Former President Donald Trump gave a shorter and gentler speech than usual on Monday night after CNN and other media outlets projected that he was the winner of the Iowa caucuses. But Trump nonetheless repeated a smattering of claims that are not true or that are unsupported by evidence. A brief fact check:
Terrorist attacks Trump touted the travel ban he imposed as president on people from certain countries, most of which have predominantly Muslim populations, and claimed that “for four years, we had no terror.”
Facts First: This is false. There were multiple terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency, including some by Islamic extremists. Trump has made this false claim on numerous occasions. You can read a full fact check on it here.
The border wall Trump claimed that during his presidency, “we built over 500 miles of wall” on the border with Mexico.
Facts First: This “over 500 miles” claim is false, an exaggeration. Official federal figures show that 458 miles of border wall were built under Trump — and that most of this construction occurred in parts of the border that already had some kind of barrier. You can read a full fact check on this claim here.
Migrants and mental institutions Decrying the influx of migrants under President Joe Biden, Trump claimed that some of them are “coming from mental institutions and insane asylums that are being emptied out into our country.”
Facts First: This claim is unsupported by evidence. In fact, when CNN inquired in April about Trump’s repeated assertions that foreign countries were emptying out mental health facilities to allow patients to enter the US as migrants, Trump’s own campaign was unable to find any evidence. You can read a full fact check from April here.
Jimmy Carter and mail-in ballots Trump said that “we have to get rid of mail-in ballots, because once you have mail-in ballots you have crooked elections – actually, Jimmy Carter’s commission said that a long time ago.”
Facts First: This claim is untrue in two ways.
The use of mail-in ballots does not make elections crooked. While elections experts say the occurrence of fraud is relatively higher with mail-in ballots than with in-person voting, they also say that fraud of any kind in American state and federal elections represents a miniscule percentage of total votes cast.
And while a commission that Carter co-chaired was generally skeptical of mail-in ballots, writing in a 2005 report that absentee voting is vulnerable to abuse in various ways, it did not say that elections in which mail-in ballots are used are always crooked. In fact, the commission’s report highlighted an example of a state it said had successfully conducted all-mail elections — and it did not call for a ban on mail-in voting, instead offering recommendations for making this voting more secure. You can read a full fact check here.
