WASHINGTON—He did it again.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made 37 false claims at the third and final presidential debate, the third consecutive time he has been in the 30s. According to CNN, Trump spoke for 35 minutes 41 seconds. That works out to him uttering a little more than one false claim per minute.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made four false claims in 41 minutes, 46 seconds of speaking, or less than one false claim every ten minutes.

Trump made 34 false claims at the first debate, 33 false claims at the second. Clinton made four at the first, five at the second. The final tally: Trump 104 false claims, Clinton 13 false claims.

The list from last night:

Hillary Clinton’s false claims

1. Falsely said, “I also will not add a penny to the debt.” (Her tax plan will add $200 billion to the debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says.)

2. Falsely said, of the end of ex-president Bill Clinton’s administration, “We were actually on the path to eliminating the national debt.” (The New York Times’ fact-checkers write: “The nation was nowhere near eliminating federal debt…Debt held by the public totalled $3.4 trillion at the end of 2000, up from $3 trillion in 1992.”)

3. Falsely said, “Mosul is on the border of Syria.” (Mosul, in Iraq, is more than 100 kilometres from the border.)

4. Falsely said, of the D.C. v. Heller legal case about gun rights, “What the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them.” (This contains a grain of truth but is more misleading than accurate. The case was about D.C.’s handgun ban. In its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, the district listed the protection of children as one reason for the ban. But there were four additional reasons, toddlers were not central to the overall argument, and toddlers were not mentioned in the court decision.)

Donald Trump’s false claims

1. Falsely said, “Justice Ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that I represent.” (Ginsburg criticized Trump, but not his supporters.)

2. Falsely said, “In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States, probably you could say by far, they have more gun violence than any other city.” (Chicago no longer has especially strict gun laws, and certainly is not “by far” the strictest; it is comparable to New York City, which has far less gun violence. Its handgun ban was struck down in 2010; Illinois’ concealed carry ban was struck down in 2012; its gun registry was abandoned in 2013; its ban on gun shops was struck down in 2014.)

3. Falsely said, of Clinton’s immigration plan, “She wants to have open borders.” (Clinton is not proposing “open borders” for immigrants, though she used the phrase in the context of energy and the economy in a 2013 speech.)

4. Falsely said, “ICE last week endorsed me.” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a government agency, did not endorse Trump; a union of its employees did. And it was three weeks ago, not last week.)

5. Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton wanted the wall. Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts.” (Trump has made it clear that he means a very specific thing by “the wall”: a giant concrete barrier, 35 feet or higher, along the entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border other than the places where there are natural barriers. Clinton voted for a different barrier: shorter fencing, of a different kind, across a shorter distance. Trump himself said last year that this 2006 proposal was not the same thing: “Such a little wall, it was such a nothing wall.”)

6. Falsely said of Syrian refugees, “They have no idea where they come from.” (The refugees are rigorously vetted by U.S. authorities.)

7. Falsely said Syrian refugees in the U.S. are “definitely, in many cases, ISIS-aligned.” (Again, there is no evidence of this, given that they are vetted rigorously.)

8. Falsely said of the perpetrator of hacking attacks against Democratic officials, “Our country has no idea.” (The White House and U.S. intelligence officials, along with independent experts, have concluded that Russia is responsible.)

9. Falsely said, of the New START nuclear arms reduction deal, “The Russians have said, according to many, many reports, I can’t believe they allowed us to do this. They create warheads, and we can’t. The Russians can’t believe it.” (The Russians have not mocked the deal in such a fashion. Though the deal sets a cap on the number of “deployed” nuclear warheads, the U.S. is still permitted to develop new ones to replace old ones.)

10. Falsely said, “Her plan is going to raise taxes and even double your taxes.” (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, and even most of the highest earners will not see a doubling.)

11. Falsely said, “We are going to cut taxes massively.” (This claim would only be true if addressed to rich people. Experts say the overwhelming majority of Trump’s cuts will go to the rich. Half are for the top 1 per cent, according to the Tax Policy Center, and some middle-class families will pay even more than they do now. Most families below the top 20 per cent of earners are expected to reap income gains of less than 1 per cent.)

12. Falsely said, of China’s 7 per cent economic growth rate, “That for them is a catastrophically low number.” (China and independent economists do not see 7 per cent as a catastrophe, though it is certainly a slowdown and lower than its much-questioned official growth rate of the past. Wang Baoan, head of China’s statistics authority, said “economic growth last year met the government’s target for medium-to-high growth.”)

13. Falsely said, “Just like when you ran the State Department, $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion? You ran the State Department, $6 billion was either stolen. They don’t know. It’s gone, $6 billion.” (The inspector-general who probed this matter says it is not true that the actual money went missing – simply that contract documentation was missing or incomplete.)

14. Falsely said, “She gave us ISIS as sure as you are sitting there.” (Trump was slightly more nuanced this time than usual, saying Clinton “gave us ISIS” with her involvement in the pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. But it remains true that Daesh was very much around during the George W. Bush administration. And it is unfair to blame the secretary of state for a major military decision, especially one negotiated under Bush.)

15. Falsely said, of violence at his rally in Chicago, “She’s the one and Obama that caused the violence. They hired people — they paid them $1,500, and they’re on tape saying be violent, cause fights, do bad things.” (A hidden-camera video, shot by a conservative activist with a history of misleading editing, appears to show a Democratic operative talking about provoking Trump supporters at rallies. But President Obama and Clinton are not on the tape, and there is no evidence they knew anything about it.)

16. Falsely said of Aleppo, “It has fallen. . . from any standpoint.” (The Syrian city has not fallen.)

17. Falsely said, of his comments on more countries getting nuclear weapons, “There’s no quote. You’re not going to find a quote from me,” and “I didn’t say nuclear.” (There is a quote, and Trump said nuclear. In a March town hall on CNN, he said, among other things, “Now, wouldn’t you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?”)

18. Falsely said “I did not say that” when Clinton noted he has, at rallies, said he did not sexually assault women “because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.” (Trump did not say those precise words, but he made such claims repeatedly in the last week and a half – saying “Look at her” of one accuser and “She would not be my first choice” of another.)

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19. Falsely said sexual assault allegations against him “have been largely debunked.” (None has been “debunked.” Trump’s campaign and allies have offered counter-claims, but no allegation has been definitively disproven.)

20. Falsely said “wrong” to Clinton’s statement that he “mocked and mimicked” a reporter with a disability. (He did precisely that, on video.)

21. Falsely said Saudi Arabia and Qatar “are people that push gays off business — off buildings.” (Homosexual activities are illegal in both countries, but neither throws gay people off of buildings – that is the Daesh group.)

22. Falsely said of the Trump Foundation, “I contribute.” (Trump has not contributed at all to his foundation since 2008.)

23. Falsely said of the Trump Foundation, “The money goes 100 per cent — 100 per cent goes to different charities.” (Reporting by the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold and others shows Trump has used foundation money to settle a legal case and to donate to political groups.)

24. Falsely said “No” when asked if some Trump Foundation money was used to settle lawsuits. (Trump used $258,000 for that purpose, Fahrenthold has reported. Trump conceded the point, though not explicitly, moments later in the debate.)

25. Falsely attributed the Mosul troop withdrawal to Clinton: “But when she left, when she took everybody out, we lost Mosul.” (Clinton did not personally take people out of Mosul; the troop withdrawal was agreed to by former president George W. Bush, and Clinton, as secretary of state under Obama, was not the decision-maker on military matters. Further, people involved in the discussions say she advocated keeping a residual force in Iraq.)

26. Falsely said of the current operation to seize Mosul from the Islamic State: “And the only reason they did it is because she’s running for the office of president and they want to look tough. They want to look good.” (This is an international effort involving U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces. There is no evidence it is being done to help Clinton.)

27. Falsely said, of the Clinton Foundation, “It’s a criminal enterprise.” (There is no evidence of this. The foundation has received good ratings from watchdog groups, and it has not been charged with illegality.)

28. Falsely said “wrong” to Clinton’s correct claim that he supported the invasion of Iraq. (His only pre-war public statements were supportive of the invasion.)

29. Falsely said, “We’re not making things anymore, relatively speaking.” (Manufacturing accounted for 12 per cent of the U.S. economy last year. Though there are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in decades past, the value of the country’s manufacturing output hit an all-time high this year. Even with the “relatively speaking” qualifier, it is wrong to say the U.S. isn’t making things.)

30. Falsely said, “John Podesta said you have terrible instincts.” (Clinton’s instincts were questioned in a hacked email not by Podesta but by another of her allies, Neera Tanden, who described them as “suboptimal.”)

31. Falsely said of Russia, “They’ve taken over the Middle East.” (This is a massive exaggeration. Russia has intervened in Syria and increased its influence in other countries in the region, but is not the dominant power there.)

32. Falsely said Warren Buffett used a similar manoeuvre to his apparent carry-forward of a $916 million 1995 loss to avoid paying federal taxes for years: “I know Buffett took hundreds of millions of dollars. . . Most of her donors have done the same thing as I do.” (Buffett says he has paid income taxes since he was 13 and has never used a carry-forward loss on any of his 72 returns. Trump may have been referring to a deduction by Buffett’s company, but this would be different than what Trump did on a personal return.)

33. Falsely said, of the Iran nuclear deal, “We gave them $150 billion back.” (Trump is misstating both the amount and the nature of the money. Writes the Associated Press: “The deal allowed Iran to get access to its own money that was frozen in foreign bank accounts, estimated at about $100 billion. The U.S. didn’t give Iran $150 billion.”)

34. Falsely said of Obamacare, “The premiums are going up 60 per cent, 70 per cent, 80 per cent. Next year they’re going to go up over 100 percent.” (Obamacare prices are jumping, but Trump greatly overstates the hikes. Writes the 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.”)

35. Falsely said, “We take care of illegal immigrants, people that come into the country illegally, better than we take care of our vets.” (Every news outlet that has examined this claim has found it ridiculous.)

36. Falsely said, of “inner cities”: “You get shot walking to the store. They have no education. They have no jobs.” (Many of America’s urban cores are thriving. Trump appears to use the phrase “inner cities” to describe poor black neighbourhoods, though most black Americans in metro areas live in the suburbs, but he is still wrong; there are, of course, educated and employed people even in low-income black communities.)

37. Falsely said of NATO: “Since I did this — this was a year ago — all of a sudden, they’re paying. And I’ve been given a lot — a lot of credit for it. All of a sudden, they’re starting to pay up.” (There have not been new spending commitments by NATO members because of Trump, nor even since Trump’s emergence. Nobody credible is giving him credit for such a thing.)

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