Part #2 Fact Checking the RNC's Glaring Error's; D.Trump & Other Speakers

Republican National Convention 2016: Fact-Checking Donald Trump and Other Speakers
By Chris Good  John Kruzel   Noah Fitzgerel

Jul 22, 2016, 12:44 AM ET

DAY ONE: Monday, July 18

Fact Check: ISIS Is Present in All 50 States

Claim: ISIS terrorists are present in all 50 states.
Rating: Questionable. Rep. Michael McCaul said that there have been ISIS-related investigations in all 50 states. In this sense, there have been investigations into possible ISIS supporters in all 50 states, but it is not possible to confirm whether ISIS terrorists are actually present.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said that “In fact, according to the FBI, ISIS is present in all 50 states. Think about that for a moment. Terrorists from ISIS are in every one of our 50 states.”
Background: Bret Baier in March asked McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, “At one point there was talk that there were investigations into ISIS in all 50 states. Is that still the case?” McCaul responded, “That’s still the case. We’ve arrested over 80 ISIS followers.”
Last year James Comey said that the FBI had opened investigations into individuals “in various stages of radicalizing” in all 50 states, in connection to concerns about homegrown terrorism.
Radicalization often happens online and from afar, according to recent studies. Being in various stages of radicalization does not necessarily mean that person is an ISIS member or a terrorist. The New York Times has profiled people in such stages, such as a young woman in Washington state who was attracted to an ISIS community on Twitter but did not act on her affinity for ISIS recruiters.
Comey’s and McCaul’s statements generally support Ernst’s statement, but the senator’s characterization is broader than what we can factually conclude.

Fact Check: American Trade Deficits with China and South Korea Have Multiplied

Claim: U.S. trade deficits with South Korea have doubled, deficits with China have risen fivefold.
Rating: Mostly true. The South Korea deficit has more than doubled since a free-trade agreement in 2011. The U.S. trade deficit with China has risen threefold since the permanent normalization of trade relations in 2000, adjusting for inflation.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said trade deals “have not worked for the American people. When those agreements were signed, President [Bill] Clinton and Obama promised our dangerous trade deficits with China and Korea would be reduced, but the deficit with China has increased fivefold, and the deficit with Korea has more than doubled in just four years.”
Background: Criticizing trade deals has been a central argument for Trump and his backers. Here, Sessions’ statement is mostly accurate.
After Obama enacted a free-trade agreement with South Korea in 2011, the U.S. deficit with South Korea grew from $13.2 billion in 2011 to $28.3 billion in 2015, the last full year of statistics maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau. Even adjusting for inflation, Sessions is correct.
After Bill Clinton signed a law granting normal trade relations to China in 2000, the U.S.deficit with China grew from $83.8 billion in 2000 to $367.1 billion in 2015 — a more than fourfold increase. In nominal dollars, Sessions is close to correct, but adjusting for inflation, he is farther off the mark: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, $83.3 billion in 2000 dollars is worth $115.3 billion in 2015 dollars. Taking inflation into account, the increase is closer to threefold.
Other trade agreements present a mixed bag. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico skyrocketed from $1.6 billion in 1993, when NAFTA was passed, to $60.6 billion in 2015. The Central America Free Trade Agreement turned deficits with Honduras and El Salvador into surpluses. A 2011 deal with Panama hasn’t meant much change.

Fact Check: Hillary Clinton Supports Influx of Syrian Refugees

Claim: Clinton supports “surge of Syrian refugees.”
Rating: True. Clinton said she would like to move from Obama’s goal of 10,000 Syrian refugees to 65,000
Rep. Mike McCaul said, “And now Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same. Open borders, executive amnesty and a surge of Syrian refugees.”
Background: After Obama directed his administration in September 2015 to accept at least 10,000 additional Syrian refugees, Clinton went further, saying, “I would like to see us move from what is a good start, with 10,000, to 65,000.”

Fact Check: Clinton’s Immigration Policy Promises ‘Open Borders’

Claim: Clinton’s immigration policy promises “open borders.”
Rating: False. Clinton’s immigration plan calls for U.S. border protection and the deportation of violent criminals.
McCaul said, “Tonight, we heard powerful testimony from people who have been devastated by Obama’s reckless immigration policies. Haven’t we had enough?”
Background: A signature feature of Donald Trump’s tough-on-immigration stance is his promise to build a wall on the southern border of the United States and make Mexico pay for it. To underscore the contrast between him and Clinton, Trump has caricatured her immigration policy by saying it would create “open borders.” This claim was ruled false by PolitiFact and repeated last night by McCaul.
In fact, Clinton’s plan for immigration reform includes a call to protect U.S. borders and a focus on “detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.” While on the campaign trail, she has touted her support for border security. “I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. And I do think you have to control your borders.”

Fact Check: Clinton lied about the cause of the Benghazi attack

Claim: Clinton lied to families of Benghazi victims, telling them the attack was inspired by protests over a controversial video.
Rating: Questionable. Clinton disputes Patricia Smith’s claim that Clinton told her that a video was the reason for her son’s death.
“When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible,” said Pat Smith, the mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith.
Background: At a Washington Post–Univision debate in March, Jorge Ramos showed Clinton a clip of Pat Smith speaking on Fox News, in which she said that Clinton and other administration officials “all told me it was a video when they knew, they knew it was not a video” in explaining the reason for the Benghazi attack. Ramos asked, “Secretary Clinton, did you lie to them?”
Clinton responded, “I certainly can’t even imagine the grief that she has for losing her son. But she’s wrong. She’s absolutely wrong. I and everybody in the administration — all the people she named: the president, the vice president, Susan Rice — we were scrambling to get information that was changing literally by the hour. And when we had information, we made it public. But then sometimes we had to go back and say we have new information that contradicts it.”
State Deptartment emails obtained by ABC News in 2013 show a changing story about the Benghazi attack, as administration talking points were developed. All versions of those talking points include references to protests inspiring the attack, but references to CIA warnings of a terrorist threat and the CIA’s belief that a terrorist group was involved in the attack were removed.

Fact Check: US Military Responders Were Ordered to Stand Down During the 2012 Benghazi Attack

Claim: U.S. military responders were ordered to stand down during the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Rating: Highly questionable. Every investigation ever done on Benghazi concluded there was no stand down order.
John Tiegen, one of the six U.S. military responders to the 2012 Benghazi attack, said, “We immediately got our gear ready to go, got the vehicles ready, and on three separate occasions, we got told to wait by the chief of base, Bob, and we got told to stand down. Next thing we know, we hear the State Department over the radio saying ‘Hey, if you guys don’t get here, we are all going to die!” Stand down order be damned. The consulate’s under siege. We took off. We left. We weren’t waiting no more.”
Background: Republicans often cite the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, as an emblem of the national security failures of the Obama administration and the State Department under Clinton. One of the more politically potent claims is that the CIA station chief in Benghazi ordered U.S. military responders to stand down as the attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex was underway.
But according to ABC News’ Justin Fishel, every investigation ever done on Benghazi has concluded there was no stand down order, including the House Intelligence report and the most recent House Select Committee on Benghazi, an investigation that lasted two years and cost more than $7 million.
Yet even as investigators said no stand down order was given, some people who claimed to have direct knowledge have furthered this claim, which was also portrayed in the movie “13 Hours.” Former Special Forces Officer Kris Paronto, one of the CIA contractors who fought that night, told Politico in January, “There is no sensationalism in that. We were told to stand down … Those words were used verbatim — 100 percent.”

Fact Check: No One Was Held Accountable for Operation Fast and Furious

Claim: No one was held accountable for the failures of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Operation Fast and Furious.
Rating: False. Some people at the Department of Justice were punished over the controversial gun-tracking program.
Kent Terry, the brother of slain border patrol agent Brian Terry, said, “Two weapons recovered from the scene were traced back to Obama’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation. Guns were used against Americans on American soil, and yet no one in [the] Obama administration has been held accountable.”
Background: Brian Terry’s death is a significant point of criticism in the scandal over Operation Fast and Furious, a program to track guns trafficked to violent criminal gangs in Mexico. The operation went awry and caused a scandal for Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration, as U.S. agents were attacked with U.S. weapons and civilians were massacred with the guns, according to reporting by Univision’s investigative unit in 2012.
Critics called for more severe measures, but some officials faced consequences. A DOJ Office of the Inspector General report in 2012 recommended disciplinary and administrative review for 14 DOJ and ATF officials, including the head of the DOJ’s criminal division. After the report’s release, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein resigned for failing to share information on the program with top DOJ officials. In 2011 three ATF officials were reassigned, resigned or otherwise left the ATF in a shakeup.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, raised questions in 2015 about why an ATF agent was not fired for whistleblower abuse after that consequence was recommended, The Washington Times reported.

Fact Check: Security Denied in Benghazi

Claim: “All security had been pulled from the embassy” in Benghazi.
Rating: False. Security requests were denied, but there was U.S. security in Benghazi. The consular facility in Benghazi, not the embassy in Tripoli, was attacked.
“All security had been pulled from the embassy, he explained, and when he asked why, he never received a response,” said Patricia Smith.
Background: The State Department did deny requests for additional security in Libya, but it is not accurate to say all security was pulled.
Internal emails obtained by ABC in 2012 showed requests for additional security were denied. The security team at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli wanted to retain a DC-3 airplane for security purposes. Emails reflected that a State Department official denied the request.
But there was security at the facility in Benghazi, and, ABC News’ Justin Fishel notes, there was a fight when the facility was attacked.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republican-national-convention-2016-fact-checking-speakers/story?id=40684860

sassy wrote:So basically he is lying through his back teeth, and then some!