Republican National Convention 2020: Day 4

President Trump spoke at length about his law and order message during his Republican National Convention acceptance speech, claiming Joe Biden’s platform is an “attack on public safety.”

“Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments all across America,” Trump said. “They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland, Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden's America.”

Biden has said that he does not support calls to defund police.

The President also said he stands with the men and women of law enforcement, saying “the overwhelming majority of police officers in this country are noble, courageous and honorable.” 

Trump made a number of misleading and exaggerated claims in touting his administration’s record on Covid-19 testing and treatments. 

“We developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world,” Trump said.

Trump also said, “America has tested more than every country in Europe put together, and more than every nation in the Western Hemisphere combined. We have conducted 40 million more tests than the next closest nation,” he said.

In addition, Trump, according to prepared remarks, said the US has “developed a wide array of effective treatments, including a powerful anti-body treatment known as convalescent plasma that will save thousands of lives. Thanks to advances we have pioneered, the fatality rate has been reduced by 80 percent since April.”

Finally, Trump said the US “has among the lowest case fatality rates of any major country in the world.

 Facts First: These claims are exaggerated and misleading. Testing in the US has been less than successful, and has never reached levels that satisfy public health experts. After getting off the ground slowly and late. Trump’s own CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, admits the US has missed 90% of coronavirus cases with its testing efforts. On June 25, he told reporters that the CDC had estimated there were many more cases than testing had detected. “A good rough estimate now is 10 to 1,” Redfield told a media briefing. Redfield told Congress that coronavirus has “brought this nation to its knees.”  

As for Trump’s claims on developing new treatments, the US has not yet developed a single new treatment for coronavirus. The only treatments that have been shown to work against coronavirus are old treatments - the steroid dexamethasone, the existing drug remdesivir, which has minimal benefits, blood thinners and convalescent plasma, which is a 100-year-old last-ditch treatment, and the FDA commissioner acknowledged he overstated its potential benefits on Sunday. Antibody treatments are in the works, but are far from approval and it’s not clear how well they might work. 

As for case fatality rates, the US does appear to have a case fatality rate of 3.1%, but that is still higher than Russia’s, which is 1.7%; Saudi Arabia’s, which is 1.2%; Israel’s, which is 0.8%; Norway’s, which is 2.5%; Japan’s, which is 1.9%. Johns Hopkins has a list of those rates among the most affected countries here. And deaths are not always reported. The CDC has found many more excess deaths during the pandemic than have been attributed to coronavirus. . It’s possible other countries are simply better at tallying their deaths. 

However, according to Johns Hopkins University, the US has among the highest mortality rates when measured per 100,000 people. The US comes in at 54.93 deaths per 100,000. Only 10 countries have higher rates, and they include Brazil, at 56.17 deaths per 100,000; Sweden at 57.12 and the UK, at 62.49. More than 100 countries have lower death rates than the US. They include Mexico, Panama, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Norway, Greece, Sudan and Haiti.  

President Donald Trump claimed that during the Democratic convention the word “God” was left out of the Pledge of Allegiance twice.

“During the Democrat Convention the words 'under God' were removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, not once but twice,” Trump said.

Facts First: The word ‘"God" was left out of the Pledge of Allegiance in at least two caucus meetings held earlier in the day that were part of the full convention but the word was not removed during the main evening events of the DNC.

President Trump doubled down on his longtime pledge to lower prescription drug prices, mentioning it twice in his speech. 

“Last month, I took on Big Pharma – you think that’s easy? It’s not -- and signed orders that will massively lower the cost of your prescription drugs,” said Trump, who also promised to “further reduce the cost of prescription drugs.” 

Facts First: The President signed four executive orders in July aimed at reducing drug prices, but it’s far from clear whether they will ever take effect or greatly lower prices if they do. Also, drug prices have continued to rise during the Trump administration, though the growth rate has slowed by some measures. 

The President issued four executive orders late last month, which resurfaced a kitchen sink of controversial proposals that have advanced little during his term. 

One, known as the favored nations measure  – which has not yet been released by the White House  – generally calls for setting Medicare reimbursement levels for certain drugs on their cost in other countries. Trump said at the signing that he would hold onto the order until August 24 to give drug makers time to present their ideas for reducing costs. A planned meeting at the White House in late July never took place, and it remains to be seen what Trump will do with the measure.  

A second order calls for effectively banning drug makers from providing billions of dollars in rebates to pharmacy benefit managers and insurers, a radical change in the way many drugs are priced and paid for in Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, drug companies would be encouraged to pass the discounts directly to patients at the pharmacy counter. The administration had to back down from this effort last summer, in part because it would have likely raised Medicare premiums. 

Another executive order pushes allowing drug importation from Canada, where prices are much lower. It would also allow manufacturers to import lower-cost versions of the drugs they sell in other countries. However, concerns include whether the medications would be safe and whether Canada has enough supply to make a dent in US prices.  

The final order directs Federally Qualified Health Centers, which provide primary care services to underserved communities, to pass along discounts on insulin and EpiPens to their patients.  

It’s likely the drug industry would take the administration to court if the President moves forward with the orders. 

As for drug prices: GoodRx, which follows several thousand brand name and generic medications, found that manufacturers hiked prices on 857 drugs by an average of 6.8% in the first six months of this year. That compares to 933 medications rising an average of 7% over the same time last year, according to the website, which provides cost comparisons and consumer discounts. The number of drugs and rate of price growth slowed between 2015 and 2019. 

President Donald Trump noted Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War in an attack on Biden’s record.

Facts First: This omits important context. While Trump is correct that Biden voted for the war, Trump didn’t mention that he himself expressed tentative support for the 2003 invasion in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern.

Trump did not become an explicit opponent of the war until 2004, more than a year after the invasion. His running mate, Mike Pence, also voted for the war as a member of Congress.

You can read a longer fact check here.

President Donald Trump claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “has pledged a $4 trillion tax hike on almost all American families.” 

Facts First: This overstates the tax increase Biden has proposed and experts say it would fall largely on corporations and wealthy Americans, rather than on the middle class. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent bipartisan nonprofit, estimated that Biden’s tax plan would raise between $3.35 trillion and $3.67 trillion over a decade by concentrating its tax increases on corporations and the country’s highest earners.  

“The Biden tax plan is highly progressive, increasing taxes for the top 1 percent of earners by 13 to 18 percent of after-tax income, while indirectly increasing taxes for most other groups by 0.2 to 0.6 percent,” wrote the CRFB in a recent report. 

During his speech, President Donald Trump claimed that he has "very good information" that China wants Biden to win because Biden cheers for China.

Facts First: While we don’t know what information Trump may have, a recent assessment from the intelligence community reported that China preferred Trump lose the election because he was "unpredictable" and because of the many actions he has taken against China.  

William R. Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, in a statement on August 7 updating the election threat landscape heading into the election, noted that "China prefers that President Trump -- whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection. The statement went on to note that China has been critical of Trump's "COVID-19 response, closure of China's Houston Consulate" and "actions on Hong Kong, TikTok, the legal status of the South China Sea, and China's efforts to dominate the 5G market." 

Evanina's report makes no mention of China preferring Biden because he would weaken the US economy.

According to Trump, “the Biden-Bernie manifesto calls for suspending all removals of illegal aliens.”

Facts First: The Sanders-Biden "unity task forces" actually recommended a "100-day moratorium on deportations of people already in the United States" to allow for the development of transformative changes to enforcement practices at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

So, there was some basis for Trump's claim here, but a moratorium is not a permanent halt. And even a moratorium would not apply to people who are apprehended trying to cross the border during the 100-day period.

Trump claimed the US economy has gained a record nine million jobs over the past three months. 

Facts First: This is highly misleading. The economy did add about 9.3 million jobs combined in May, June and July -- but that record increase immediately followed a much bigger record loss of about 22.2 million jobs in March and April.  

 In other words, the economy is still down nearly 13 million jobs because of the coronavirus crisis. (Also, many of the jobs added were simply people returning to work after temporary layoffs.)  

You can read a longer fact check here.