Fact Check: Trump’s Account of His First 100 Days in Office

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/politics/fact-check-trump-100-days.html

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WASHINGTON — On his 100th day in office, President Trump offered familiar misleading defenses and boasts about his early progress, his setbacks and his predecessor.

Mr. Trump began his Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania with attacks on the news media, before giving himself oversize credit for accomplishments. He followed a similar pattern in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday morning.

Here’s an assessment.

This needs context. In his 100-day plan, Mr. Trump vowed to cancel payments to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, a financial program intended to help poorer countries mitigate the effects of climate change. His budget blueprint includes “eliminating U.S. funding related to the Green Climate Fund,” but the proposal has yet to be enacted.

While Mr. Trump is right that the United States has said it would add $3 billion to the fund, it is among 43 contributing countries, many of them with advanced economies like Japan ($1.5 billion), the United Kingdom ($1.2 billion) and France ($1 billion). The United States ranked 11th in the world in terms of amount per capita, according to J. Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies at Brown University.

China, Russia and India have yet to add to the pool, but China has committed billions to provide direct climate-action assistance to other countries, and Russia has pledged $10 million to a separate United Nations climate program.

This needs context. Mr. Trump may have been referring to an estimate from the conservative Heritage Foundation that is disputed by environmental groups. The World Resources Institute, for example, argues that the Heritage study relies on “outdated and outlier assumptions” and ignores the benefits of the agreement.

Studies from environmental organizations, the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, independent researchers, Citibank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have estimated that not acting on climate change would cost the economy trillions.

This is misleading. The United States economy added about 533,000 jobs in the first three months of 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But it’s a stretch for Mr. Trump to take credit for all of these jobs.

The January figure (216,000) was estimated before he took office, while the February figure (219,000) was conducted about three weeks into his administration. In March, the number that reflects the first full month of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the economy added 98,000 jobs.

This needs context. Mr. Trump cited this ban and another lifetime ban for government officials on foreign lobbying. The five-year lobbying ban could actually weaken an Obama-era rule that prohibited federal employees from lobbying until the end of the administration.

False. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, precedes Mr. Obama’s presidency by decades. The gang was formed in the 1980s in Los Angeles by immigrants fleeing civil war in El Salvador, and it gained notoriety in the 1990s for brutal violence.

By 2005, MS-13 already had 50,000 hard-core members internationally and 10,000 active in 31 states and Washington, the same numbers Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited in early April.

Some conservative outlets have argued that Mr. Obama’s program giving refuge to Central American minors attempting to escape gang violence allowed MS-13 to flourish by admitting potential recruits. (Mr. Trump’s claim is less nuanced and more inaccurate.)

This is misleading. Mr. Trump may have sped up the process, but costs were decreasing before he got involved. The Air Force projected about $600 million in savings on Dec. 19, two days before Mr. Trump met with Lockheed’s chief executive.

This is misleading. All member nations contribute an amount proportional to their gross domestic product to NATO’s direct spending. Few meet the commitment to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on the alliance’s defense efforts, but NATO members agreed in September 2014 to meet the commitment in the next decade, nine months before Mr. Trump announced his candidacy.

This is misleading. Mr. Trump promised to declare China a currency manipulator during the campaign, and did so in an early April interview with The Financial Times. He told The Wall Street Journal later that month that he would no longer do so, and the Treasury Department followed his lead.

Mr. Trump is right that China used to keep the value of its currency, the renminbi, artificially cheap, but his timeline is off. China has attempted to prevent its currency from depreciating more in recent years, predating Mr. Trump’s labeling the country a currency manipulator.

This is misleading. It’s unclear which version of the bill Mr. Trump was referring to, but the original Republican plan and an amended version released last week would change insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, as the Upshot’s Margot Sanger-Katz reported.

This needs context. Countries with gross domestic product growth upward of 5 percent tend to be developing economies like Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Tanzania, according to World Bank data. The United States growth is on par with other developed nations like Denmark, France and Japan.

This is misleading. Mr. Flynn resigned in February after it was revealed that he had mislead Vice President Mike Pence about contact with Russian officials. The New York Times reported in late April that Mr. Flynn failed to properly disclose a payment by a foreign government to the Defense Department in 2014.

Mr. Flynn, who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Mr. Obama, was dismissed in 2014, but had a security clearance until January 2016. Mr. Trump appointed him as national security adviser after the November 2016 election.