WASHINGTON—U.S. President Donald Trump is travelling the country doing campaign rally after campaign rally: 10 more, his campaign says, in the 13 days before the midterm elections on Nov. 6.

And he is telling the same lies over and over.

We’re sometimes asked how we can immediately fact-check the claims the president makes at these events. The answer is that he repeats the same things at rally after rally, only occasionally mixing in some new bit of nonsense.

To help you wade through the blizzard, here is a guide to the most common false claims — some exaggerations, many outright fabrications — Trump has made most frequently at his rallies in 2018.

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You can read our full list of every false claim Trump has made in his presidency — 3,084 so far — at this link.

19 times — The border wall is under construction

Sample quote: “So we’ve already started the wall. We got $1.6 billion. The wall has been started.”

Why it’s wrong: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and he has not received money for it. The $1.6 billion in congressional funding is to build some new fencing and replace some existing fencing, not build the giant new barrier he has proposed.

13 times — The U.S. trade deficit with China was $500 billion

Sample quote: “China has been taking out $500 billion, yet people have no idea what that is. Five hundred billion. We have rebuilt China.”

Why it’s wrong: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China. (Economists disagree with Trump’s use of phrases like “taking out” and “losing” to describe trade deficits, but that’s another issue.) The deficit was $337 billion in 2017.

13 times — Asian-American unemployment is at an all-time low

Sample quote: “Hispanic Americans and Asian-Americans likewise have the lowest unemployment in the history of our country.”

Why it’s wrong: In May, the unemployment rate for Asian-Americans did hit a new record low: 2.0 per cent. But then it immediately jumped back up to a non-record, and it is now at the non-record of 3.5 per cent, which is 0.9 percentage points higher than the 2.6 per cent rate in the last full month of Barack Obama’s term in December 2016.

12 times — The Veterans Choice health care program couldn’t get passed for 44 years before Trump came along

Sample quote: “We also passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor. Big thing. Forty-four years. Forty-four years, they’ve tried to get it passed. People are waiting on line for 12 days, for 20 days, for 28 days. I thought it was my idea, but then I came back and I said — what a great idea. They said, we’ve been trying to get it passed for 44 years. I mean, how simple? Right? Forty-four years.”

Why it’s wrong: Nobody has been waiting 44 years for the Veterans Choice program to be passed: four years ago, in 2014, it was passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama. The program allows certain veterans to see private doctors rather than face long wait times in the Veterans Health Administration system. The bill Trump signed into law in June 2018, the VA Mission Act, merely makes changes to the Choice program.

12 times — Trump’s military budgets are record-setting

Sample quote: “And just last week, I signed a record $716 billion funding bill for our military.”

Why it’s wrong: Obama signed a $725 billion version of the same bill in 2011. In other words, Trump’s spending is not a record even if you ignore inflation.

9 times — Pollsters are fraudulently manipulating their numbers to dampen the enthusiasm of Trump voters

Sample quote: “Even Gallup, Gallup, who treats me horribly, polls are fake news also. What they do is called suppression. They put out these horrible polls and then they hope that everyone’s going to say, ‘Hey, look, I like Trump, but he’s got no chance of winning.’ Suppression, it should be illegal actually.”

Why it’s wrong: There is simply no evidence pollsters have done this.

9 times — The Trump administration has created almost 600,000 manufacturing jobs

Sample quote: “We’ve added nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs.”

Why it’s wrong: The economy added 378,000 manufacturing jobs between January 2017, when Trump took office, and September 2018, the last month for which there is official data. Even if you start counting from the month he got elected, November 2016, it’s only 408,000 manufacturing jobs. (Note: Including in these nine false claims are some in which Trump used different inaccurate figures about the number of manufacturing jobs added, not only ones in which he claimed it was “nearly 600,000.”)

9 times — The Obama administration gave Iran $150 billion as part of their nuclear deal

Sample quote: “It’s like the Iran Deal, we’re so bad, we paid $150 billion to sign a horrible agreement...”

Why it’s wrong: The nuclear deal did not involve a $150 billion payment from the U.S. government to Iran. Rather, the deal unfroze a certain quantity of Iran’s own assets – and even that wasn’t $150 billion. Experts said Iran had about $100 billion in worldwide assets at the time, and that the deal allowed Iran to access a certain percentage of it, not all of it. PolitiFact reported: “The actual amount available to Iran is about $60 billion, estimates Garbis Iradian, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew pinned it at $56 billion, while Iranian officials say $35 billion, according to Richard Nephew, an expert on economic sanctions at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.”

8 times — U.S. Steel is opening six, seven, eight or nine new plants

Sample quote: “But you have to see what’s happening with the steel industry. You don’t get it. I mean, they don’t tell you about it. Jobs are being produced. Plants are opening. U.S. Steel is opening up at least eight new plants.”

Why it’s wrong: U.S. Steel has announced major investments in only two plants – existing facilities in Granite City, Illinois and Gary, Indiana, not new ones – since Trump announced his steel tariffs. While the company has refused to explicitly deny Trump’s claim, it has told the Washington Post: “We post all of our major operational announcements to our website and report them on earnings calls.” That website and those calls have not included anything about opening six, seven, eight or nine plants, as Trump has claimed at various times.

8 times — Obama said there would be no more manufacturing jobs

Sample quote: “We’ve created more than 400,000 — that’s very soon going to be 600,000 manufacturing jobs since my election. Well, President Obama said you won’t have manufacturing jobs anymore…”

Why it’s wrong: Obama never said that; Trump is twisting his words. At a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs — “some of those jobs of the past” — “are just not going to come back,” and mocked Trump for claiming he would bring “all these jobs back.” But Obama did not say all manufacturing jobs would vanish, nor that none could be created. In fact, he boasted about the creation of manufacturing jobs during his own presidency: he said “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.”

8 times — The Democrats have a platform of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Sample quote: “The new platform of the Democrat Party is to abolish ICE and let’s not worry about crime.”

Why it’s wrong: Not only is abolishing ICE not part of the party’s official platform, that policy is not supported by the party’s leadership and has not been endorsed by most of its members of Congress. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters: “Look, ICE does some functions that are very much needed. “Reform ICE? Yes. That’s what I think we should do. It needs reform.” Trump could accurately say that some prominent Democrats have called for abolition, including possible 2020 presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

8 times — This is the first time wages have increased in 18, 19, 20, 21 or 22 years

Sample quote: “And now, for the first time in 22 years, wages are rising again.”

Why it’s wrong: Depending on how you measure, wages have been rising steadily since at least 2014.

8 times — Nobody would have believed this many jobs could be created

Sample quote: “Four million jobs created since the election. That’s unheard of. Nobody thought that was possible.”

Why it’s wrong: More jobs were created during the equivalent period under Obama (though, of course, at a different point of the economic cycle). When Trump uttered this particular quote in August, for example, 20 months had passed since the election; 4.3 million jobs were added under the previous 20-month period under Obama.

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7 times — Before Trump’s new Right to Try law, terminally ill patients could get no access to experimental medications

Sample quote: “You know what Right to Try is? Very proud of it. Right to Try. These are people that are terminally ill. It’s sad. They travel all over the world if they have the money. If they don’t, they don’t know what to do. If we have drugs that haven’t been approved yet but are showing tremendous promise, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how sick you were, where you were. You couldn’t get it. And the reason was, they didn’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt you.”

Why it’s wrong: According to Trump’s own Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, 99 per cent of patients who requested access to experimental medications before the new Right to Try law were granted access by the FDA. The Government Accountability Office confirmed in a 2017 report: “Of the nearly 5,800 expanded access requests that were submitted to FDA from fiscal year 2012 through 2015, FDA allowed 99 per cent to proceed. FDA typically responded to emergency single-patient requests within hours and other types of requests within the allotted 30 days.” The new law allows patients to ask companies for the drugs without having to also seek FDA approval, but it is obviously not true that the FDA was regularly standing in the way.

7 times — Coal is “clean”

Sample quote: “And we are unleashing the power of Pennsylvania shale and clean, beautiful Pennsylvania coal, beautiful, beautiful, clean coal.”

Why it’s wrong: By any objective standard, coal is not clean. Some coal advocates controversially use the phrase “clean coal” to refer to high-tech techniques for reducing the amount of carbon emissions from the use of coal power. But it nonsensical to claim that all of a state’s coal is clean coal.

6 times — The U.S. trade deficit with the European Union was $151 billion

Sample quote: “I say, ‘Jean-Claude, we’d like to negotiate a new trade agreement with the European Union. We lost $151 billion over the last number of years per year.’ Does anyone know what a $151 billion per year is?”

Why it’s wrong: This figure counts only trade in goods and excludes trade in services. In goods trade alone, the U.S. did indeed have a 2017 deficit of $151 billion with the European Union. But when you count all kinds of trade, the deficit was much smaller, $102 billion.

6 times — Foreign governments enter their unsavoury citizens into a lottery to immigrate to the U.S.

Sample quote: “Who the hell are they? Who is he? Pick them out of a hat. We’re letting people come in on merit, where they can help you, where they can help these companies grow. Right now, we have a system, lottery, a lottery. Think of it, lottery. Oh, pick ‘em, I wonder? What people do you think these countries are putting in? Do you think they’re putting in their finest? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. So we’re going to end it.”

Why it’s wrong: Governments do not decide who enters the State Department’s visa lottery. Individuals enter on their own, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate. And they are subjected to a background check if their name is drawn.

5 times — San Diego is asking for a border wall

Sample quote: “And, in San Diego, they came to us — they wanted the wall in California. And you heard the story. I said, ‘Don’t give it them, because we lose a lot of energy.’ They wanted it so badly. They got tired of illegal immigrants walking across their front lawn. Can you understand that? Isn’t that terrible that they got tired? Why shouldn’t they have people walking in their living room? Why? So they wanted the wall.”

Why it’s wrong: There is no apparent basis for this claim. San Diego’s city council has formally voted, 5-3, to oppose the wall, and even the city’s Republican mayor, Kevin Faulconer, is opposed.

5 times — Obama said he was close to going to war with North Korea

Sample quote: “And we won’t even mention how well we’re doing with North Korea. But when I came in there, too, they were going to go to war with North Korea. President Obama said it was his biggest problem. We sat before I took office. ‘What’s your biggest problem?’ ‘Biggest problem is North Korea. We were going to go with North Korea.’”

Why it’s wrong: Obama did tell Trump at their post-election meeting that North Korea was the biggest or most urgent problem he would face. But there is no evidence he ever told Trump he was close to going to war with North Korea, and people close to Obama say he has never said anything like this at all, let alone to Trump. Obama’s office declined to comment, but it referred us to Ned Price, a former special assistant to Obama and spokesperson for the National Security Council, who called Trump’s remark “absolute revisionist history,” saying, “I’ve never heard anything even remotely like that coming up during that session.” Obama’s strategy of “containment and deterrence” was “predicated in part on the understanding that a military conflict on the (Korean) Peninsula would be nothing short of catastrophic,” Price said.

5 times — There were 32,000 people in Trump’s election-eve crowd in Michigan

Sample quote: “We said, ‘Let’s go to Michigan, right? Grand Rapids.’ I got there at 12 o’clock in the evening, remember that? And I said, ‘How’s the crowd?’ We couldn’t even get near the arena. There were 32,000 people.”

Why it’s wrong: The capacity of the Grand Rapids hall was 4,200. Local newspapers reported that the room was over capacity, and that there was a large crowd outside, but the total was nowhere near 32,000. Nick LaFave, a news anchor for WZZM 13 television in Grand Rapids, wrote on Twitter: “I covered that rally. The place was definitely beyond capacity. I think we estimated 8k. Many more outside who never got in. But, no way that got to 32k. None. No way.”

5 times — Democrats are going to end the Medicare health insurance program for seniors

Sample quote: “Also at stake in this election is Medicare. Democrats support a socialist takeover of health care that would totally obliterate Medicare.”

Why it’s wrong: Some Democrats have endorsed the idea of a single-payer health care system kind of like Canada’s. Their favoured term for that idea is “Medicare for all.” While many of the Democrats are vague about what exactly they mean by “Medicare for all,” their single-payer proposals — what Trump calls a “socialist takeover” – would not “obliterate Medicare.” They would extend Medicare to more people, plus give additional coverage, for things like dental and vision care, to existing Medicare recipients.

5 times — Trump has eliminated the estate tax for small farmers and small businesspeople

Sample quote: “And our tax cut saves family farms and ranchers and small businesses from unfair estate tax, also known as the death tax…You’d like your kids to take over the farm. But you couldn’t do it, because they had to borrow a fortune in order to work it out. We got rid of that tax.”

Why it’s wrong: Trump’s tax cut did not eliminate the estate tax; it merely doubled the threshold at which the tax must be paid, raising it to $11 million. And a tiny percentage of farmers and small businesspeople were paying the tax even before Trump signed the cut into law in late 2017: according to the Tax Policy Center, a mere 80 farms and small businesses were among the 5,460 estates likely to pay the estate tax in 2017.

5 times — It will cost only $400,000 to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Sample quote: “And the embassy — which was going to cost over a billion dollars. We built it for about $400,000, right. You know that.”

Why it’s wrong: The renovations required to move the embassy to an existing U.S. diplomatic building in Jerusalem will cost at least $21 million, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

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