Fact-checking Trump's Hannity event

This week:?Fact-checking the first Kamala Harris-Tim Walz interview … Harris calls rival’s planned tariffs a “Trump tax,” we check her number … Elizabeth Warren, JD Vance and the Comstock Act … We talk ads on “Morning Edition” ... Sorting out a claim about Trump, Biden and Arlington National Cemetery

Fact-checking Donald Trump's interview with Sean Hannity in Pennsylvania

In an interview from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump tested themes he might repeat in next week’s ABC debate against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity hosted the Wednesday event,?questioning?Trump for an hour; audience members questioned Trump for a second hour, which Hannity said would air on Thursday night's program.?

Here's a rundown of what Trump said about fracking, immigration and Harris in this key swing state.

Trump: “There's no chance that (Harris is) going to allow” fracking.

Harris currently supports hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, but that wasn’t always so. As a Democratic primary candidate in 2019, Harris opposed fracking.

Harris said during a 2019 CNN town hall, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking, so, yes. And starting — and starting with what we can do on Day 1 around public lands, right? … And to your point, we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities."

But after President Joe Biden picked Harris as his running mate in 2020, Harris aligned with Biden’s policies, which did not involve a fracking ban.?

Trump: "Now you have to have fracking. You know, you're the biggest in the country for this," referring to Pennsylvania.?

He's close: The federal Energy Information Administration’s most recent data, from 2021, shows Pennsylvania producing 7.5 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, which is produced by fracking.

One state has produced more: Texas, with 8.3 trillion cubic feet.

Trump: In Pennsylvania, fracking is "your biggest business, and you get a big majority of your income from fracking."

This is inaccurate.

In the past five quarters, "mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction” — a larger category than just fracking — collectively accounted for 1% to 2% of Pennsylvania's gross domestic product.

In 2024’s first quarter in Pennsylvania, the gross domestic product generated by mining, logging and oil and gas extraction amounted to about one-eighth of the gross domestic product generated by manufacturing, one-eighth that of health care, one-fifth that of finance and insurance and one-third that of construction.?

Trump: “They're filling up and loading up Social Security, Medicare, with illegal immigrants that have come into our country.”

Saying that immigration will hurt Social Security’s fiscal viability is questionable, particularly in the short- to medium term.?

First, immigrants in the U.S. illegally cannot receive Social Security retirement benefits or Medicare coverage.

Immigrants who are legally allowed to work can receive Social Security retirement benefits, but only after they’ve worked and paid Social Security taxes for 10 years.

Social Security’s fiscal challenges stem from a shortage of workers compared with beneficiaries. Immigration alone won’t make the program solvent, but would increase the worker-to-beneficiary ratio, potentially for decades.

Estimates have found that immigrants without legal status pay billions of dollars in Social Security taxes annually without drawing benefits, now or ever.

Trump: Under Biden, 20 million people have “poured into our country.”

False.?

During Biden’s administration, immigration officials have encountered immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border around 10 million times. When accounting for "got aways" — people whom border officials don’t stop — the number rises to about 11.6 million.?

But encounters aren’t the same as admissions. Encounters represent events, so one person who tries to cross the border twice counts as two encounters. Also, not everyone encountered is let into the country. The Department of Homeland Security estimates about 4 million encounters have led to expulsions or removals.

During Biden’s administration, about 3.4 million people have been released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings, Department of Homeland Security data shows. About 422,000 children who crossed the border alone were also let in.

Trump: Countries are “emptying out their prisons and jails. They're emptying out their mental institutions and insane asylums. They're emptying out the sickest people and they're emptying all into the United States.”

There is no evidence that countries are emptying their prisons or mental institutions and sending people to illegally migrate to the U.S.

U.S. immigration officials arrested about 103,700 noncitizens who had criminal convictions (whether in the U.S. or abroad) from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry.

Not all of those people were let in. And the term "noncitizens" includes people who may have legal immigration status in the U.S., but are not U.S. citizens.

Trump: Harris “was the first to leave” the Democratic 2020 presidential primary race.

That’s incorrect.

Harris left the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest weeks before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucuses. But she was far from the first. Ten candidates who held elected office in positions such as governor and major-city mayors left the race before Harris did.

From August 2019 to Harris' Dec. 3, 2019, departure from the race, other Democrats who quit the race included: U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California; then-Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio; former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas; former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania; and then-Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana.

Trump: “I call her comrade Kamala, because that's what her ideology is … her father is a Marxist.”?

Experts told us Harris is neither a Marxist nor a Communist, regardless of her dad’s position. Pants on Fire!?

The Trump campaign has pointed to Harris’ plan to ban price gouging by implementing price controls. That proposal is vague, but it falls far short of communist policy, which advocates abolishing private property. Harris has not called for seizing private homes or businesses.

Harris’ campaign describes Harris’ stance as capitalist, and experts say her policies are based on the assumption of a market-driven economy.?

Harris’ father, Donald Harris, is a retired Stanford University economics professor. In a July 25 profile of Donald Harris, The Economist magazine wrote that his work “is more unashamedly Marxist than anything in modern American politics.” The magazine said his 1978 book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” focused on economic inequality, growth and the downside of profit-seeking capitalist economies.

Other news outlets, including Fox News, said the Stanford Daily newspaper in 1974 called Harris a “Marxist.” The New Yorker magazine wrote that Donald Harris is estranged from his daughter.

Trump: “They went to (Biden) and they said, ‘We want you out. You're not going to win.’ And it was really a coup, when you think about it.”

This is misleading.?

Coup d’etat is a French term that means the overthrow of a government, usually by illegal means and with the threat of violence.

Experts previously told PolitiFact that Democrats persuading Biden to drop out of the race for president doesn’t meet that commonly used definition. Biden’s presidency continues, and Democrats’ persuading him to drop out of the race and then using party rules to replace him on the ticket is not illegal.

Read our full story.

— Louis Jacobson, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Amy Sherman

Fact-checks of the week

• Separating children at the border. On “Meet the Press,” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration record. “There was a zero-tolerance policy during the Trump administration, and that led to less family separation than under Kamala Harris’ border policies,” he said Aug. 25. A 2018 Trump administration policy led immigration officials at the border to separate more than 5,500 children from their parents when they crossed into the U.S. illegally. (The Biden-Harris administration rescinded the policy.) The Trump campaign pointed to data about children who came to the U.S. alone without a parent or guardian, but U.S. border officials didn’t separate children from their parents. Unaccompanied children arrive at the border without a parent — a choice they or their families make before coming to the U.S. alone. We rate Vance’s statement?False.
• Pick an impact figure. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris said Trump’s proposal to levy higher tariffs on goods imported into the United States could hurt everyday consumers. “(He) intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax — call it a Trump tax — that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year,” Harris said. The specific projected dollar impact on consumers varies. Two estimates we found broadly support Harris’ $4,000 figure; two others show a smaller — though still significant — impact. We rate this?Half True.
• It’s his signature. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she doesn’t believe vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s statement that Trump wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban. "JD Vance actually sent a letter last year to the Department of Justice saying, ‘enforce the Comstock Act,’" Warren said Aug. 25 on “Meet the Press.” The act, an 1873 antivice law, bans the mailing of "obscene" materials used in abortions. Anti-abortion advocates have tried to resurrect the law to bar the sending of materials such as abortion-inducing medication and surgical equipment. Vance in 2023 joined about 40 other Republicans in signing a letter to the Justice Department challenging the department’s interpretation of the law and demanding it stop all mailing of abortion pills. We rate this claim?True.

Poynter Institute President Neil Brown discussed the current state of the news with prominent journalists and content creators Sept. 4, 2024. The institute this week released the OnPoynt Report "Values Rising: Trends and traction in journalism and the news industry."

Fact-checks from the first Harris-Walz interview

PolitiFact fact-checked Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in their first joint interview since accepting the Democratic nominations for president and vice president at the party’s convention in Chicago. The segment, hosted by Dana Bash, aired Aug. 29 on CNN.

Harris: "We created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs."

This figure is close, but it comes with caveats.

The most recent figures show the increase is slightly less than that — a gain of 765,000 manufacturing jobs added during the Biden-Harris administration. That gain followed a sharp decline in manufacturing employment during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, so some of the gains reflect a return of workers to existing jobs once public health conditions had improved.?

Manufacturing employment is now 173,000 jobs higher than the prepandemic level.?

Harris: "I made (my opposition to fracking) clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking."

Harris’ response to Bash focused on her comments as Biden’s running mate in 2020, and not her strong opposition to fracking in the Democratic presidential primary.?

After Biden picked Harris as his running mate in 2020, Harris aligned with his policies, which did not involve a fracking ban. During the 2020 vice presidential debate with Republican Mike Pence, Harris said, "Joe Biden will not end fracking." Harris didn’t say she no longer supported a fracking ban, but that Biden would not pursue one.?

Harris: "In the first year of being in office, (we) … extend(ed) the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%."

This is accurate, but the drop didn’t last.?

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed in 2021, increased the annual child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for children younger than 6 and to $3,000 for children 6 to 17. Beneficiaries received up to half the credit in monthly payments from July 2021 to December 2021.?

Overall, supplemental poverty numbers show poverty among all U.S. children dropped from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau said — a 46% decline. About 5.3 million people were lifted out of poverty, including 2.9 million children.?

When the expanded tax credit expired, child poverty spiked. Supplemental child poverty rose from 12.1% in December 2021 to 17% in January 2022 — a 41% change. This meant 3.7 million more children were living below the poverty line.

Harris: "When Joe Biden and I came into office during the height of the pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost."

This is accurate. The economy lost almost 22 million jobs essentially overnight when the COVID-19 pandemic started. By the time Biden and Harris took office in January 2021, employment rebounded by about 12 million, leaving employment about 10 million jobs short of the prepandemic level.

By June 2022, employment was back to its prepandemic level. Since then, the number has risen by more than 6 million jobs.

— Matthew Crowley, Louis Jacobson, Samantha Putterman and Amy Sherman

PolitiFact talks campaign ads on NPR’s “Morning Edition”

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson joined NPR’s “Morning Edition” this week to fact-check some recent campaign ads.

Jacobson and host Michel Martin discussed an ad from the Harris’ campaign that tied Trump to Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for another Republican presidential administration. They also discussed Harris ads claiming that Project 2025 would eliminate K-12 schools and the Education Department and that Trump would cut Social Security.

Turning to Trump, Martin and Jacobson discussed ads claiming that Harris was the Biden administration’s “border czar,” that the Biden-Harris border policies allowed a massive rise in illegal immigration and that Harris would “weaponize” the Internal Revenue Service and confiscate service workers’ tip money.

Quick links to more fact-checks & reports

• Harris backs an unrealized capital gains tax. It won’t affect most Americans’ home sales.
• Here’s how a Biden ad that featured Arlington National Cemetery differs from a Trump campaign effort.
• Michigan Republican surfaces inaccurate claim about noncitizen voters in Senate race.
• A new California bill won’t eliminate voter ID at polling places.
• In a U.S. Senate race in Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno misleads on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s votes for federal aid for migrants who are in the country illegally.

Do you smell smoke??

Here's your Pants on Fire fact-check of the week:?Yes, there is such a thing as menopause.

See what else we've rated Pants on Fire this week.

Have questions or ideas for our coverage? Send me an email at [email protected].

Thanks for reading!

Katie Sanders

PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief