The Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate on Sept. 16, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. Factcheck found they strayed from the facts on numerous issues, including:
Donald Trump told a story linking vaccination to autism, but there's no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism. Sen. Rand Paul suggested that it would be safer to spread out recommended vaccines. There were no adverse neuropsychological effects in children who were vaccinated according to the CDC schedule, and in fact those who had delayed vaccinations performed worse on some measures.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Trump donated to his gubernatorial campaign to get him to change his mind on casino gambling in Florida. Trump denied he ever wanted to bring casino gambling to the state. But Trump's denial that he was ever interested in bringing casino gambling to Florida is contradicted in a legal affidavit by a former Senate president who says he was hired by Trump to do just that.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that Hillary Clinton was "under investigation by the FBI" because she "destroyed government records." Not true. "There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision - she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server," the court filing said. "Under policies issued both by the National Archives and Records Administration and the State Department, individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record."
Trump said that "illegal immigration" cost "more than $200 billion a year." In 2013 the CBO estimated that a bipartisan bill to grant legal status to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally - which passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 32 only to die in the House - would have boosted economic output by 3.3 percent in 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033, compared with current projections. The CBO estimated that "the legislation would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014-2023 period and by roughly $700 billion over the 2024-2033 period." That's the opposite of what Trump claimed.
Carly Fiorina said that the Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." Factcheck is aware of no Planned Parenthood video showing such a scene. Another video does contain images of what appear to be intact fetuses, but they don't fit Fiorina's description. In one, where a fetus does appear to move, there is a caption saying that the footage is from the pro-life Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform; there is no indication as to where the footage was shot. In the other, it was revealed after the video's release that the image was of a stillborn baby, rather than an aborted fetus. Fiorina also repeated familiar boasts about her time at Hewlett-Packard, saying the size of the company "doubled," without mentioning that was due to a merger with Compaq, and she cherry-picked other statistics.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would "do absolutely nothing." The U.S. would have a small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, and experts say U.S. leadership on the issue would prompt other nations to act. Rubio is wrong that cutting U.S. emissions will do "absolutely nothing" to fight climate change.
Chip Tuthill is a longtime resident of Mancos. Website used for this column: www.factcheck.org.
