attempted to end the catch-and-release practice under his presidency, migrants were more likely to be "released" through this process under Trump compared to Biden, according to the libertarian Cato Institute. The Cato analysis found that Biden’s immigration authorities released 48.6% of individuals apprehended at the border, while the Trump administration released 52.2% over roughly a two-year period.
"Of course, the absolute numbers of releases have been higher under President Biden, but that reflects much higher arrivals, not any meaningful change in policy," Cato's David J. Bier wrote.
-ABC News
THE ECONOMY
Trump’s tax legislation while in office
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump has repeatedly claimed the tax legislation passed during his presidency was the largest tax cut ever.
FACT CHECK: Needs more explanation. Trump’s tax cut was, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of GDP, it ranked seventh.
He also said, "People don't realize I brought taxes way down, way, way down, and yet, we took in more revenues the following year than we did when the tax rate was much higher."
That’s technically true, but misleading.
If you look at when the tax bill passed, it’s not clear at all that an increase in tax receipts followed the bill’s passage. Every year, the U.S. population grows, and -- except during a recession -- the size of the economy grows, too. "So you’d expect receipts to be higher every year, all other things equal," said Benjamin R. Page, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, told PolitiFact previously.
If you look at when the tax bill passed, it’s not clear at all that an increase in tax receipts followed the bill’s passage. For the three months of fiscal 2018 prior to the tax cut, individual income tax collections rose by 10.8% over the equivalent period from 2017. But the rise for the seven months after the tax cut was 6.7%.
And if you look at total tax collections from every category, rather than just individual income taxes, the picture is even worse. During the seven-month period after the tax bill was passed, total receipts actually fell slightly compared to the equivalent period in 2017 by about a tenth of a percentage point.
Perhaps the most revealing comparison takes into account the May-to-July period because it excludes the spike in payments in April, when most Americans pay taxes on income generated in 2017 before the tax law was passed. During that period, individual income tax collections fell by about 1% compared to 2017.
-PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson and Aaron Sharockman
The economy under Trump
TRUMP CLAIM: During his presidency, Trump said the U.S. had the best economy in the history of our country, "no inflation" and soaring incomes.
FACT CHECK: False. One of the strongest ways to assess the economy is the unemployment rate, which fell during Trump’s presidency to levels untouched in five decades. But his successor, Joe Biden, matched or exceeded those levels.
Another measure, the annual increases in gross domestic product, were broadly similar under Trump to what they were during the final six years under his predecessor, Obama. And GDP growth under Trump was well below that of previous presidents.
Wage growth increased under Trump, but to say they soared is an exaggeration. Adjusted for inflation, wages began rising during the Barack Obama years and kept increasing under Trump. But these were modest compared with the 2% a year increase seen in the 1960s.
Another metric — the growth rate in personal consumption per person, adjusted for inflation -- wasn’t higher under Trump than previous presidents. For many families, this statistic serves an economic activity bottom line, determining how much they can spend on food, clothing, housing, health care and travel.
In Trump’s three years in office through January 2020, real consumption per person grew by 2% a year. Of the 30 nonoverlapping three-year periods from 1929 to the end of his presidency, Trump’s periods ranked in the bottom third.
As for inflation being zero, that’s also wrong. It was low, ranging between 1.8% and 2.4% increases year-over-year in 2017, 2018 and 2019. This is roughly the range the Federal Reserve likes to see. During the pandemic-dominated year of 2020, inflation fell to 1.2%, because demand plummeted as entertainment and travel collapsed.
-PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson and Aaron Sharockman
The state of the auto industry
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump said he would reverse government regulations to encourage the development of electric vehicles, saying he’d be "saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now."
FACT CHECK: False. During Biden’s presidency, employment in auto and parts manufacturing had risen by 127,800 jobs through December 2023.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
THE MIDDLE EAST
ISIS
TRUMP CLAIM: "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.
FACT CHECK: Needs context. 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% 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
Afghanistan exit
TRUMP CLAIM: Discussing U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, Trump said, “We also left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment.”
FACT CHECK: False. That’s wrong.
The United States spent $88.6 billion in Afghanistan providing security assistance over the course of two decades, and only a fraction of it was for hardware. The lion’s share of that is for salaries for members of the Afghan army and national police, FactCheck.org reported.
As of June 30, 2021, there were 167 usable aircraft, including 23 A-29 attack planes and 33 UH-60 Black Hawk military helicopters in Afghanistan, according to a July 2021 report released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
But there has been no full accounting of how much aircraft or other military equipment was still there in mid-August, when the Taliban regained control. Defense expert John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, told PolitiFact "very little" of the $88.6 billion would have been spent on equipment. He estimated that the military equipment remaining is worth less than $10 billion, though virtually all of it could be considered under the category of weapons.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
THE POLLS
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump claimed in his speech that he's leading in Nevada by 14 points.
FACT CHECK: False. According to 538's polling average, he leads Biden by only 6 points in the Silver State. Even the best poll for Trump gives him only a 10-point lead in Nevada.
-538's Nathaniel Rakich
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S RECORD
Inflation
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump said, "We’ve had the worst inflation we’ve ever had under this person [Biden]."
FACT CHECK: False. Although inflation is still considered an economic problem for the U.S., the overall rate is nowhere near a record.
The highest inflation rates were recorded in the 1970s and early 1980s when the annual price increase sometimes hovered between 12% and 15%. The highest rate on Biden’s watch was around 9% in summer 2022. That was the highest monthly figure in about four decades but not the highest ever.
Inflation is down to around 3% now, about two-thirds lower than its 2022 peak.
-PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson
Taxes under Biden
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump said of Biden's administration, "This is the only administration that said we're going to raise your taxes by four times what you're paying now."
FACT CHECK: False. Biden proposes a tax increase of roughly 7% over the next decade, not 300%, as Trump claims. About 83% of the proposed Biden tax increase would be borne by the top 1% of taxpayers, who earn just under $1 million a year in income.
-PolitiFact’s Sara Swann