Fact-checking Night 3 of the Republican National Convention

Night Three of the Republican National Convention featured a number of elected officials, second lady Karen Pence and others who made the case for President Donald Trump’s re-election during a program focused on “law and order” as protests grow over the police shooting of a Black man in Wisconsin.

Vice President Mike Pence also accepted his re-nomination with a speech praising Trump for his leadership.

NBC News is fact checking the speeches in real time.

Pence credits Trump for Obama’s veteran’s choice program.

At one point in his speech, Pence said: “After years of scandal that robbed our veterans of the care that you earned, in the uniform of the United States, President Trump kept his word again. We reformed the VA and veteran’s choice is now available for every veteran in America.”

In fact, the veteran’s choice program was a bipartisan initiative enacted by President Barack Obama in 2014. It allowed the government to pay doctors outside the VA for veteran’s care. It is misleading to imply that it only became available under President Trump.

Pence is right, however, that the Trump administration “reformed the VA” by signing the VA MISSION Act of 2018, which boosted funding for the choice program and expanded the eligibility criteria.

Pence faults Biden for not condemning violence last week. He condemned it 8 hours ago.

Addressing the RNC on Wednesday, Vice President Pence faulted Joe Biden for not condemning violence in American cities when he spoke at the Democratic convention: “Last week, Joe Biden didn’t say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country. So let me be clear: the violence must stop.”

Pence did not mention that eight hours earlier, Biden posted a video on Twitter in which he unequivocally condemned the violence in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday in Wisconsin.

“Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary. But burning down communities is not protest, it’s needless violence. Violence that endangers lives,” Biden said in the video. “That’s wrong.”

Biden denounced violence after George Floyd’s death in similar terms in late May.

Pence offered a similar message as Biden during his speech on Wednesday: “President Donald Trump and I will always support the right of Americans to peaceful protest, but rioting and looting is not peaceful protest.”

Second lady Karen Pence, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway and Lara Trump, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, celebrated the passage of the 19th Amendment in their remarks on the third night of the RNC, something first lady Melania Trump touched on during her speech Tuesday, too.

“One hundred years ago today, the 19th amendment was adopted into the United States Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote. Because of heroes like Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone women today, like our daughters, Audrey and Charlotte, and future generations will have their voices heard and their votes count,” Karen Pence said.

Lara Trump claimed that, “One hundred years ago today, the 19th Amendment was ratified granting the right to vote to every American woman.”

But the women Wednesday night failed to acknowledge a crucial reality of the 19th Amendment: It enfranchised white women, while many Black women remained disenfranchised. The amendment outlawed keeping women from voting based on their gender, but Black women who attempted to vote in 1920 were often still subject to the poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that disenfranchised Black men in many states.

Even prior to the 19th Amendment’s ratification, as women across the country organized, marched, and lobbied for enfranchisement, Black women took on their share of the work only to be shunned or excluded by the wider, white suffrage movement. Anthony herself grew hostile to the idea that a Black man would have the right to vote before white women. Black suffragists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Adella Hunt Logan constantly fought to be included in marches and were subjected to segregated or limited inclusion.

Madison Cawthorn said James Madison signed the Declaration of Independence. He didn’t.

North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn, 25, urged viewers to consult their U.S. history books in his speech Wednesday night.

But he gets a few things wrong.

“If you don’t think young people can change the world, then you just don’t know American history,” Cawthorn said. “George Washington was 21 when he received his first military commission. Abe Lincoln — 22 when he first ran for office. And my personal favorite, James Madison was just 25 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence.”

Madison, considered one of the country’s Founding Fathers, didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence. Washington was actually 20 at the time of his first commission, and Lincoln was 23 when he first ran for office.

Kayleigh McEnany misleads on Trump and pre-existing conditions.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told a compelling story about her battle with a BRCAII genetic mutation, a pre-existing condition.

She said President Trump personally reached out to check on her and care for her as she sought a preventative mastectomy. “I know him well,” McEnany said. “And I can tell you that this president stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions.”

Trump’s policy record on pre-existing conditions, however, tells a different story.

He has fought for legislation that would undo the Affordable Care Act and weaken those protections. He’s currently supporting a lawsuit that would wipe out current safeguards for pre-existing conditions, without offering a replacement plan. The president has also used his executive authority to expand the use of short-term health plans, which are less expensive but not required to cover pre-existing medical conditions.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem distorts recent protests

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, in her Republican National Convention speech Wednesday, accused Democrats — and only Democrats — of running cities that have been taken over by “violent mobs.”

“From Seattle and Portland, to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs. The violence is rampant. There’s looting, chaos, destruction and murder.”

This is a substantial distortion and exaggeration of the facts.

Outrage over the death of George Floyd, who died in May after the white Minneapolis police officer arresting him knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, sparked protests against police brutality and in support of racial justice all over the country, in cities and states run by both Democrats and Republicans.

While the cities Noem listed all have Democratic mayors, and are all in states with Democratic governors (with the exception of Washington, D.C.) , protests have taken place in at least 450 cities across the U.S. Those included large ones in Miami, whose mayor is a registered Republican. Protests also arose in smaller cities and towns in regions supportive of Trump.

Furthermore, Noem’s claim that the cities she spoke of were “overrun by violent mobs,” is outright false.

The protests across the U.S. in recent months were largely peaceful. Violent incidents did occur, but many were initiated by outside groups with political agendas. Violence during recent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which formed after a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by a police officer, appears to be following a similar pattern as protesters are met by armed pro-police counter activists. Read more here.

Does Biden want to defund police, ICE and the military? No, no and no.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., in her RNC speech Wednesday, accused Democrats — singling out Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by name — of wanting to defund the police, the military and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“As hard as Democrats try, they can’t cancel our heroes, they can’t contest their bravery and they can’t dismiss the powerful sense of service that lives deep in their souls. So they tried to defund them. Our military, our police, even ICE, to take away their tools to keep us safe,” Blackburn said. “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their radical allies tried to destroy these heroes because if there are no heroes to inspire us, government can control us.”

All of her claims are not true.

As NBC News pointed out on both the first and second nights of the RNC (following smiliar claims from other Republicans), Biden does not support calls from some on the left to defund the police. He has explicitly said so on multiple occasions. In addition, the official Democratic Party platform, approved last week, includes no references to defunding the police.

Biden also has not called to abolish ICE. He has explicitly said he doesn’t want to abolish the agency, and has instead called for reforms, particularly regarding how it deals with undocumented immigrants who have not committed any crimes.

Biden has not made any pledges to defund the military, either, and has even faced calls from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party over not making a more overt commitment to slashing defense spending.

Blackburn, for her part, went further, saying Democrats “don’t recognize” heroes like police officers “because they don’t fit into their narrative.”

That’s also not true.

Biden, at the Democratic National Convention last week, said, “Most cops are good.” He added, “but the fact is, the bad ones need to be identified and prosecuted.”

Would Biden’s plan raise taxes by $4 trillion? Yes, but it targets top earners.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said that the Democratic nominee Joe Biden wants to levy “$4 trillion in new taxes” on “American workers, entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

It’s true that Biden’s tax proposals are estimated to raise taxes by approximately $4 trillion over 10 years, but Stefanik’s claim that Biden wants to tax middle class workers and small businesses is false.

Biden’s tax plan, aimed at making the ultra-wealthy and major corporations pay more, would raise taxes on high earners and includes proposals to tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income for people making more than $1 million a year and roll back President Trump’s tax cuts for people making more than $400,000. He also wants to raise the corporate tax rate and create tax minimums for corporate profits and corporations’ foreign earnings.

In a recent interview, Biden said Americans making less than $400,000 a year and “Mom and Pop businesses that employ less than 50 people” wouldn’t see a tax increase. The Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center have both reviewed the proposals and found that the top 5 percent of taxpayers would be most affected.

Dan Crenshaw says ISIS is defeated. The U.S. military says it is not.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, a rising star in the party, said Wednesday: “The defeat of ISIS was the result of America believing in our heroes, our president having their backs and rebuilding our military so we’d have what we needed to finish the mission.”

But the United States military says ISIS hasn’t been defeated. Although it is true that the violent extremist group last year lost the last of its territory in Iraq and Syria, and that its leader was killed in a U.S-led air strike, the Pentagon warns that the group has since found safe havens in the region and is seeking to build a caliphate.

“While ISIS no longer has the ability to hold ground, the terrorist organization isn’t completely defeated,” reads an article published two weeks ago by the U.S. Department of Defense, which quoted Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. saying that defeating the group will require a plan for displaced Syrian refugees and for local forces to be able to combat ISIS on their own.

Crenshaw’s depiction mirrors Trump’s rhetoric, which some of his own allies have rejected. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a frequent golfing partner of the president, said last October on Fox News: “The biggest lie being told by the administration is that ISIS has been defeated.”

source: nbcnews.com