WASHINGTON—Donald Trump did a rally and interview in Florida on Sunday, Oct. 23. He made 14 false claims — his lowest number in weeks.

1.Falsely said of his polling, “We’re setting records with men.” (He is not. “To put this year’s gender split into a little more context: Trump’s 7-percentage-point lead among men is about how well George W. Bush did with men in 2000,” FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten wrote last week.)

2.Falsely said, “Everybody said I won the third debate.” (Trump was judged the loser in every scientific poll.)

3.Falsely said, “‘Hillary Clinton has bad instincts’ — this guy Podesta’s a nasty guy … he said ‘bad instincts.’” (Another Clinton ally, Neera Tanden, called her instincts “suboptimal” in a hacked Podesta email, not Podesta himself.)

4.Falsely said, of the Daesh (Islamic State) terror group, “She’s the one that allowed it to form.” (The group first formed in 1999 under a different name. It was using the Islamic State name by 2006, under George W. Bush.)

5.Falsely said of Clinton, “You watch her at the end of the debate, where she's, like, exhausted. She could hardly make it to her car: ‘Oh, let's get out. Let’s go.’” (Clinton appeared upbeat after the debate, and she took questions from reporters on her airplane afterward. Trump left without taking questions.)

6.Falsely said of voter fraud, “You look at certain cities and I mean you take a look at some of the cities that you know about, you know about very well, whether it’s Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago.” (There is no evidence of voter fraud problems in Philadelphia in Chicago; there have been recent news reports of alleged fraud in a St. Louis race for Missouri’s state legislature, but there is no evidence of a significant problem in presidential elections.)

7.Falsely said, “We created a monster with Iran by giving them $150 billion … we gave them back $150 billion.” (Estimates vary, but experts say the U.S. nuclear deal allowed Iran access to about $100 billion in frozen assets; it wasn’t $150 billion, and wasn’t literally the U.S. giving money back.)

8.Falsely said, of illegal immigrants being mistakenly granted citizenship, “This is two weeks ago.” (This story was published on Sept. 19, more than a month ago. We might ignore a one-time slip, but Trump repeatedly moves events closer to the present.)

9.Falsely said of John Kerry, “The only time he walked was to be in a bicycle race where he fell and broke his leg.” (Kerry was not in a bicycle race when he broke his leg. He was simply cycling.)

10.Falsely said of ObamaCare, “It’s already going up 60, 70 and 80 per cent.” (ObamaCare prices are jumping, but Trump greatly overstates the hikes. Writes the Washington Post: “State-by-state weighted average increases range from just 1.3 per cent in Rhode Island to as high as 71 per cent in Oklahoma. But the most common plans in the marketplace will see an average increase of 9 per cent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s July analysis.”)

11.Falsely said, “She’s going to raise your taxes big league, by the way.” (This would only be true if addressed to rich people; Clinton is only raising taxes on the highest earners. The Tax Policy Center says most residents below the top 1 per cent will receive minor tax cuts under her plan.)

12.Falsely said, “We have a nearly $800 billion annual trade deficit with the world.” (The trade deficit last year was $532 billion. It was $746 billion only when the count includes goods alone, excluding services. Trump sometimes specifies that he is talking about goods, but often does not.)

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

13.Falsely said the operation to retake Mosul, Iraq from Daesh is a “total disaster.” (This is a subjective claim, but there is no evidence at all that the operation is a “total disaster.” The anti-ISIS forces have made substantial gains.)

14. Falsely said the Mosul operation is happening because “Obama wanted to show what a tough guy he is before the election.” (There is no evidence of this. This is a major Iraqi initiative involving the Iraqi army, Kurdish peshmerga forces and various militias, not something Obama could order on his own.)

Read more about: