I found 49% of Politico’s fact-check on Trump suspect. In their article titled “Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths,” they list 87 “falsehoods,” but by my count, 43 aren’t worthy of that label. Trump’s comments are often subjective or relative which are fine for campaign speeches.

(My breakdown on Clinton)

The breakdown

1.

Trump: U.S. manufacturers are out of business.

Politico: The sector went from 13.1% of GDP in 2006 to 11.8% in 2016

But to the regions Trump speaks to, the manufacturing jobs have vanished. And to a single audience member, if their once cushy manufacturing job is gone, it’s “vanished” enough for them, statistics be damned.

3.

Trump: “The World Trade Organization — disaster for us.”

Politico: The WTO just adjudicates trade disputes, and so far it’s been neither good nor bad for the U.S.

Trump is indicting the WTO, but also free trade in general. And while the consensus among economists is that free trade is great, it ignores the real-life experience of the people working in the industries affected. If you’re focused on protecting old jobs, then free trade is a disaster. Plus, Trump and many conservatives are against trade deficits, which free trade is causing.

4.

Trump: NAFTA is a job-stealer.

Politico: NAFTA is a job-creator.

Same free trade argument above.

7.

Trump: “Hillary Clinton wants to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

Politico: Clinton changed her position after Sanders.

The evidence Politico cites is good enough to infer that Clinton’s position on TPP is tactical. Deep-down, she is a likely a free trade hawk, and besides, politicians flip-flop. Plus, she’s loyal to Obama. To say that Clinton wants to approve the TPP is probably the truth.

8.

Trump: Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina are getting killed.

Politico: Unemployment rates are dramatically down in those states.

It’s OK to say that a state is getting killed, even if unemployment rates go down. For one, employment isn’t the only measure of whether or not a state is winning. By some accounts, the U.S. as a whole is getting killed. Secondly, unemployment statistics have been getting increasingly suspect. They don’t include people who’ve stopped searching for jobs, nor do they account for people who’ve reduced to part-time work, or have taken jobs at lower wages. If you drive around the U.S. you don’t really get the sense of a country that’s firing on all cylinders. The “Land of the Free” is starting to look more like the “Land of the Idle.”

9.

Trump: Our trade deficit with China is $500 billion a year.

Politico: The trade deficit was $366 billion in 2015, but excludes IP theft.

The IP theft component is no joke. It may sound small to hand-wave it away, but here’s some hand-waving myself: If 95% of the billion-plus computers in China run pirated copies of Windows, how many billions of dollars in theft is just that alone. And the problem with China goes further, with small-time entrepreneurs in the U.S. getting pushed out by Chinese counterfeiters on Amazon, exacerbating said trade deficits.

10.

Trump: “We’re losing our good jobs.”

Politico: Wages have gone up.

The devil’s in the details, and ultimately it may be subjective. Where are the wages going up? Are they going up in the regions Trump is talking to? For whom are the wages going up? Are they going to young people? Has the 1.6% annualized growth in wages counter-balanced the rise in cost-of-living?

11.

Trump: Politicans aren’t doing enough to prevent jobs from moving out of different states.

Politico: Obama pushed for insourcing tax breaks.

Firstly, I couldn’t find any information as to whether or not, four years later, those tax breaks have been useful. And Trump isn’t necessarily talking about outsourcing outside the U.S., but possibly the practice of states luring jobs away from each other.

16.

Trump: Clinton “plans a $1.3 trillion tax hike.”

Politico: Another estimate came out to $498 billion over 10 years.

Again, forecasts are shaky, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Clinton’s tax hike could be multiples of $1.3 trillion. Obama increased taxes by $3 trillion over 86 months in office, while debt has increased more than that, so future generations will have to pay even more on top of likely Obama-level tax increases in a Clinton administration.

17.

Trump: “Every energy dollar that isn’t harvested here in America is harvested instead in a foreign country.”

Politico: It’s not.

I didn’t see a cogent argument on Politico’s part.

19.

Trump: “Premiums in Ohio have increased more than 80 percent since Obamacare was passed.”

Politico: This statistic ignores that many people get their health insurance from their employers and also that Obamacare provide subsidies for low- and middle-income insurance buyers.

Premiums can still have increased 80% from the point-of-view of employers who may have held back wage increases to compensate. As for the subsidies, they aren’t a slam dunk and there is still a donut hole for the middle-class. It seems like everybody I know who is working for themselves at a middle-class income has had premiums that have gone up in the neighborhood of 80% since Obamacare was passed.

20.

Trump: “Premiums have gone up almost $5,000 nationwide since 2009.”

Politico: While technically true, premiums have gone up slower than they did under Bush. Less of a bad thing is still a bad thing.

23.

Trump: Ohio lost a third of its manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA, which Hillary supported.

Politico: The numbers are correct, but the cause is in dispute.

If the numbers are correct then it’s not a lie. If economists deeply disagree about the cause, then it’s a matter of opinion, in which case what Trump said is fine.

24–30.

Trump: Clinton and Obama helped usher in ISIS.

Politico: Clinton, nor Obama, founded ISIS; Abu Musab al-Sarqawi and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did. It’s complicated what exactly lead to the rise ISIS, and a lot of it can be attributed to Bush.

Trump and mainstream Republicans aren’t saying that Clinton nor Obama actually rounded up a group of people and told them to start ISIS. Also, it’s been seven years, and while much of what has happened can be attributed to policies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the time has passed where we can reference Bush as a way to rationalize away the impact of Obama and Clinton’s foreign policies. If the formation of ISIS was inevitable because of Bush’s policies, then at the very least Obama and Clinton did not succeed in stopping that inevitability.

31.

Trump: We aren’t hitting ISIS hard.

Politico: We conducted 6,704 strikes in Iraq, plus 4,983 and Syria.

It’s a matter of interpretation what constitutes “hard.” Trump probably wants more boots on the ground.

32–36.

Trump: “My opponent won’t even say the words radical Islamic terror.”

Politico: Clinton made a point of breaking from Obama in using the term “radical Islamism” when describing the attack on the Orlando nightclub.

Trump forced her hand, so in a way similar to how Clinton was forced to be against TPP, “radical Islamism” is not really in Clinton’s vocabulary. A quick Google in the past month for “clinton radical Islamic terror” doesn’t turn up much, so while she may have said it once back then, she isn’t really using the term, and it’s unlikely that she will use it in the future.

40.

Trump: “Obama and Clinton have toppled regimes, displaced millions of people, then opened door to ISIS to enter our country.”

Politico: Only 434,000 people have been displaced in Libya.

Trump isn’t just talking about the displacements directly related to the one regime they toppled, which is Libya. Rather, over seven years, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that those displaced from Syria, Iraq and Libya combined may add up to a million-plus.

43.

Trump: Our local police know who the terrorists are, but are afraid of profiling.

Politico: There is no evidence for this.

First of all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And second, a lot of these terrorists were already in our database. Our tolerance for profiling is balanced against the urgency of national security, and we are becoming more open the further we get away from 9/11.

54.

Trump: “Many” Gitmo detainees are returning to the battlefield.

Politico: Does 7 confirmed, and 12 suspected relapsed terrorists count as “many”?

This a question, not a takedown. Plus the Administration under-reports such statistics to make themselves look better.

56.

Trump: “We’re going to build the wall. Mexico’s going to pay for the wall, 100 percent.”

Politico: We have no legal recourse to force Mexico to pay.

Negotiation is not out of the realm of possibility. Our trade deficit with Mexico is high, and Trump could ask for $6 billion in tariffs that Mexican businessmen wouldn’t be too keen on, who could then force the Mexican president to split the difference.

59.

Trump: “Our current immigration system makes no real attempt to determine the views of the people entering our country.”

Politico: “Immigration processes are lengthy and include detailed interviews. Some forms include questions about membership in terrorist organizations.”

The existence of a lengthy interview and a few direct questions about membership in groups like Al-Qaeda isn’t enough to imply the U.S. already does a values test.

63.

Trump: “Ever notice — all she does is attack me, constantly attack, attack?” Politico: Clinton also gives policy addresses.

Trump is not asserting that the majority of Clinton’s talking points are about Trump. He’s saying that attacking Trump is a focus of her campaign, if not the main focus.

64.

Trump: “Hillary is copying my airplane rallies”

Politico: Many candidates have used airplanes for backdrops.

This isn’t appropriate for a fact-check, because Trump isn’t claiming he invented the airplane idea. At worst, Trump’s claim is conjecture. At best, he’s probably right to think Clinton was prompted to do it because of Trump, firstly because it’s emblematic of Trump’s campaign, and secondly because nobody remembers any of those other candidates.

66.

Trump: “Crooked Hillary’s bad judgment forced her to announce that she would go to Charlotte on Saturday to grandstand. Dem pols said no way, dumb!”

Politico: Clinton was actually invited, but then canceled after local official said it would be detrimental.

Again, Trump’s statement is at worst conjecture. It’s not implausible that Clinton’s decision and subsequent reversal involved coordination and miscalculation from her campaign.

69.

Trump: Clinton “supports with a nod” the narrative of cops as racist.

Politico: This is too hard to prove or disprove.

Just as it’s hard to definitively prove someone is racist, it’s also hard to definitively prove that Clinton vaguely thinks cops are racist. At the same time, it’s easy to disprove the opposite, since Googling turns up numerous Clinton statements that while veiled, still imply a sweeping statement about the police.

70.

Trump: “Not only did I win, I got 14 million votes.”

Politico: It was 13.3 million.

13.3 million is the commonly reported figure, but according to Wikipedia the total is 14,015,993 based on a reference to the Green Papers. Even though you should be suspicious when citing Wikipedia, that particular Wikipedia page is subject to strict consensus requirements to approve edits. Further research shows that the nearly 1 million vote discrepancy, comes from not counting the caucus votes.

74.

Trump: We’re leading in Florida.

Politico: Florida is within the margin of error.

Trump has enough preferred polls to make a case that he’s leading in Florida. His case probably wouldn’t pass an analyst’s high standards, like those of Nate Silver, but if it’s in the margin of error, there’s likely enough for Trump to claim one narrative over another.

75.

Trump: “Our people, the highest levels of enthusiasm that they’ve seen.”

Politico: A poll showed slightly less enthusiasm about Trump than Romney.

Enthusiasm is hard to measure, but just going by his record Republican primary, Trump’s supporters seem more passionate. Plus, was anybody really fired-up about Romney?

76–78.

Trump: We’re going to get tremendous votes from Blacks and Hispanics.

Politico: Clinton leads by a ridiculous amount in both groups.

It won’t happen for Trump, but this doesn’t mean his statement is a “falsehood.” The future has yet to happen. Trump having 28.3% support from Hispanics might also be “tremendous” to him, so he could also be speaking relatively, or that he might get enough support from those groups in swing states to edge out Clinton in the electoral college.

79.

Trump: We’re up five points in Ohio.

Politico: Using a poll of polls, it’s 2.5 points.

While meta-polls are more accurate than single ones, it doesn’t mean what Trump is saying is false. At worst it’s maybe a half-truth, but his team trusts two polls that re-enforce his narrative, so that should be good enough.

80.

Trump: “We’re doing really great in the polls. The Bloomberg poll, we’re up 5 in Ohio. In CNN, CNN we’re up 3 in Florida. We now lead in Nevada, Iowa. We lead in North Carolina. The LA Times has us four or five points up.”

Politico: Trump is cherry-picking his best polls.

But Trump is clearly stating the specific polls. It’s not a “falsehood” to cherry-pick polls to tell a story of momentum, especially when the polls are in flux. CNN and Bloomberg themselves report these polls as samples of reality, and it’s fine.

85.

Trump: The NYT wrote a false story about me and women.

Politico: The article was spin, but not false.

Politico is mincing words here, because the gist of what Trump is saying is that the article was false. In watching the interview with the lead subject, former model Rowanne Brewer Lane, it’s clear she disavows the article. Technically, she was quoted correctly, but the quote was taken out-of-context. And yet, Politico calls an aforementioned out-of-context quote from Trump a falsehood.

Stats

Politico’s original count: 87

My Disputes: 43

Balance: 44 “falsehoods”

Hours of remarks: 5

Politico’s original rate: 1 falsehood every 3 minutes and 15 seconds

My Corrected Rate: 1 every 7 minutes