Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine debated last night in Virginia. Pence uttered 17 false claims, Kaine 11.

Mike Pence

1. Falsely said Iraq “was secured in 2009.” (It was not.)

2. Falsely said Clinton and Kaine are advocating “open borders.” (They are not.)

3. Falsely said it’s “nonsense” that Trump has called for a “deportation force.” (He has used those precise words.)

4. Falsely said “Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement” in Iraq. (While she was in the administration, experts say it is wrong to suggest this was a personal failing of hers.)

5. Falsely said it was “absolutely false” that Trump had said “keep them out if they’re Muslim.” (That is what Trump said for months, and he has refused to retract the proposal even though he has started talking about it differently.)

6. Falsely said Clinton and Obama pulled out of a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe “out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.” (Wrote the Washington Post: “Pence reprises a GOP talking point from the 2012 campaign, but it’s not correct. Obama substituted a different system, but it was on the recommendation of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican. Gates, in fact, had recommended the original plan to George W. Bush and then decided the new system implemented by Obama was more effective, less costly and timelier than the Bush plan.”)

7. Falsely said of Kaine, “He left his state about $2 billion in the hole.”

8. Falsely said Clinton and Kaine want to expand Obamacare “into a single-payer program.” (They are not proposing this.)

9. Falsely said “two Syrian refugees were involved in the attack in Paris.” (None of the attackers was a refugee.)

10. Falsely accused Clinton of running a “pay to play” scheme. (There’s no evidence of this.)

11. Falsely claimed Trump “never said” more nations should get nuclear weapons. (He did.)

12. Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton said her No. 1 priority was a reset with Russia.”

13. Falsely said it was “absolutely inaccurate” that he had said “Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama.” (He said this.)

14. Falsely said, “We found, thanks to the good work of the Associated Press, that more than half her private meetings when she was secretary of state were given to major donors of the Clinton Foundation.” (This misleading count excludes all of her private meetings with foreign officials and U.S officials.)

15. Falsely said, “They give virtually every cent in the Trump Foundation to charitable causes.” (The Washington Post and other outlets have discovered that Trump has used foundation money for political donations, personal purchases, and to settle legal cases involving his business.)

16. Falsely said, “Less than 10 cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes.” (The foundation gives away less than 10 per cent of its money in the form of grants — but uses most of the rest to conduct charitable-service programs of its own. Nearly 90 per cent of its funds go to its programs; watchdogs have described it as efficient.)

17. Falsely claimed Trump had said, of Mexicans, “Many of them are good people.” (Trump was considerably weaker in his announcement speech: he said, “some, I assume, are good people.”)

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Tim Kaine

1. Falsely said “the Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces.” (Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was pushed out more than a month and a half ago; Kaine is wrong to suggest a “team” was fired, and even that Manafort’s ties to pro-Russia figures was the sole reason he lost the job.)

2. Falsely said Trump said, “And we’ll only work together with Israel if they pay ‘big league.’” (Trump has not said this about Israel. He used “big league” to refer to payments he wants from other countries, not Israel.)

3. Falsely said Trump “lost a billion a year.” (The New York Times story this week was about him apparently losing more than $900 million in one year. There is no evidence he lost $1 billion any year, or that he annually lost $900 million.)

4. Falsely said, “Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence think we ought to eliminate the federal minimum wage.” (Trump, often hard to pin down, has sometimes suggested he does not think the federal minimum wage should exist. But Pence has merely argued against raising it.)

5. Falsely said Clinton and worked to “eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program without firing a shot,” and that Pence “doesn't want to acknowledge that we stopped the Iranian nuclear weapons program.” (The program has been curtailed but not eliminated)

6. Falsely suggested that, on 9/11, “Donald Trump was fighting a very different fight. It was a fight to avoid paying taxes so that he wouldn't support the fight against terror.” (This is a highly unfair description of Trump’s (possible) decision to carry forward his giant income loss from 1995 to avoid paying taxes in subsequent years. He did not make the decision on 9/11, or fight specifically to avoid supporting the war on terror.)

7. Falsely denied he boycotted Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. (He did.)

8. Falsely claimed Trump has said “we need to get rid of NATO.” (Trump has called on NATO members to contribute more money to the alliance. While has said he would be fine if NATO disbanded over his hard line, he is pursuing reform, not elimination.)

9. Falsely said, “These guys say all Mexicans are bad.” (Even Trump has not said “all Mexicans” are bad. Pence has never said anything of the sort.)

10. Falsely said the George W. Bush tax cuts “put the economy into” the great recession. (Experts agree they were not the cause of the recession, which was triggered by the collapse of a bubble in the housing market, which was caused by various other factors.)

11. Falsely said Obama had produced “15 million new jobs.” (It is closer to 11 million new jobs. Kaine is misleadingly beginning the count at the lowest point of the recession rather than the beginning of Obama’s term.)

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