Eight Republican presidential candidates. The fourth debate. Here's POLITICO's analysis of where the Republican field stretched the truth, steered around some inconvenient facts, or just plain got it wrong.



Trump vs. Fiorina vs. Putin vs. the facts

Of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump said: “I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 minutes’ the other night."

Er, how well exactly? Trump and Putin did both appear on the season premiere of the news program in September. But Trump’s interview was filmed in Manhattan, Putin’s thousands of miles away in Russia. The Donald was almost certainly just having fun with this one: Even on the show, there was never any pretense they were in the same place.

For Carly Fiornia, the question is just how green that room was. During the debate, she followed Trump’s claim with a little jab: “I have met Mr. Putin as well,” Fiorina said. “Not in a green room for a show but in a private meeting."

But back in September, Fiorina had Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon riveted as she recounted a story about meeting Putin in….well, you guessed it.

Here’s Fiorina: “I met him in Beijing. We were in sort of a green room setting actually. The two of us were giving a speech, each of us were giving a speech at a major economic conference called APAC. And so the two of us were sitting sort of in a chair like this, about this close, for 45 minutes before his speech and before mine.”

— Ben Schreckinger and Darren Samuelsohn



Rand Paul's carbon claim? That's some very deep history



Rand Paul responded to a question about his support for a Senate resolution stating "human activity contributes to climate change" by laying out his doubts about global warming science, and declaring there have been “times when carbon in the atmosphere has been higher.”

The good news for the senator: He's right. Scientists believe carbon dioxide levels were once far, far higher than they are today.

The bad news: There were no humans. Whatever the earth was like to live on, it was populated by a very different set of species.

As far as human history is concerned, the World Meteorological Organization on Monday reported that the planet was in uncharted territory, with average levels of carbon dioxide emissions crossing 400 parts per million during early 2015. That’s a 43 percent jump from pre-industrial levels and into a danger zone where scientists say the planet, at least the one we're familiar with, is on course for serious long-term disruptions.

— Darren Samuelsohn



Cruz blames the Fed for something it didn't do

In his latest assault on the Federal Reserve, Cruz blamed the central bank for easy-money policies in the early 2000s that created an asset bubble in real estate and commodities—and popped it when the Fed tightened the money in the third quarter of 2008, snapping his fingers for dramatic effect.

Now, economists have debated the role of low interest rates in the housing and commodities booms, but at best they were one among many factors.

But what did the Fed do in 2008? It wasn't tightening money. The Fed actually cut rates repeatedly in 2008. Some economists have argued policy makers didn’t cut rates fast enough given the economic conditions. But that's only "tightening" if you measure it against the demand for liquidity and market expectations. It doesn't reflect the Fed's actual policy moves.

— Isaac Arnsdorf



Fiorina's fuzzy math on bank failures



During the Dodd-Frank portion of the GOP debate (where a few candidates made hazy claims of their own), Fiorina threw out the figure that 1,590 community banks have gone out of business. Not quite! According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which tracks banks’ demise across the country, just 543 banks have failed since 2008. The latest one occurred on Oct. 2 in Washington state, when the Hometown National Bank closed its doors.

— Nancy Cook



Jeb, what did Dodd-Frank do to bank capital again?

Bush: “What we ought to do is raise the capital requirements so banks aren’t too big to fail. Dodd-Frank has actually done the opposite, totally the opposite.” Bush went on to say “capital requirements aren’t high enough.”

They may not be high enough for some people, but Bush’s point that Dodd-Frank “did the opposite” is false.

Actually, the biggest banks have doubled their Tier 1 capital under Dodd-Frank. And this year, all 31 of the banks that took the Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test held enough capital to withstand a severe recession, the Federal Reserve Board announced in March. It was the first time since the tests started in 2009 that all of the banks crossed the Fed’s minimum threshold.

— Katy O'Donnell

And more: Wall Street has actually started to complain that the higher capital levels are constricting the market and adding to volatility, though regulators are skeptical of this argument.

— Jon Prior



Trump overstates recent U.S.-China & Japan trade deficits

Donald Trump declared that the “U.S. loses with everybody” on trade before singling out a “$500 billion…imbalance with China," a ”$75 billion a year imbalance with Japan” and “by the way, Mexico, $50 billion a year imbalance.”

But he’s a bit off with some of his numbers.

The United States’ largest trade deficit in the world is indeed with China. But the highest that imbalance has gotten in recent years is $343 billion in 2014, according to U.S. Census data.

As for the U.S.-Japan trade relationship, the numbers have been all over the map. The most recent figures from 2014 were a $67 billion deficit. If you round up, Trump would have been right in 2013, 2012 and even in 2008. But it fell to $63 billion in 2011, $60 billion in 2010 and even down to $45 billion in 2009.

Trump does get props on the Mexico trade imbalance, though here he actually understated the U.S. deficit. It was $53 billion in 2014 and actually went north of $60 billion from 2010 to 2012.

— Darren Samuelsohn



Rand: Democrat-led states more unequal? Not really.

Sen. Rand Paul said in the GOP debate tonight that inequality "seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, states run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats."

The cities are too numerous to account for, but the states aren't.

According to calculations by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development quoted this past May in USA Today, the District of Columbia is more unequal than all 50 states—and D.C. is governed by Democrats. But second place (and the most unequal actual state) belongs to Louisiana, whose governor, Bobby Jindal is seeking the GOP nomination for president.

Third and fourth place belong to Democratic New York and Massachusetts, but Republican Mississippi and Alabama are fifth and sixth.

— Timothy Noah



Cruz's sugar plan wouldn't help federal budget

Sen. Ted Cruz, during an argument with Sen. Rand Paul about funding for the military, said that he would end sugar subsidies to pay for funding the military.

"That sort of corporate welfare is why we’re bankrupting our kids and grandkids," he said of the sugar program. "I would end those subsidies to pay for defending this nation."

Only that's not how the sugar program works. Subsidies for U.S. sugar producers are provided by consumers, through artificially high prices, rather than by the government. Rather than direct subsidies, the sugar program involves limiting import and supporting prices, leading to U.S. sugar prices that are higher than sugar on the global market.

— Victoria Guida



Cruz vs. Big Sugar

Trying to score points against the “special interests” bogeyman, Ted Cruz said sugar farmers cultivate 0.2 percent of the land but spend 40 percent of lobbying money.

Forty percent of what? It’s not clear. But it’s hard to imagine any way to get there. Total spending on lobbying was $3.24 billion last year, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Agribusiness spent $127.5 million, or about 4 percent. The sugar cane and sugar beets industry? $9.6 million, or 0.3 percent.

— Isaac Arnsdorf



Wait, Trump – there is a currency deal

Donald Trump criticized the lack of rules on currency manipulation in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. “They don’t even discuss it in this trade agreement,” he said. But the 12 countries in the TPP deal signed a separate “joint declaration” to deter currency manipulation, which was released along with the TPP.

— Danny Vinik



Eisenhower didn't deport... oh, wait, he did

Trump: “Dwight Eisenhower …moved a million and a half illegal immigrants out of this country…Dwight Eisenhower—you don’t get nicer, you don’t get friendlier—they moved a million and a half people out.”

As strange as this sounds, he’s mostly right about that—though nobody really knows how many people were really shipped out.

The folks at Factcheck.org dug into claims about the deportation policies of former Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and came up with a few key figures after talking to archivists in their libraries.

The main point: under Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” (yes, that’s the actual name), “just over 2.1 million [Mexican immigrants] were recorded as having been deported or having departed under threat of deportation,” according to official statistics. The number actually deported is thought to be about 1.3 million people (not the 13 million figure occasionally thrown around), but “even that figure is criticized as inflated by guesswork.”

Hoover officially deported or “induced to leave” 121,000 people. During Truman’s eight years in office, about 3.4 million people were deported or left under the threat of deportation.

— Katy O'Donnell



Obamacare "Failing"? Depends who you ask.



Fiorina: “Obamacare is failing…Obamacare is throwing more people into Medicaid…”

That viewpoint depends entirely on who you ask. The Affordable Care Act is failing by GOP standards because the cost of health care premiums has risen drastically in many states heading into 2016, and at least 11 health insurance co-ops in states have failed this year.

But the price tag is not the only measure of success. Under Obamacare, the rate of the uninsured has fallen dramatically to a low of 9 percent, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which means 16.3 million more people gained insurance under the health care law.

And "throwing" people into Medicaid isn't quite what it sounds. One whole goal of the Affordable Care Act is to give more working adults the chance to access Medicaid, particularly in states that have expanded their Medicaid programs.

— Nancy Cook



Rubio thinks welders earn more than philosophers. Nope.

Marco Rubio said at tonight's FOX Business presidential debate that "welders make more money than philosophers," so America needs more welders and fewer philosophers.

"I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education," Rubio said during his opening comments.

That's a fair question to raise. But as far as pay goes for welders versus professional philosophers?

Philosophy teachers and professors earned a mean wage of $71,350 in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's far more than the mean wage for welders and workers in similar professions. They earned a mean wage of $40,040 that year.

There are, however, many more welders employed in the U.S. than philosophers.

— Maggie Severns



Rand, actually the dollar is going up

Sen. Rand Paul said the Federal Reserve is destroying the dollar with its easy money policies—but whatever you think of the policies, that’s not what they’re doing.

The dollar’s value has been rising steeply against other currencies for a number of reasons, including the rocky economies abroad pushing investors stateside. There are currently no signs of inflation either as Fed officials have noted for months.

— Jon Prior



Carson's wrong: A higher minimum wage doesn’t always boost joblessness

"Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases,” Ben Carson said in tonight's Republican presidential debate.

That isn’t true.

Multiple studies have observed instances in which the minimum wage rose and unemployment did not rise. The best-known was a 1994 study by economists David Card and Alan Krueger, both then at Princeton.

Economists do agree that there is some point at which a minimum wage increase will increase unemployment. But they differ on how large an increase it would take to do that. With small increases, many economists have argued, productivity gains from reduced turnover have outweighed any negative impact on employers’ ability to hire additional employees, yielding no net increase in unemployment.

— Timothy Noah

And more: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in February 2014 that an increase to $10.10 an hour would “reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent.”

But raising the minimum wage a few dollars has had varied success in different states, and some economists argue that the laws of supply and demand aren’t a perfect fit here. Others say the benefits of modest increases outweigh the costs, as the majority of economists said in a 2013 University of Chicago survey. The left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research found that 12 of the 13 states that raised the minimum wage in 2014 saw employment gains.

Looking in the most basic way at 11 times Congress has raised the federal minimum wage, six occurred in a year with overall growth and five didn’t – but again, it’s hard to tease out cause and effect.

— Katy O'Donnell



Cruz lowballs U.S. economic growth

Ted Cruz said: “From 2008 to today our economy has grown 1.2 percent per year, on average.”

The Texas senator might want to check his stats.

According to World Bank data, the U.S. gross domestic product has risen 2 percent per year since 2011 and actually saw a 3 percent leap in 2010. There was a 3 percent drop in 2009, during the Great Recession.

Looking out to 2015, the forecasts from the International Monetary Fund are predicting another 3 percent growth year for the U.S.

— Darren Samuelsohn



Dr. Carson, black teenage unemployment isn’t quite that bad

Ben Carson said that just “19.8 percent of black teens have a job who are looking for one.”

Not quite. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the unemployment rate for African-Americans between 16 and 19 years old is 25.6 percent. In other words, 74.4 percent of them have jobs, almost four times what Carson said.

— Danny Vinik



...and one from the undercard:

Gov. Chris Christie erred when he said in the GOP undercard debate tonight that President Barack Obama "has more income inequality in this administration than any previous administration."

The Gini index, the most common measurement of income inequality, rose 0.012 points — from 0.468 to 0.480 — between 2009 and 2014, the most recent year for which data are available.

That’s more than the Gini rose under President George W. Bush. But it’s much less than the 0.025 point rise under President Ronald Reagan or the 0.023 point rise during President George H.W. Bush’s single term.

— Timothy Noah