Six (dozen) brags over Texas We checked every factual claim President Donald Trump made at his Dallas rally and found truth, nonsense and everything in between For nearly 90 minutes, President Donald Trump held forth before a rapt audience on Oct. 17 at American Airlines Center, his first campaign rally in Dallas since becoming president. Supporters in red “Make America Great Again” hats cheered as he railed against “do-nothing Democrats” and “fake news,” exaggerated his successes, and made dozens of claims of varying accuracy. The following is an annotated text, with claims labeled as factual, false or misleading or somewhere in between. Click on the numbered annotations below for more details. Show all annotations Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, Dallas. It’s great to be with you tonight. Thank you. I am thrilled to be here deep in the heart of Texas where we just opened a beautiful new Louis Vuitton plant. I’m with the freedom-loving Patriots of the Lone Star State. I love it. There has never been a better time to be a proud Texan, and there’s never a better time to be a proud American. There never has. Never has. I came from a small town, Alvarado, Texas, where we celebrated the incredible revival of American manufacturing and we opened up some beautiful places. I’ll tell you, this place is doing great and created in a very short period of time an extra 1,000 jobs for Texas. The company plans to employ 1,000 people in Johnson County, but right now it has 150. Story Since my election, we’ve created 775,000 new jobs across your state including 70,000 Texas manufacturing jobs. They said those jobs had disappeared, didn’t they? Huh? Hey man, our country is once again living by two simple rules, buy American and hire American. Texas has added about 665,000 jobs since November 2016, according to Texas Workforce Commission data. Of those, about 73,000 were in manufacturing. The economy is booming. Our people are prospering. Our country is thriving and our nation is stronger than ever before.But the more America achieves, the more hateful and enraged these crazy Democrats become. Crazy. They’re crazy. They’re crazy. At stake in this fight is the survival of American democracy itself. Don’t kid yourself. That’s what they want. They are destroying this country but we will never let it happen. Not even close. For three straight years, radical Democrats have been trying to overthrow the results of a great, great election. Maybe, maybe the greatest election in the history of our country. They want to impose an extreme agenda. They cannot pass it and they cannot win it at the ballot box. They’re not going to win. They’re not even going to get … They won’t come close in 2020. They know it. They know it. They’re not going to win it. They say, let’s see. What’s another idea? What’s another idea? How do we win this election? You know, I really don’t believe anymore that they love our country. I don’t believe it. A Gallup Poll taken before July 4 this year found that only 22% of Democrats say they are extremely proud of the United States, down 10 points in a year — but that's largely due to their dim views on Trump. Crazy Nancy. Think of that. That crazy Nancy. She is crazy. And shifty Schiff. How about this guy? He makes up my conversation, which was perfect. He makes up my conversation. He sees what I said. It doesn’t play well because it was perfect. So he made up a totally false conversation with the Ukrainian president and we caught him cold. Everybody knew it anyway. See, we did one thing. You always have to do the unexpected. They never thought I’d release the conversation with the Ukrainian president. I want to get him before Congress and I want to see what he has to say. You know, they say he has immunity. Why would you have immunity for outright fraud? Why do you have immunity? Why? He’s a fraud. We’re fighting a campaign against leftists, socialists and globalists who want to return to reckless wars, open borders, rampant crime and totally disastrous one-way trade deals. We’re changing that one around very quickly. Trump is referring to comments House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. During a Sept. 26 hearing, Schiff said he would describe the "essence" of what the president said to Ukrainian President Zolodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 call. He exaggerated some aspects of the rough transcript in what he later called a "parody." Not one Democrat advocates open borders. They believe America is the world’s piggy bank and that your tax dollars should subsidize the economy, military and defense of every other nation in the world but our own. It’s not happening anymore. Our political opposition made its fortune selling out our nation and its citizens. And you know that’s what’s been happening. And that’s why 2016 was so important. And that’s why 2020, I can never say it’s more important, but you know it’s like the roots of a tree. You plant the baby tree, it’s got to catch, get that extra time. We’ll have more tax cuts. We’ll have even … I’ll tell you what, we have rebuilt our military. What we’ve done has never been done before. The do-nothing Democrats have betrayed our country and that great betrayal is over. We are finally again, and we’ve been doing it now for almost three years. Can you believe we’ve been doing this for three years? Can you believe it? I’ve been a politician for three years. I can’t believe that. I never thought I’d be called a politician. I don’t like it. But it is what it is. But we’re finally again putting America first. The radical Democrats want to destroy America as we know it. They want to indoctrinate our children and teach them that America is a sinful, wicked nation. You see that happening all the time. And I know it from personal experience. What they want to teach your kids, not good. They come home, Mommy, Daddy, this is what I learned. And you’re going, oh no, don’t tell me. Let’s get them into another school fast. They want to disarm law-abiding citizens. They want to take your guns away. They want to install far-left judges to shred our Constitution. It’s not happening. They want to tear down symbols of faith and drive Christians and religious believers from the public square. They want to silence your voices on social media and they want the government to censor, muzzle, and shut down conservative voices. You know that. If they didn’t hate our country, they wouldn’t be doing this to our country. They wouldn’t be doing it because they know better. They know better. As an example, we’re building a great wall along the Southern border and it’s going up rapidly. Going up. And you know, five years ago almost every one of them wanted a wall until I came along and I said, we’re going to build a great wall because they could never get it done. Then they stopped the funding. They made it almost impossible. The claim about the U.S.-Mexico border wall is misleading in several ways. He led voters to believe he would push for a 2,000-mile wall in 2016. The barrier being built mostly is replacement for lower, less effective fencing. According to Customs and Border Protection, 66 miles of replacement barrier has been built as of Sept. 19. This is misleading because it refers to a failed 2013 immigration plan that would have provided $8 billion for border fencing in exchange for a path to citizenship for millions of unauthorized immigrants. The Senate approved the deal but it died in the Republican-controlled House. Story Few people would’ve been able to do what we did, but we got it from here and we got it from there and we got it from all over the place and we’re building that sucker right now and it’s having a tremendous effect already. Not easy. Highest level. Everything we said it would be, it’s moving rapidly. Although the fake news back there, they don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. Look at all those cameras. You believe it. Look at all those red lights. Don’t worry. I won’t say anything bad about your network because a lot of times I get ready to do a number of these phony networks and you know, you see those red lights go off, off, off, off. They don’t want their viewers to see it, but that’s OK. I’m not going to say it tonight. I’m going to say you’re legitimate media. I don’t actually mean that. But you look at that. But look at all those cameras. You know that’s like the Academy Awards used to be before it failed. You know why it failed? You know why it failed? Because they came after us. That’s why it failed. It failed because they had stupid people saying horrible things about us. Stupid. Stupid people. They are stupid people and their ratings have dropped like a rocket. I love seeing it. I’m telling you. Love it. But no matter how hard they try, they will fail because the people of Texas and the people of America will never surrender our freedom to those people right there. We will stand strong for family, faith, God, and for country. The Academy Awards' ratings dropped in 2018 but were slightly higher this year, though it was still the second-lowest-rated telecast. Last week, a very dumb Democrat candidate for president, that’s the end of him in this state, pledged to revoke the tax exempt status of many churches and religious charities. By the way, that was after a few weeks ago. He said, excuse me, we’re going to take your guns away. That doesn’t work well with me. I called him right. Remember the flailing arms? Nobody noticed it. I noticed it. The flailer. You remember he was flailing all over the place. I said why is this guy hot? John Cornyn’s going to win so easily. Just like Ted Cruz won. He’s going to win no matter what happens. Trump is referring to Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke's comment earlier this month that religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status. O’Rourke quickly clarified that he would only target churches and other groups based on acts of discrimination in hiring or insurance. Story O'Rourke never said he would ban all guns, as Trump insinuates, but he is demanding mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons such as AR-15s and AK-47s. But John Cornyn is not talking about Beto anymore because Beto, in a few short weeks, got rid of guns and got rid of religion. Those are not two good things in Texas to get rid of. I will never allow the federal government to be used to punish Americans for their religious beliefs. I will never allow the IRS to be used as a political weapon, except in the case of myself where they use it against me. The radical left tolerates no dissent. It permits no opposition. It accepts no compromise. These people are crazy. And it has absolutely no respect for the will of the American people. First it was the Russia hoax. Then it was the smearing which continues, that disgraceful, disgusting smearing of a fine man, Justice Kavanaugh. And now they continue the outrageous impeachment witch hunt with nothing. With nothing. They come after me, but what they’re really doing is they’re coming after the Republican Party, and what they’re really, really doing is they’re coming after and fighting you. And we never lose. I’m fighting for everyone who believes in the values, traditions, and principles that have made our nation the greatest in the history of the world. And I have to say this, we are far greater now than ever before. You go back four years, you go back seven, six, eight, even you go back into another administration, you go back 10 and 12 years, where were you compared to where you are right now? There’s no factual basis for saying that O'Rourke wants to ban religion. He wants to punish religious institutions that discriminate on the basis of same-sex marriage. He also wants limits on gun ownership, not to get rid of guns. It's widely accepted by members of both parties that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, though not by Trump. Despite Trump’s claims, special counsel Robert Mueller told Congress that his report did not exonerate Trump or his campaign. Story We must hold the Democrats accountable for their lies and their corruption. They are corrupt people. And we must show and vote and we have to go out and we have to win this election coming up. It’s going to be a landslide and we have to make it a landslide. Today’s do-nothing Democrats, they don’t do anything. Where’s the USMCA? Everybody wants it. The Democrats even want it and crazy Nancy won’t let anybody vote on it. She’s nuts. Today’s Democrats believe anyone who opposes them must be crushed. It’s not just like, let’s win. You know, I have to say this. The Republicans said, I’m not sure I like this because my life hasn’t been this way, but the Republicans play a much softer game. They really do. When all of our stars, and we have great stars, when they went to our speaker of the House at the time and they asked for subpoenas, oh, let’s take it easy. Let’s … OK. I mean, I get that too. She hands them out like it’s cookies. Here. Subpoena. Democrats have sought assurances from the U.S. Trade Representative that certain labor and environmental standards will be enforced by Mexico and Canada, before the House votes on the deal. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said ratification is coming closer. I heard a commentator who happens to be standing right there the other day. Doesn’t like us at all. But said, I’ve never seen anyone hand out so many subpoenas. I have people getting subpoenas I never heard of. I said, who are those people? Never saw anything like it. It’s a disgrace what they’re doing to our country. We became, because of what they do, not the Republicans and not what we’ve done because what they’ve done and what they see. When people come to my office, which is now the Oval Office, which is your office too. Presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. I hate to say it. Sometimes dictators, they just don’t like to go by that title. They say, sir, congratulations, sir, on what you’ve done. Congratulations on what you’ve done. It’s incredible. Your economy is the greatest on earth. And let me tell you it, if my crooked opponent would have won the election, right now China would be by far the No. 1 nation from an economic standpoint in the world. We’ve gone up trillions of dollars. They’ve gone down trillions of dollars, and we are so far No. 1, so far that they’ll never catch us if we are smart right here. But the do-nothing Democrats believe anyone who opposes them has to be crushed. They don’t want to just beat them. They don’t want to just beat him. These are sick people. They want to crush these people. The anger, the hatred, and that any lie or crime or corruption is justified so Schiff gets up and makes up my statement. He makes it up 100% and then he said he didn’t speak to the whistleblower. No, we didn’t see the whistleblower. And what about the whistleblower? The whistleblower got it all wrong. Who’s the whistleblower? Who’s the whistleblower? Who is the whistleblower? We have to know. Is the whistleblower a spy? And who is the IG that did this? All he had to do is look at the tape or look at what they wrote down, the transcribed version of the phone call. Compare that to the whistleblower’s account and you see it had nothing to do with it. So why does the IG allow a thing like this to happen to our country? Why? Why? It's unclear what Trump is referring to here, but the U.S. and Chinese economies have both grown from the end of 2016 to mid-2018, according to World Bank data. The whistleblower's report on Trump's phone call with Zelenskiy was corroborated by the rough transcript that the White House released last month. Story Got a lot of bad people out there, but one by one we’re advancing. One by one. Just look at the terrible foreign corruption of the Bidens. I hate to talk about him. You know why? I don’t think the guy’s got a chance. Sleepy Joe. I don’t think he’s got it. I don’t see it. I don’t know. I’ve got these great, brilliant senators over here. I have all these congressmen over here. Fellows, I don’t think he has a chance. I’d like him to. I’d like him to. You know I thought Pocahontas was gone, left in embers. You got to give her credit. Those embers, they kept going, going, going. Now it looks like she’s doing better. But I don’t think Joe has a chance. But did you see the other night where CNN, in a totally unsubstantiated statement, the president said this about you. We’re so sorry he said that. His son walked out with a billion and a half dollars from China. These were not the same Chinese people I just dealt with. I will tell you that. But Joe Biden was in charge of Ukraine policy while his son with absolutely no energy experience just got thrown out of the Navy like a dog, was paid massive sums of money by a Ukrainian energy company. You know what that’s called? It’s called a payoff, folks. He didn’t know energy at all, knew nothing about energy. They hired him, paying him massive amounts of money, much more than the $50,000 a month you heard about. That’s a lot. That’s a lot. But much more. There is no evidence that Hunter Biden was paid by the Chinese government to win favorable trade deals with the United States. Hunter Biden was discharged from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. There is no evidence that Joe Biden acted inappropriately with regard to Ukraine. Though some have criticized Hunter Biden, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said earlier in October that he was unaware of any evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president’s son. Joe Biden made them go out and fire the prosecutor on tape. But they don’t want to show the tape. I had to put it up on my social media site. They don’t want to show the tape where he was bragging. You’re not going to get this money unless they get rid of … and boom, they got rid of the prosecutor. He was investigating the son and the son’s company. Got rid of him. Now that’s what you call quid pro quo. While these charges are totally unsubstantiated. These are the fake newsers out there. And then Biden flew. Think of it. He goes into a tough place. There is video of Biden bragging about pressuring a former Ukrainian prosecutor to get tougher on corruption. But there was broad international agreement that the official was ineffective and corrupt. There's no evidence the pressure had anything to do with Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine. Story We just made such a great deal with China. Just think of this. My guy said, if we could get $20 billion in agricultural product, that would be good. The most China ever did was $16 billion for our farmers. OK. We’re just talking about the farmers. We did banking. We did everything. But we’re talking about them. The most they ever did was $20 billion of product from our farmers. Our great farmers. Our patriot farmers. Our farmers that never left us even though they were being targeted by China. They never left me. So they wanted 20 and China agreed. I said nope, no good. I want $50 billion, not $20 billion. Fifty. So my guys say, sir, we have a problem, sir. Our farmers cannot produce that much. It’s true. I said, tell them to go out and get bigger tractors, right? John Deere, Case, Caterpillar, all American. Only American tractors. We only buy American tractors. Go out and get bigger. So now China’s agreed. They’ve already started buying. Hopefully the agreement gets signed sometime prior to a big summit that we have with President Xi and others in Chile. That’s in about four weeks. China spent $23.8 billion on U.S. agricultural products in 2017. The all-time high was nearly $25 billion in 2012. The two leaders plan to meet in Santiago, Chile, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings on Nov. 16 and 17. But they give this. They said, sir, they can’t produce $50 billion. I said, I want the farmers to tell me … remember the story about winning? We’re going to win so much. We’re going into the White House. We’re going to tell the president, sir, we just can’t stand winning. The state of Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, they’re going to come into my office. Sir, we just can’t stand this winning in Texas anymore. It’s too much. We can’t handle it. Well, that’s what I want from the farmers. I want the farmers to say. I want the farmers to say, sir, we just can’t produce that much product. We can’t do it, sir. And I’m going to say yes, you can. And they’re going to say, no, we can’t. I’m going to say yes you can. And they’re going to go out and they get to take in $50 billion from China as opposed to 20. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what’s going to happen. The White House announced that China agreed to buy $40 billion to $50 billion in U.S. agricultural products, though the Chinese have yet to confirm the figure. The two countries haven't formally agreed to terms to end the trade war. But they were great. They stuck with us through thick and thin. Now it’s really working out for a lot of different groups. In the meantime, we’ve taken in tens of billions of dollars of tariffs and China’s eaten the cost because they devalued their currency and they put money out. Tens of billions of dollars. It’s cost us nothing. Billions and billions and billions. You know what I did for the farmer? During the lean times, I gave them $16 billion last year and $12 billion the year before. $28 billion altogether came out of the tariffs that I had a lot of money left over and nobody complained. Tariffs are actually paid by U.S. consumers, which increases the purchase price of imports. Trump is correct in saying that China's central bank has devalued the yuan, though China denied that its 10% devaluation in August was in response to U.S. tariffs. Story The figures on subsidies sent to farmers are correct, but it's not accurate to say the funds "came out of the tariffs." Tariff revenue goes into the federal government's general fund. It is not directed or earmarked for farm aid. Story You know our farmers didn’t want that money. Our farmers didn’t want it. True story. Everybody comes for money. Countries come for … everybody wants money, right? They all want our money. The farmers said, sir, we don’t want this money. It’s a subsidy. We don’t want it. I said, no, it’s not a subsidy. You’re being targeted unfairly. They said, no, sir, it’s a subsidy. This is true. I had 35 farmers in the Oval Office. Incredible people. They didn’t want it. They said, sir, just give us a level field. So now I gave them a field that’s more than level. It’s level like this. Nice and easy. Nice and easy. Trump may be referring to a May 23 meeting at which he announced $16 billion in aid to farmers because of the tariffs. But the farmers, I call them the great patriots, the farmers. I never lost them. They always said, yeah, I’m in trouble. I got a problem. But this should have been done many, many years ago by other presidents and other leaders. And we lose for many years $500 billion a year with China and many other countries we lose billions. We lose with everybody. But that’s all changing now. But we lose $500 billion, not million. $500 million’s a lot, right? We lose $500 billion. And you know what? It’s a disgrace that that was allowed to go on for 25 years. It was a disgrace. Disgrace. The U.S. trade deficit with China was $419 billion in 2018 and has never reached $500 billion, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The U.S. has a trade surplus with numerous countries, according to the Census Bureau. But now we’re taking in billions of dollars. They’ve had the worst year they’ve had in 27 years and we’re having the best year we’ve ever had. So that’s good. That’s good. China's GDP growth slowed to its lowest point in 27 years. The U.S. economy is strong, but it has been stronger. U.S. GDP growth was 2.1% in the second quarter of 2019. In the second quarter of 2014, under Obama, GDP growth hit 5.5%. So Biden flew with Hunter on Air Force 2. They flew to China. Hunter walked out of the plane, had a quick meeting, walked away with one and a half billion dollars. These characters back there said, oh, that’s OK. There’s no problem. Can you imagine if Don or Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump, who’s here someplace … right here. And by the way, our great first lady is home watching this. She said, this is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a long time. You’re a great first lady. Doing a great job. She’s doing a great job. We’re doing a great job. The whole country now is doing a great job. Hunter Biden did travel with his father to China on Dec. 4, 2013. Less than two weeks later, paperwork was filed to create BHR Partners, an investment advisory firm whose owners included Chinese entities. Hunter Biden was one of nine board members, and he did not own an equity stake until nearly a year after his father left office. The origin of the $1.5 billion figure Trump repeatedly cites is unclear. He has never provided evidence to back the claim and none has surfaced. In mid-2014, BHR announced a long-term goal of raising $1.5 billion in equity. In a 2018 book that Trump has praised, “Secret Empires,” author Peter Schweizer wrote that shortly after that Air Force Two flight to Beijing, “Hunter’s firm would seal a highly unusual $1.5 billion deal with funding from the Chinese government.” Story So Biden takes a billion-five, and he goes on and he allows China to rip us off. Remember he said a year ago? No, no, China’s good. They’ve done nothing wrong. They are wonderful people. They are all wonderful people. I don’t blame China, by the way. I blame our leaders for allowing this horrible, you know what and pillage. It’s the R word. You know what and pillage. You know what word I’m talking about, right? I don’t want to use it because they’ll say it’s a horrible word that Trump used. So the Bidens got rich while America got robbed. Tonight we forcefully condemn the blatant corruption of the Democrat Party and nobody ever pays the price with the Democrats. They’re so deep-seated. They never pay the price. They never pay. But maybe soon that will start. You know, we’ve had a lot of, we’ve had a lot of Obama people and Clinton people and some, to be honest with you, we’ve had some pretty bad Republicans down deep that didn’t exactly love us. But slowly they’re getting out. They have all sorts of protections. He says get rid of them. Yeah, we’re trying. Get rid of them. But their partner in the whole thing is the fake news media. That’s the problem. Because the Democrats and the fake news media, it’s a partnership. Remember that. And you see it all the time, and I’ve never seen it to this extent. You know, when I won in the primaries and then I won the election, I was treated horribly by the media, horribly. And then when I won the election, we had the greatest night, one of the highest-rated nights in the history of television all over the world. And I won. And I said, oh, the great thing. I said to Ivanka, I said to the first lady, I said to anybody that would listen, I said, listen, this is so great. Finally, finally, we, all of us, we’re going to be respected by the media. And you know what happened? They got worse. They’re worse now than they ever have been. They’re crooked as hell. They’re worse now than they’ve ever been. They’re crooked. Trump's election night ratings were on par with Obama's in 2008 and fell short of other major events, such as Super Bowls. The only message these radicals, and they are radical lefties, will understand is a crushing defeat on Nov. 3, 2020. Save that date. With your help, we will win back the House. We …


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