From touting the successes of stop and frisk in New York to the state of African American communities across the US, here’s a fact check of Trump’s statements

“That was never said, you know that.” – 22 September, Philadelphia.



Only a few hours before he visited Geno’s Steaks in South Philadelphia, Trump told a crowd – and rolling cameras – in Pittsburgh that “drugs are a very, very big factor in what you’re watching on television at night”, referring to riots against police abuses in Charlotte, North Carolina, the night before.

He denied having said this to a reporter who asked him about it in Philadelphia. He added, as if in support of his original statement: “Drugs are a big problem all over the country. They’re flowing in like never before. Drugs are a big, big problem.”

“I think stop and frisk, in New York City, it was so incredible, the way it worked. Now, we had a very good mayor. But New York City was incredible the way it worked.” – 21 September, on Fox News.



The controversial police tactic of stop and frisk, which became a hallmark of New York policing through the mayorships of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, has landed the city in federal court, where a judge ruled it unconstitutional. One research paper, unpublished through peer review, found modest drops in some crimes. A second paper, published through peer review, found problems in the first study and “few significant effects” of the tactic.

A New York Civil Liberties Union report, on 12 years’ worth of police data, found young black and Hispanic men were targeted for stops at a vastly higher proportion than white men: more than half the people searched were black and about 30% were Hispanic. Among more than 5m stops during the Bloomberg administration, police found a gun less than 0.02% of the time, according to the report. NYPD records between 2004 and 2012 show similar figures: in 4.4m stops, weapons were seized from 1.0% of black people, 1.1% from Hispanic people and 1.4% of white people.

New York’s long-term decline in crime rates began before Giuliani took office in the 1994, and its causes were and are diverse: data-driven policing with the Compstat system, the growth of the police force by 35% over the decade, incarceration increases by 24%, and the 39% unemployment decline that matched with national economic growth. Not even the loudest supporters of stop and frisk, including Bloomberg, whose last term Trump has called “a disaster”, have argued the tactic alone reduced crime to its current lows.

Trump also told Fox and Friends stop-and-frisk would let police “look and they will take the gun away” from people, which seems to fly in the face of his avowed support for gun rights for legal owners by ceding authority to police to decide “who shouldn’t be having a gun”.

“Our African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before, ever, ever, ever.” – 20 September, Kenansville, North Carolina.

This statement defies most of American history, and if meant to refer to the past 50 years it is still wrong by most if not all metrics. Trump’s surrogates have argued that his use of the word “ever” did not actually include the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Great Depression and segregation – nearly two full centuries from 1776 through the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1968.

Data on employment, education and health show empirical evidence for the persistent reality of discrimination against black Americans, but also show major gains in the last few decades. In 2015, black people earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings, whether full- or part-time, according to a Pew Research analysis. The black unemployment rate in August 2016 was 8.1%, compared with 4.4% for white people, but still lower than for most of the last 40 years. Black life expectancy has increased from the mid-30s around 1900 to the mid-70s in 2016, according to the CDC. Education rates have similarly increased in the last 40 years, according to the census.

“Fifty-eight percent of African American youth are not working. Can’t get a job.” 16 September 2016, Miami.

The August unemployment rate for African Americans aged 16-19 was 26.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For young black people in a slightly wider age range, the rate was 20.6% in July, compared with 9.9% of young white people.

Trump may have used a statistic called the “employment-population ratio”, which was 45.2% in August for black people aged 16-24, but this figure includes everyone, including high school and college students who aren’t looking for work. The ratio for white people in this group was 54.2% in August. Trump ignores who is looking for work and who is not.

“It can’t get any worse. The crime. The jobs. No jobs. Worst education. More unsafe. You go to Afghanistan, right? We hear Afghanistan. I mean, we have cities that are far more dangerous than Afghanistan. Inner cities.” – 16 September 2016, Miami.

Trump often cites Chicago’s shooting crisis as evidence that the US is plagued by dangerous crime, but even that city, which has the most homicides in the US, does not compare to Afghanistan. In 2015, Chicago had 2,988 people who were victims of gun violence, according to the Chicago Tribune, and 488 homicides in all. The city has more than 500 homicides so far this year, per the paper, and more than 2,100 victims of gun violence.

In Afghanistan between January and June 2016, 1,601 civilians have been killed and 3,565 injured, according to the United Nations. The figures include 388 killed and 1,121 injured children. The UN reported 3,545 civilians killed and 7,457 injured in 2015. More than 80,000 people have been displaced by violence this year. The US and Afghan forces control only about 70% of the country, while the Taliban and militants control the other 30%, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff told the Senate on Thursday.

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.” – 16 September, Washington DC.

There is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with the false rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, nor did Clinton have anything to do with Donald Trump’s five years of questions about birth certificates, which he finally recanted last Friday.

Trump’s campaign has tried to blame several people who were, if at all, tangentially related to the Clinton campaign. A former aide named Mark Penn wrote a 2007 memo that Obama’s “lack of American roots” could “hold him back”. But he added: “We are never going to say anything about his background.” The Clinton campaign never acted on his advice, and he was dismissed in April 2008.

Some Clinton supporters have been blamed over anonymous chain emails questioning Obama’s citizenship, but none of the rumormongers were linked to the campaign. Philip Berg, a former Pennsylvania official who supported Clinton, filed a lawsuit in 2008 over Obama’s birth certificate; the suit was thrown out because it was groundless. Sidney Blumenthal, an old friend of the Clintons who frequently sent them unsolicited advice, reportedly asked reporters to investigate Obama’s birth, but he has denied this and denounced the conspiracy.

As fellow fact-checkers at Politifact have noted, a Texas volunteer for Clinton named Linda Starr eventually joined Berg’s failed lawsuit; there is nothing to suggest Starr had any influence in the campaign at any level. Campaign volunteers who forwarded emails falsely alleging Obama is Muslim resigned when they were found out.