Fact-Checking the Biden-Trump Debate: Exposing False Claims

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump traded barbs and a variety of false and misleading information as they faced off in their first debate of the 2024 election.

Here’s a look at some of those false and misleading claims Thursday night by the two candidates.

January 6

Trump, on January 6 rioters: “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol and in many cases were ushered in by the police.”

The facts: That’s false. The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the deadliest assault on the seat of American power in more than 200 years. As thoroughly documented by video, photographs and people who were there, thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill in what became a brutal scene of hand-to-hand combat with police.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. More than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes, and 200 others have been convicted at trial.

Economy

Trump: “We had the greatest economy in history.”

The facts: That’s not accurate. The pandemic triggered a massive recession during his presidency. The government borrowed $3.1 trillion in 2020 to stabilize the economy. Trump left the White House with fewer jobs than when he entered.

But even if you take out issues caused by the pandemic, economic growth averaged 2.67% during Trump’s first three years. That’s pretty solid. But it’s nowhere near the 4% averaged during Bill Clinton’s two terms from 1993 to 2001, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Growth has been stronger so far under Biden than under Trump.

Trump did have an unemployment rate as low as 3.5% before the pandemic. But again, the labor force participation rate for people 25 to 54 — the core of the U.S. working population — was higher under Clinton. The participation rate has also been higher under Biden than Trump.

Trump also likes to talk about how low inflation was under him. Gasoline fell as low as $1.77 a gallon. But that price dip happened during pandemic lockdowns when few people were driving. The low prices were due to a global health crisis, not Trump’s policies.

Insulin

Biden: “It’s $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400.”

The facts: No, that’s not exactly right. Out-of-pocket insulin costs for older Americans on Medicare were capped at $35 in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law. The cap took effect last year, when many drugmakers announced they would lower the price of the drug to $35 for most users on private insurance. But Biden regularly overstates that many people used to pay up to $400 monthly. People with diabetes who have Medicare or private insurance paid about $450 yearly before the law, a Department of Health and Human Services study released in December 2022 found.

Abortion

Trump: “The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth.”

The facts: Trump inaccurately referred to abortions after birth. Infanticide is criminalized in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.

Abortion rights advocates say terms like this and “late-term abortions” attempt to stigmatize abortions later in pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are exceedingly rare. In 2020, fewer than 1% of abortions in the United States were performed at or after 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Abortions later in pregnancy also are usually the result of serious complications, such as fetal anomalies, that put the life of the woman or fetus at risk, medical experts say. In most cases, these are also wanted pregnancies, experts say.

Russia

Trump on Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Russia: “He should have had him out a long time ago, but Putin’s probably asking for billions and billions of dollars because this guy pays it every time.”

The facts: Trump is wrong to say that Biden pays any sort of fee “every time” to secure the release of hostages and wrongfully detained Americans. There’s also zero evidence that Putin is asking for any money in order to free Gershkovich. Just as in the Trump administration, the deals during the Biden administration that have brought home hostages and detainees involved prisoner swaps, not money transfers.

Trump’s reference to money appeared to be about the 2023 deal in which the U.S. secured the release of five detained Americans in Iran after billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets were transferred from banks in South Korea to Qatar. The U.S. has said that that the money would be held in restricted accounts and will only be able to be used for humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food.

COVID-19

Biden: Trump told Americans to “inject bleach” into their arms to treat COVID-19.

The facts: That’s overstating it. Rather, Trump asked whether it would be possible to inject disinfectant into the lungs.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute,” he said at an April 2020 press conference. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

Migrants

Trump, referring to Biden: “He’s the one that killed people with a bad border and flooding hundreds of thousands of people dying and also killing our citizens when they come in.”

The facts: A mass influx of migrants coming into the U.S. illegally across the southern border has led to a number of false and misleading claims by Trump. For example, he regularly claims other countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions to send to the U.S. There is no evidence to support that.

Trump has also argued the influx of immigrants is causing a crime surge in the U.S., although statistics actually show violent crime is on the way down.

But FBI statistics do not separate out crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York.

Studies have found that people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes. For more than a century, critics of immigration have sought to link new arrivals to crime. In 1931, the Wickersham Commission did not find any evidence supporting a connection between immigration and increased crime, and many studies since then have reached similar conclusions.

Texas is the only state that tracks crimes by immigration status. A 2020 study published by the National Academy of Sciences found “considerably lower felony arrest rates” among people in the United States illegally than legal immigrants or native-born.