Fifteen Republican presidential candidates. Two debates. 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 REVISITS FALSE VACCINE LINK TO AUTISM

Donald Trump: “I am totally in favor of vaccines, but I want smaller doses over a longer period of time. … We’ve had so many instances — people that work for me, just the other day. Two years old, 2 ½ years old, a child, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine, and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”

Donald Trump stuck to a position that’s totally unsupported by medical evidence — that a link exists behind autism and vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical authorities have said repeatedly that science has demonstrated there is no link between vaccination and autism. Giving children multiple vaccinations at the same has also been proven to be safe, the CDC said.

— Sarah Karlin



TRUMP SAYS HE OPPOSED 'GOING INTO IRAQ.' NOT QUITE.

Donald Trump: “I am the only person on this dais, the only person that fought very, very hard against us — and I wasn’t a sitting politician — going into Iraq. Because I said going into Iraq, that was in 2003, you can check it out, check out, I’ll give you 25 different stories. In fact, a delegation was sent to my office to see me because I was so vocal about it.”

Trump has repeatedly implied or directly asserted that he publicly opposed the Iraq war before the U.S. -led invasion in March 2003. But the reality is that he publicly came out against the war nearly a year and half after the invasion, in November 2004.

At the time, he told interviewer Larry King: “I do not believe that we made the right decision going into Iraq, but, you know, hopefully, we’ll be getting out.” But he also publicly endorsed George W. Bush for a second term for president that same month.

Trump was also not the only candidate in tonight’s debate who could claim the anti-war mantle. Sen. Rand Paul quickly interjected: “I made my career as being an opponent of the Iraq War. … Iran is now stronger because Hussein is gone.

— Bryan Bender



NO, PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEOS DON’T SHOW A FETUS’ HEART STILL BEATING

Carly Fiorina: “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

The videos that have stirred up so much trouble for Planned Parenthood don’t show what Fiorina claims.

An anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress, has released several videos alleging that the women’s health organization illegally profits from fetal tissue sales. In one video, a former employee of the fetal tissue procurement company StemExpress — which, until recently, worked with Planned Parenthood — alleges that she saw an aborted fetus’ heart beat after a clinician tapped its heart.

That video relies solely on the interview and does not include footage to support her claims.

The group’s undercover videos do show specimens of fetal tissue in some Planned Parenthood clinics, but at no point do they include footage of an entire aborted fetus.

— Rachana Pradhan





TRUMP VS. BANKRUPTCY

Donald Trump: “I never went bankrupt, by the way, as you know, everybody knows. But out of hundreds of companies, hundreds of deals, I’ve used the law four times, made a tremendous thing, I’m in business, I did a very good job.”

While, it's technically true that Trump himself never went bankrupt personally, four of his properties somewhat famously have.

Three of the bankrupt properties were gambling-related — the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City being the first, in 1991. A second business, the Trump Plaza Hotel, declared bankruptcy in 1992.

Trump formed new parent companies over these — first Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, then later, Trump Entertainment, which in turn went bankrupt in 2004. Debtwire ascribed the latter Chapter 11 filing to the burden of several private debt offerings that Trump’s company used to get out of the 1991 bankruptcy, a seeming cycle of red ink.

Trump Entertainment went under again in 2009, after which Trump left the business and billionaire investor Carl Icahn — who has already turned down a Treasury secretary nomination from Trump — took over. Trump later sued — and recently dropped the claim — to take his name off the property that started all the bankruptcies, the Trump Taj Mahal, though litigation continues to remove his name from Trump Entertainment.

Many factors, including macro-level and local economics, can contribute to bankruptcies. But while Trump’s statement that he never personally went bankrupt was technically correct, his statement that he did “a very good job” remains open to some debate.

— Colin Wilhelm

OBAMA’S ILLEGAL IRAN ‘SIDE DEALS’?

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: “Let me note President Obama is violating federal law by not handing over the side deals and we ought to see it.”

Cruz is taking some liberties in his interpretation of what Congress can expect to get a look at as it reviews the nuclear deal that the U.S. and five other world powers reached with Iran. Lawmakers can expect to see the details of the core agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for ending economic sanctions — but what they can’t see hardly means that the Obama White House is doing anything illegal.





Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that became law in May, Obama was required within five days of reaching a final deal to supply Congress "the text of the agreement and all related materials and annexes." But the White House, in a Q&A released in July after the P5+1 agreement was reached, knocks down the notion that there were any “secret side deals” that merited release to lawmakers. There are indeed two attachments — brokered between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, including one addressing the sensitive Parchin military site — but the White House explained that those are “not public documents.”

“The administration was not provided them by the IAEA and therefore has not shared them with the Congress,” the White House said. It noted that the IAEA has followed “standard practice” in keeping the agreements confidential, adding: “It has not distributed these sensitive documents, nor do we expect it to do so.”



— Darren Samuelsohn

FIORINA'S UNSUBSTANTIATED SYRIA CLAIM

Carly Fiorina: “The reason it is so critically important that every one of us know General [Qasem] Soleimani’s name is because Russia is in Syria right now because the head of the Quds force traveled to Russia and talked Vladimir Putin into aligning themselves with Iran and Syria to prop up [Syrian President] Bashar al Assad.”

Fiorina was referring to the late July visit to Moscow by the chief of Iran’s Quds Force, a special forces unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in violation of a United Nations-imposed travel ban. She also worked in a jab at Donald Trump’s mixing up of the Quds Force and the Kurds during a recent interview with Hugh Hewitt, one of the moderators of tonight’s debate.

But the claim that Iran orchestrated the deployment of Russian forces to Iran’s ally in the Middle East appears to be based on a single unnamed source cited by the Israeli news site ynet.com http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4699809,00.html that has not been independently verified.

Russia has also had long-standing ties to the Syrian regime and been a primary provider of arms to the Syrian army in its four-year war against a series of rebel and Islamic terrorist groups.

—Bryan Bender



YES, TRUMP ASKED BUSH FOR FAVORS

Jeb Bush said Donald Trump gave him money in the form of political donations and then tried to get him to expand casino gambling in Florida. Trump denied it — “I promise you, if I wanted it, I would’ve gotten it,” he said — but it's true.

In 1998, when Bush was waging his second gubernatorial campaign, Trump held a fundraiser for him at Trump Tower in Manhattan. “I had a fundraiser and raised about $1 million, which in those days was a lot of money,” Trump told the Washington Post last month. “In fact, I remember [Bush] saying, ‘It was the most successful fundraiser I’ve ever had.’ ”

At the time, Trump was working partnering with the Seminole tribe to expand its gambling operations, which state law limited to bingo-style games, to a full range of table games. Bush strongly opposed the expansion of gambling in the state—and stood his ground in office. Trump abandoned his plans with the Seminoles.

— Ben Schreckinger



SANTORUM: IMMIGRANTS DIDN'T TAKE ALL THOSE JOBS

Rick Santorum: “If you look at, from the year 2000 to the year 2014, there are 5.7 million net new jobs created,” Santorum said. “What percentage of those jobs are held by people who weren't born here? The answer is all of them.”

But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ payroll survey, 6.5 million new jobs were created between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2014, the period to which Santorum was apparently referring.

Santorum’s claim appears to come from a report from the Center for Immigration Studies. That report, using a calculation method different from that of BLS, put the net number of jobs created between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2014 at more than 8 million, of which 5.7 million went to immigrants. Santorum appeared to be misstating the report’s finding that the number of jobs created in that period that went to “working age” individuals—5.7 million—matched the number of jobs created in that period that went to immigrants.

— Marianne Levine

THE COLUMBINE FAIRYTALE



Rick Santorum: "Sixteen years ago, this country was tremendously inspired by a young woman who faced a gunman at Columbine and was challenged about her faith and she refused to deny God. We saw her as a hero. Today, someone who refuses to deny a judge's unconstitutional verdict is ridiculed, criticized and chastised because she's standing up and … not denying her God and her faith. That is a huge difference in 16 years.”

The former Pennsylvania senator was referencing an early story about a victim of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in his defense of briefly jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was refusing to provide marriage licenses to gay couples. But the story has since been widely debunked.

The Denver Post had reported the story that Santorum was citing, that of Columbine student Cassie Bernall’s answer to one of the shooter’s questions led to her death.“’Do you believe in God?’ one of them asked. ‘Yes, I do believe in God,’ Bernall said,” according to the newspaper. “Then he pulled the trigger.”

The account led to a best-selling book, “She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall,” which traced the once-troubled teen’s path to finding her faith.

But Jefferson County, Colorado, investigators weren’t so sure Bernall faced that scenario, debunking the myth.

"We strongly doubt that conversation ever occurred," a sheriff’s office spokesman said later, according to the Washington Post.

The far more likely scenario was that a victim who was shot, but not fatally, Valeen Schnurr, had that conversation with one of the shooters.

— Caitlin Emma & Nirvi Shah



PLANNED PARENTHOOD ‘SELLS BABY PARTS’



Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: “Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts across this country.”

While an anti-abortion group has been releasing several undercover videos suggesting that’s the case, Jindal’s claim is a stretch.

Since July, the Center for Medical Progress has released 10 undercover videos arguing that Planned Parenthood clinics are engaged in the widespread practice of illegally profiting from fetal tissue sales. But the women’s health organization says only two of its local affiliates are involved in donations of fetal tissue — and the clinics only recoup costs for things like storage and transport, as allowed by federal law.

Planned Parenthood is under investigation by several states and congressional committees because of the videos, but none of the panels or states have found proof of wrongdoing

— Rachana Pradhan



AN 'UNCONSTITUTIONAL' COURT



Rick Santorum: “A judge’s unconstitutional verdict.”



Santorum here appeared to be referring to the Supreme Court's decision this summer in Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. This statement wasn't so much wrong as self-canceling. The Supreme Court, since 1803, has been the final arbiter of what's constitutional and what's not, so by definition a Court decision is constitutional. But the court does reverse itself on constitutionality, especially on major social issues, as it did in the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson cases.





— Stephen Heuser

WHO LOST IRAQ?

Lindsey Graham: “We were in a good spot in Iraq. President Bush made mistakes but he adjusted. To those who fought in Iraq, you did your job and Barack Obama wasted it all. Now we are in a spot where if we don’t destroy ISIL soon they are coming here.”

The South Carolina Republican and 33-year Air Force veteran stretched the facts when he blamed Obama for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 despite “sound military advice” urging him to leave some troops behind.

The so-called Status of Forces of Agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government regarding the long-term U.S. military presence was sealed not by the Obama administration but George W. Bush. It required U.S. combat forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and for all U.S. combat forces to leave the country by Dec. 31, 2011.

The Obama administration sought to negotiate a way to keep a contingent of American forces in the country — something that was also advocated by top U.S. commanders — but, as Obama explained in a news conference in 2014, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept certain key conditions.

“In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system,” Obama said. “And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left.”

— Bryan Bender