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| Fact-Checking the Las Vegas Democratic Debate | Fact-Checking the Las Vegas Democratic Debate |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Six of the candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination took the stage on Wednesday night in Las Vegas for their last debate before Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday. | Six of the candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination took the stage on Wednesday night in Las Vegas for their last debate before Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday. |
| Here is how the candidates’ remarks stacked up against the truth. | Here is how the candidates’ remarks stacked up against the truth. |
| WHAT THE FACTS ARE: | WHAT THE FACTS ARE: |
| WHAT MS. WARREN SAID: | WHAT MS. WARREN SAID: |
| “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” | “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” |
| This is mostly true. In 1990, Mr. Bloomberg’s colleagues at his financial data firm compiled a book of one-liners purportedly uttered by their boss, including a number of bawdy and sexist comments. Among the quotes was a quip about the British royals, in which Mr. Bloomberg used the terms “horsey-faced lesbian” and “fat broad” to refer to two female members of the Royal Family. | This is mostly true. In 1990, Mr. Bloomberg’s colleagues at his financial data firm compiled a book of one-liners purportedly uttered by their boss, including a number of bawdy and sexist comments. Among the quotes was a quip about the British royals, in which Mr. Bloomberg used the terms “horsey-faced lesbian” and “fat broad” to refer to two female members of the Royal Family. |
| In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg dismissed the book of quotes as “Borscht Belt jokes.” He has never explicitly admitted to having said the quotes in the book. Last year, though, a Bloomberg spokesman, Stu Loeser, issued a general comment about Mr. Bloomberg’s history of misogynist comments, saying: “Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life.” | In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg dismissed the book of quotes as “Borscht Belt jokes.” He has never explicitly admitted to having said the quotes in the book. Last year, though, a Bloomberg spokesman, Stu Loeser, issued a general comment about Mr. Bloomberg’s history of misogynist comments, saying: “Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life.” |
| What the Facts Are: | What the Facts Are: |
| What Ms. Warren said: | What Ms. Warren said: |
| “When Mayor Bloomberg was busy blaming African-Americans and Latinos for the housing crash of 2008, I was right here in Las Vegas literally just a few blocks down the street holding hearings on the banks that were taking away homes from millions of families.” | “When Mayor Bloomberg was busy blaming African-Americans and Latinos for the housing crash of 2008, I was right here in Las Vegas literally just a few blocks down the street holding hearings on the banks that were taking away homes from millions of families.” |
| This is exaggerated. Mr. Bloomberg’s comments were made in 2008 as the subprime mortgage crisis was pulling the country into the biggest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. Asked to explain the origins of the crisis in an appearance at Georgetown University, Mr. Bloomberg linked it to federal interference in the mortgage lending business and a wide variety of other factors like “very cheap money” in the form of low Federal Reserve interest rates, a failure by banks to consider that home prices could fall, and developers that built more houses than the market could absorb. | This is exaggerated. Mr. Bloomberg’s comments were made in 2008 as the subprime mortgage crisis was pulling the country into the biggest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. Asked to explain the origins of the crisis in an appearance at Georgetown University, Mr. Bloomberg linked it to federal interference in the mortgage lending business and a wide variety of other factors like “very cheap money” in the form of low Federal Reserve interest rates, a failure by banks to consider that home prices could fall, and developers that built more houses than the market could absorb. |
| Where his critics have focused, however, is on the first part of his 8-minute answer. He started his answer off by saying the present economic woes began when “there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone.” He then pointed to legislation passed by Congress to end the practice known as “redlining,” in which banks declared entire neighborhoods off limits to lending. These were usually poor, heavily minority communities. | Where his critics have focused, however, is on the first part of his 8-minute answer. He started his answer off by saying the present economic woes began when “there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone.” He then pointed to legislation passed by Congress to end the practice known as “redlining,” in which banks declared entire neighborhoods off limits to lending. These were usually poor, heavily minority communities. |
| “Once you started pushing in that direction,” he added, “banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like.” | “Once you started pushing in that direction,” he added, “banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like.” |
| Adding more unpredictability to the situation, he said, were bankers and Wall Street executives who had created such complex instruments to profit from mortgages that they did not, in essence, understand what they were selling. | Adding more unpredictability to the situation, he said, were bankers and Wall Street executives who had created such complex instruments to profit from mortgages that they did not, in essence, understand what they were selling. |
| What the facts are: | |
| What Mr. Buttigieg said: | |
| “Let’s put forward somebody who’s actually a Democrat.” | |
| This is exaggerated. Mr. Sanders is formally running for president as a Democrat, according to his Federal Election Commission filing. However, as a senator he is an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. His F.E.C. filing for his 2024 senate re-election campaign lists his party affiliation as “Independent” and his senate website continues to have an “I” next to his name. | |
| As for Mr. Bloomberg, he was a lifelong Democrat before running for mayor of New York City as a Republican in 2001. In 2007 he changed parties and became an Independent. In 2018, as he prepared to run for president, Mr. Bloomberg once again became a Democrat. | |
| What the Facts Are: | |
| What He Said: | |
| “I notice what everybody’s talking about is the plan that I first introduced.” | |
| This is exaggerated. Four candidates — Mr. Biden, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Mr. Bloomberg — support a public option, which anyone can buy into but retains private insurance. The concept has been around for many years. | |
| Mr. Biden first released his health care plan in July and Mr. Buttigieg delivered his in September. Ms. Klobuchar released hers in May, though it did not go into the same level of detail as the other plans on the implementation of the system. Mr. Bloomberg entered the race in November and released his plan in December. | |
| Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Buttigieg’s plans do share many facets — but that’s not particularly surprising or a sign of Mr. Biden’s particular leadership on the issue. (Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who has since dropped out of the race, has argued that Mr. Biden actually copied his 2017 health care plan, which Ms. Klobuchar supported.) | |
| “It’s not unusual to see presidential candidates have health care reform proposals that are very similar,” said Larry Levitt, the president of the nonprofit Kaiser Health Foundation. “Many of the ideas in the Biden and Buttigieg plans have been circulating in health policy circles for several years. Candidates rarely create these policy proposals from scratch.” | |
| Their plans, Mr. Levitt said, “represent is an emerging consensus among Democrats of what a health care reform plan might look like in 2021 other than Medicare for all, if the party wins in 2020.” | |
| What the Facts Are: | |
| What MR. Sanders Said: | |
| “Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop and frisk, which went after African-American and Latino people in an outrageous way.” | |
| This is true. A judge ruled in 2013 that the tactics underlying stop and frisk as practiced in New York disproportionately stopped blacks and Latinos. | |
| What MR. Biden Said: | |
| “He had stop and frisk, throwing close to 5 million young black men up against a wall.” | |
| He later said, “The reason that stop and frisk changed is because Barack Obama sent moderators to see what was going on. When we sent them there to say this practice has to stop, the mayor thought it was a terrible idea we send them there, a terrible idea.” | |
| This is mostly false. New York’s wholesale stop and frisk policy began its death spiral with a report from the New York Civil Liberties Union in May 2012 that revealed more than 685,000 stops had been made the year before. The next month, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the program was going to be reformed, and over the next year, the number of stops plummeted. Lawsuits were also filed. In August 2013, as Mr. Bloomberg approached his final months in office, a judge ruled against the city and as part of the remedies, appointed a monitor. Mr. Bloomberg strongly objected to the monitor, to no avail. By then, the number of monthly stops had declined by more than 90 percent from its peak. | |
| Fact checks by Michael M. Grynbaum, Jeremy W. Peters, Alan Rappeport, Linda Qiu and Jim Dwyer. |