On Thursday night, 10 of the top 2020 Democratic presidential candidates were invited by ABC News to take the stage and debate — and they all lied straight to the faces of American voters.
In the past, presidential debates were once considered a prestigious affair.
But Thursday’s Democratic sideshow was filled with errors, lies, mis-truths, and worse.
Here are the five biggest lies Democrats tried to push on America last night… and the truth the mainstream media won’t share.
Lie #1 — The El Paso shooting was President Donald Trump’s fault
BETO O’ROURKE, former U.S. representative from Texas, on last month’s mass shooting in El Paso: “Everything that I’ve learned about resilience, I’ve learned from my hometown of El Paso, Texas, in the face of this act of terror, that was directed at our community, in large part by the president of the United States. It killed 22 people, and injured many more, we were not defeated by that. Nor were we defined by that.”
JULIAN CASTRO, former U.S. housing secretary: “Look, a few weeks ago a shooter drove 10 hours inspired by this president to kill people who look like me and people who look like my family.”
THE TRUTH: Trump didn’t direct the killer. He didn’t inspire him, either.
It is difficult to know for sure what led the gunman to open fire inside a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people. The suspect posted a manifesto online before the shooting about his fear of illegal immigration.
The screed spoke of what the suspect called a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” railed against illegals and warned of an imminent attack. But he wasn’t directed or inspired by Trump.
In his manifesto, he said his own views “predate Trump and his campaign for president.”
Lie #2 — America has one of the worst child poverty rates in the world.
BERNIE SANDERS: “We have the highest child poverty rate of almost any country on Earth.”
THE TRUTH: Wrong. This oft-repeated line by the Vermont senator is simply false.
There are nearly 200 countries in the world, many with people deep in extreme poverty that most Americans would struggle to fathom.
Poverty is also a relative measure in which someone who is poor in one nation might look rather prosperous in another.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s
updated child poverty report in 2018, things are good inside America’s borders.
The United States was not at the bottom of the 42 nations listed in the report. Even poor children in the United States are better off than in Russia, Chile, Spain, India, Turkey, Israel, Costa Rica, Brazil, South Africa, China, and other countries.
Lie #3 — Former President Barack Obama didn’t separate illegal immigrant families
JOE BIDEN: “We didn’t lock people up in cages, we didn’t separate families.”
THE TRUTH: Biden’s comment about cages and family separation are both completely wrong.
The so-called “cages” — chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where illegal immigrants have been temporarily housed, separated by sex and age — were built and used by the Obama administration. The Trump administration has been using the same facilities as the Obama administration.
Democrats routinely accuse Trump of using “cages” for children when they’re caught crossing the border illegally. But the media and Democrats don’t acknowledge that the same enclosures were employed when Biden was vice president.
No one cared then. Now that a Republican is in office, they’re suddenly “concentration camps”?
The Obama administration also separated children from families under certain circumstances, like when the child’s safety appeared at risk or when the parent had a criminal history.
Lie #4 — “Medicare for All” will save taxpayers money
SANDERS: “Every study done shows that ‘Medicare for All’ is the most cost-effective approach to providing health care to every man, woman and child in this country.”
THE TRUTH: It’s the exact opposite, according to experts.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said
in a report earlier this year that total spending under a single-payer system, such as the one proposed by Sanders, “might be higher or lower than under the current system depending on the key features of the new system.”
Those features involve details about payment rates for hospitals and doctors, which are not fully spelled out by Sanders, as well as the estimated cost of generous benefits that include long-term care services and no copays and deductibles for comprehensive medical care.
Rand modeled a hypothetical scenario in which a plan similar to legislation by the Vermont senator had taken effect this year. It found that total U.S. health care spending would be nearly $4 trillion under “Medicare for All” in 2019, compared with about $3.8 trillion under the status quo.
Lie #5 — Donald Trump wasn’t indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller only because of a legal loophole
KAMALA HARRIS, on Trump: “The only reason he has not been indicted is because there was a memo in the Department of Justice that says a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.”
THE TRUTH: Not according to former special counsel Robert Mueller.
He never said that
in his 440+ report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and corrected the misinformation when questioned by Congressional leaders while under oath.
Harris is referring to a Justice Department legal opinion that says sitting presidents may be immune from indictment. But Mueller said that they never reached a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.
In Mueller’s congressional testimony in July, he said his team never even started the process of evaluating whether to charge Trump.
