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.
