Monday, April 08, 2019

FactChecking President Trump on wind power and more

Here's another installment of an occasional series we run listing some of the most relevant items from FactCheck.org and other nonpartisan fact checkers. FactCheck found fault with several President Trump statements last week:

"During an April 2 speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, President Donald Trump once again attacked wind power, falsely claiming that noise from turbines causes cancer and that turbines sink property values by 75 percent," Jessica McDonald reports. "The president has repeatedly erred when it comes to wind power. As we’ve explained before, when the president said living near turbines is noisy enough to make someone 'go crazy after a couple of years,' there’s no direct evidence that the sound is harmful to human health."

Last week, Trump said that "for the first time, really, in decades" Mexico "has been starting to apprehend a lot of people at their southern border coming in" from other Central American countries. That's untrue, though. "In fiscal year 2018, Mexico apprehended 110,000 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and over the previous four fiscal years the total was more than 500,000," Lori Robertson reports.

Trump also misstated Rep. Jerrold Nadler's 1998 position on releasing special counsel Kenneth Starr's report on President Clinton. Nadler, A Democrat from New York and the House Judiciary Committee chair, has said that special counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted report on Trump should be released to the committee. On April 2,  Trump tweeted: "In 1998, Rep.Jerry Nadler strongly opposed the release of the Starr Report on Bill Clinton. No information whatsoever would or could be legally released. But with the NO COLLUSION Mueller Report, which the Dems hate, he wants it all. NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM! @foxandfriends"

Trump based his tweet on a video clip aired on Fox & Friends that day. "The video clip gives the impression that Nadler was against making any of the Starr report public, which wasn’t the case," D'Angelo Gore reports. "The fuller video and transcript show that Nadler said the report and other documents would have to be reviewed by members of Congress to determine what could be released or not."

Finally, Trump claimed that Puerto Rico received $91 billion in hurricane aid, and that that amount was "more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before." Neither statement is true. Puerto Rico has received $11.2 billion in disaster relief payments since 2017, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"In all, the federal government has allocated nearly $41 billion, and has obligated about half of it via binding agreements, but as we said, so far just a portion of that — $11.2 billion — has been distributed in Puerto Rico," Robert Farley reports. "To get to the $91 billion figure, a senior administration official told us Trump is including the total allocation for Puerto Rico — $41 billion — plus an estimated $50 billion in future FEMA costs 'over the life of the disaster,' which can stretch decades."

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