“It’s not true”: during their first debate before the November presidential election in the United States, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attacked each other on their respective records and programs, with a great deal of approximations and false information.
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Here are the main false or misleading claims on the major themes of the debate, verified by AFP’s team of fact-checkers.
Asked whether Americans live in better conditions today than they did four years ago, the Democratic candidate did not answer directly.
She accused her opponent of leaving Democrats with “the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression” when he left the White House.
This claim is misleading: The unemployment rate in the United States reached its highest level since the 1930s in April 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A few months later, at the end of Donald Trump’s term, it had returned to 6.4%.
It was 4.2% last August, a few months before the end of the mandate of Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Taxes on the sale of products
The Democratic candidate also accused her opponent of wanting to introduce a tax on the sale of products that would have a significant impact on the purchasing power of Americans, something that Donald Trump has denied.
He acknowledged, however, that he would impose tariffs of at least 10 percent on other countries, which many economists say would increase prices paid by consumers.
Inflation rate
Donald Trump, for his part, accused the Biden administration of opening the door to the highest inflation rate in US history, claiming that it had reached 21%, or even 60% for some products. This claim is misleading. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, well below the record of 23.7% reached in 1920.
Violent crimes
The Republican candidate falsely claimed that “millions of people” were flocking to the United States “from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums” abroad to commit crimes.
He also did not hesitate to repeat his camp’s false accusation that migrants are eating “cats and dogs” in an Ohio town, a claim denied by local authorities and police in recent days.
Violent and property crime are near their lowest levels in decades, according to the FBI’s 2022 data, the most recent available.
Illegal immigration
A study published in June 2023 showed a decline in incarceration rates among immigrants of all nationalities since 1960. Others have shown that migrants commit fewer violent crimes than U.S. citizens.
Illegal immigration was higher during Donald Trump’s presidency than during Barack Obama’s two terms in office. But it did reach a historic peak earlier this year under President Joe Biden, before falling after Biden signed an executive order in June temporarily closing the border with Mexico when a daily limit was reached.
Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of prioritizing political quarrels by blocking a bill earlier this year that could have increased resources allocated to securing the southern border of the United States.
Abortion
The Republican candidate, who appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, helping to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that gave American women a federal right to abortion, denounced the Democrats’ “radicalism” on the issue.
He notably falsely claimed that Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz supported “executing babies after they’re born, well execution and not abortion, because the baby is born.”
No state allows the killing of a child after birth, and infanticide is of course illegal in the United States. A debate moderator corrected the Republican candidate after he persisted in making this claim.
“Nowhere in America is a woman going to go to term to seek an abortion,” Harris said, adding that Trump, if elected, would sign a federal abortion ban, something Harris immediately denied, saying that was a decision up to the states.
