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September 2024

Fact-Checking 22 Claims Made in Trump-Harris Debate

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/10/fact-checking-claims-made-in-trump-harris-debate/

The rules in this debate were the same as the June debate. Candidates’ microphones were silenced while the opponent answered questions.

1. Trump: We had no inflation

Trump repeatedly said he “had no inflation” during his tenure in the White House. While inflation grew much faster under Biden and Harris, prices also rose under Trump.

Prices overall rose 19% over the first 42 months of Biden’s term compared with 6% during Trump’s first 42 months, according to Forbes. Year-over-year inflation peaked under Biden at a four-decade hgh of 9% in 2022.

2. Opportunity economy

Harris said she is the only candidate promoting an opportunity economy, but Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act gave the 82% of middle-income earners a tax cut that averaged about $1,050, according to FactCheck.org.

“I was raised in a middle-class home,” Harris said, “And I am actually the only person on the stage who has a plan to lift up the middle class and the working people, and when you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.” 

But even the Biden-Harris administration’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, acknowledged that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut taxes for all.

The year following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, new job openings surged, and about 83,000 more Americans voluntarily left their jobs for better opportunities at the end of 2019, compared with the trend before the reform.

3. Trump: Harris’ father Is a Marxist professor

The claim that Harris’ father is a Marxist was fact-checked by Snopes as “true” after a viral X post from political economist Maxine Fowé.

Donald Harris, a now-retired professor of economics at Stanford University, was the author of a 1978 book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution.” It features ideas on Karl Marx’s theory of capital. “His book, ‘Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution’, published in 1978 and dedicated to Kamala and her sister, examines the pitfalls of relying on profit-seeking capitalists to direct an economy,” writes The Economist. The New Yorker wrote of Donald Harris being “a renowned Marxist economist from Jamaica who taught at Stanford University for decades.”

4. Border ‘Security’ Bill

With the border and illegal immigration being one of the most important issues among voters in the 2024 presidential election, it’s no surprise moderators raised the issue early on in the debate.

Muir began by asking Harris why the Biden administration waited “until six months before the election” to take action on the border, referring to Biden’s recent executive order limiting illegal border crossings.

Harris answered by touting her work prosecuting “transnational criminal organizations,” before attacking Trump for opposing a controversial border bill that failed in the Senate twice.

Harris said the failed bill “would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl” coming into the U.S., and would have provided “more resources to prosecute transnational criminal organizations.”

The failed bill directed the Department of Homeland Security to close the southern border “during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, [if] there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.”

Over 1.8 million illegal aliens a year still would have been permitted to enter the United States under the now twice-failed legislation.

Harris blamed Trump for the bill’s failure, saying the former president “got on the phone” and told Republican members of Congress to “kill the bill.”

Trump, and many GOP members of Congress, were clear about their opposition to the proposed border security bill, arguing it would enshrine harmful border policies into law.

The Senate border bill “codified Joe Biden’s open border,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said of the bill in February.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., led the way in negotiating the terms of the bill with Democrats. Lankford was one of the few Republicans who voted in favor of advancing the border and foreign aid bill, along with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah.

Even if the Senate had successfully passed the bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill would have been “dead on arrival” in the House.

China Casting the Decisive Vote in U.S. Election by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20930/china-casting-the-decisive-vote-in-us-election

[W]hat about similar efforts of the far larger People’s Republic of China?

Attorney General Merrick Garland mentioned China in passing in remarks on the 4th—he promised to be “relentlessly aggressive” against foreign powers interfering in American elections and undermining democracy—but there were no indictments or other actions by his department, Treasury, or State against the Chinese regime for election-interference offenses.

It is clear that China, at this moment, is doing the same things as Russia, only on a larger scale.

“China’s trolls are conducting one of the world’s largest covert online influence operations. Its attack element is the group called ‘Spamouflage,’ and it is impersonating U.S. voters to denigrate U.S. politicians and push divisive messages ahead of the November 5 election.” — Kerry Gershaneck, former U.S. counterintelligence official, to Gatestone, September, 2024

The operation, reported Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, was attempting “to portray the U.S. as this declining global power with weak political leadership and a failing system of governance.” The effort was comprehensive. As Stubbs said, this operation was run by “Chinese state-linked actors.”

This election cycle, Spamouflague achieved its greatest success on TikTok. That is probably not a coincidence as the Wall Street Journal “found TikTok pushing thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole to its users.”

So, what are federal authorities doing about China now? Said Canfield: “Nothing, zero, zilch, nada.”

The Justice Department on September 4 announced it was seizing 32 internet domains “used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as ‘Doppelganger.'” DOJ also announced criminal charges against two Russian media executives.

Another 9/11 Anniversary, and We Have Still Learned Nothing Willful ignorance about our enemies. John Steinreich

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-9-11-anniversary-and-we-have-still-learned-nothing/

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks which turned the World Trade Center into a hellscape, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, where the Taliban government had protected the 9/11 mastermind, Saudi cleric Osama Bin Laden. Two years later, we invaded Iraq at least partly on the premise that Saddam Hussein was connected to Bin Laden.

Saddam was deposed and captured quickly enough, being executed in 2006. Bin Laden survived in hiding until Navy SEALs killed him in May 2011. In December of that year, the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. The U.S. military stayed in Afghanistan until a debacle of a withdrawal in August 2021.  As of this writing 30 detainees are still in Guantanamo Bay on 9/11-related charges.

The Watson Institute reported that the Afghanistan war took 70,000 civilian lives and that between 186,000 and 316,000 civilians were killed in Iraq.  Over 7,000 Americans died in these two conflicts. Harvard University estimates that the American taxpayer paid between $4 and $6 trillion for our Afghanistan and Iraq ventures. With such an astronomical price in blood and treasure for 9/11 and its aftermath, we need to ask some questions as we reach another anniversary of that evil day.

Do we truly understand why 9/11 happened?

Have we assessed our response to determine if it has been effective?

Did the pain of 9/11 cause us to increase our determination to cherish and protect our civilization all the more from hostile enemies?

Forgive my cynicism, but the answer to these questions is no, no, and no.

Trump Debates ABC News A debate with an establishment, not with a candidate. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/debate/

What was supposed to be a presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris hosted by ABC News, instead became a debate between the former president, his current challenger, and ABC’s two moderators: David Muir and Linsey Davis.

Even as Kamala Harris lied about her positions on fracking, gun control, and Israel, Muir and Davis repeatedly jumped in to argue with Trump under the guise of ‘fact-checking’ him.

The 3-on-1 debate format may very well mark the end of mainstream media presidential debates. It also represented a new low in not just media bias, but election interference.

The media marks each year by giving the public new reasons to distrust it, and ABC News, Muir, and Davis were clearly so insecure about the performance of their candidate that they repeatedly felt called on to argue with Trump instead of letting Kamala rebut him.

ABC News, Muir, and Davis also had no trust in the voters to decide for themselves. 

And so what was supposed to be a debate between two candidates instead became a debate between the establishment and an insurgent. Paradoxically this cut against efforts by the Kamala campaign to brand her an “underdog: and an insurgent candidate swimming upstream.

Trump debate performance panned as well-prepped Harris gets help from ABC moderators: ‘3 on 1’ By Steven Nelson and Diana Glebova

https://nypost.com/2024/09/11/us-news/trump-debate-performance-panned-as-well-prepped-harris-gets-help-from-abc-moderators-three-on-one/

PHILADELPHIA — Former President Donald Trump repeatedly found himself on the back foot Tuesday night during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris — as Republicans seethed over repeated fact-checks of the GOP candidate and a noticeably lighter touch for the Democrat’s own disputed statements.

Harris, 59, arrived well-prepared to rattle Trump by claiming that military leaders had told her that the Republican nominee and 45th president was a “disgrace,” that world leaders were “laughing” at him and even asserting that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom” after he was “fired by 81 million people” in 2020.

Trump, 78, found himself having to answer not only Harris’ repeated and pointed attacks on both his pride and policy, but also a pair of moderators who quibbled with some of his statements despite what his supporters viewed as a lack of even-handedness.

When Trump argued that crime in the US is increasing because of migrants allowed into the country on Harris’ watch, “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir interjected: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down.”

JIHAD IN AFRICA-A NEW SERIES BY CHARLES JACOBS AND UZAY BULUT

https://www.jns.org/jihadists-massacre-hundreds-in-burkina-faso/

Jihadists massacre hundreds in Burkina Faso
More than 1,000 churches, public Christian properties, houses, shops and businesses were attacked, damaged, bombed, looted, destroyed, burned down, closed or confiscated for faith-related reasons in 2023.

Oct. 7-like attacks happen almost daily across Africa. In at least nine countries, armed jihadists, following what they believe to be the precepts of Islamist theology, storm villages, and torture and murder innocent Africans. Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan are Hamas by different names.

Like the Israelis, Africans have their homes and schools burned. Churches are a prime target. Women and girls are kidnapped and enslaved as concubines, “wives” of warriors, or merchandise to ransom or sell—all to the screams of “Allahu Akbar!”

Not all the victims are Christians; moderate Muslims and practitioners of tribal faiths are also attacked. This has resulted in the displacement of millions of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods. Yet this is generally ignored by the Western “human rights” establishment.

To break the silence, we have formed the African-Jewish Alliance: to recruit decent people for the tasks of liberating the slaves and protecting the innocent. The topic will be discussed in a series of pieces.

Jihad continues to ravage Africa.

At least 500 people in the central part of Burkina Faso were killed on Aug. 27 when jihadists opened fire on civilians who were digging defensive trenches. Hundreds of those wounded were transported to healthcare facilities.

Kamala Harris won the debate — and it wasn’t close The vice president was controlled and effective where Trump was angry, defensive and rambling Charles Lipson

https://thespectator.com/politics/kamala-harris-won-debate-philadelphia-2024/

If Kamala Harris is elected president — and that’s a big “if” since the race is still tight — she won it on the debate stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night. True, her answers were often vague, but they were also inspirational and forward-looking. She avoided the “word salads” that have so often marred her (rare) comments without a teleprompter. She was clear and articulate throughout. 

Harris showed the skill of a professional politician as she avoided being pinned down on her most extreme policy pronouncements from 2019-2020, often denying she ever made them. Trump could have pressed her on those but seldom did. 

Harris effectively stressed her winning position on “women’s right to choose” and damned Trump for his position. (She misstated his views on in-vitro fertilization, but he rebutted her on that.) She also underscored her support for Obamacare, a smart position nationally, and tied it to John McCain’s vote, a smart position in the swing-state of Arizona. 

Most important of all, Harris displayed the control, sureness and coherence voters demand of their president and commander-in-chief. Demonstrating her ability to occupy the Oval Office was job number one in the debate — and Kamala Harris accomplished it. 

Donald Trump, by contrast, hurt himself time and again. He was constantly angry and defensive, qualities that engage his rallies but alienate all Democrats and many Independents, especially women. On the plus side, he repeatedly emphasized his main points on immigration, crime and endless wars — all winning issues for him. He made a strong case that he would encourage fracking, a vital issue in Pennsylvania, and that a Harris administration would kill it. (She denied it.)