The old adage that ‘you can prove anything with statistics’ feels especially relevant at the moment.
In a world where ‘BBC Reality Check’ regularly posts about both the Government and the Opposition making false claims, and Donald Trump literally began his presidency with lies about how many people attended his inauguration, fact checking has never been more important. So why did Donald Trump and his speech writers think it would be fine to litter his speech as the ‘Republican National Conference’ (RNC) with misleading statements, half-truths, and a few all out lies?
“in terms of both annual growth and new jobs being created, Trump’s administration is lagging behind what Obama’s managed to achieve in the same amount of time”
The most emphasised lie both in his acceptance speech and throughout the conference was based on Trump’s handling of the economy during his time in office. Speaking about people’s experiences before the pandemic, Trump claimed “everybody was doing well“, thanks to his bolstering of the economy after inheriting a “stagnant” one from the Obama administration.
However, in terms of both annual growth and new jobs being created, Trump’s administration is lagging behind what Obama’s managed to achieve in the same amount of time (comparing the first three year’s of Trump’s tenure to the final three of Obama’s). Throughout the RNC both Trump and his various other family members/speakers claimed Trump had built “the most successful economy in the history of our country“, which was disproved months ago. While this claim seems to be the only one that matters to many of his voters, it’s still worth going through some of the other misleading comments in his speech:
- ‘The wall will soon be complete’ – currently around 300 miles of the wall across the US/Mexican border has been built, but the full border is approximately 2,000 miles long.
- ‘The US has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country’ – Trump has already shown that statistics in relation to COVID-19 are easy to manipulate, after his interview with Jonathan Swan where he claimed the US was “lower than the world”. This was then clarified by Swan as being in terms of deaths as a proportion of cases rather than as a proportion of population. Depending on which figures you look at, the US is either doing the best or the worst, globally, thus only using one is highly misleading.
- ‘We also passed… VA Choice’ – The Veterans Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act was first signed by President Obama in 2014 after it passed through Congress. Trump later expanded the eligibility criteria.
Trump’s claims about the economy are the ones that are going to win him votes. The various unfounded accusations that Biden is a socialist and a threat to national security only serve to distract the Democrats, just like giving his nomination acceptance speech at the White House did. While this was a flouting of tradition and technically a violation of the Hatch Act, for many working Americans this will enhance his image as a trailblazer, the man who is going to fix everything because he has a new approach, and hasn’t been corrupted by years in Washington and become out of touch in the way people perceive Biden and Clinton had.
Furthermore, any complaints from the Democrats about minor rule breaking only consolidate the image of them as overly sensitive, and looking to attack Trump by any means necessary. A huge part of his voter base are people for whom tradition has not been working, and because Trump’s flouting of minor rules has no real impact on a normal person’s day-to-day life, it similarly won’t have an impact at the polling station.
“Trump’s emphasis on himself as a political bad boy, able to get things done that no one before him has been able to do, is what originally attracted disenfranchised voters to elect him in 2016.”
During her speech, Ivanka Trump referred to her father as the “champion of the American worker”, and in the same vein Trump quipped that in his time in office he broke “the cardinal rule of Washington politics”: “I kept my promise”. Trump’s emphasis on himself as a political bad boy, able to get things done that no one before him has been able to do, is what originally attracted disenfranchised voters to elect him in 2016. His various bumbling mishaps and the viral videos of comments that left-wingers assume make him unelectable are viewed by his voters as either fake news from left dominated media industry; a sign that he is different from the previous politicians that have failed them; or as unfortunate aspects of his character they are willing to overlook in favour of his policies that they support and the strong economy they previously (supposedly) had. They are able to “distinguish the noise of Trump from what he is actually getting done“.
Beth Ure
Featured image courtesy of Radek Kucharski via Flickr. Image licence found here. No changes were made to this image.