BY MELISSA GOLDIN
President Donald Trump stepped back into the presidency this week moving quickly to set a new agenda, but from his inaugural address continuing through a flurry of executive actions, press conferences and interviews Trump relied on an array of false and misleading information to support his case.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
Trump misrepresents election results
CLAIM: Speaking to attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Trump said he won by millions of votes in the 2024 election, which gave him “a massive mandate from the American people, like hasn’t been seen in many years.”
THE FACTS: Trump’s margin of victory in the 2024 election was not as large as he makes it seem. He won the electoral vote 312 to 226, including all seven swing states. The popular vote, however, was far closer, with Trump receiving 49.9% of the vote with 77,303,573 votes cast to Harris’ 75,019,257 votes (48.4%), according to AP Vote Cast. That’s a difference of 2,284,316 votes. In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes.
CLAIM: In an interview Wednesday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump said that he “won youth by 36 points.”
THE FACTS: That’s false. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won the 18 to 29 age group by 4 percentage points, 51% to 47%; and the 30 to 44 age group 50% to 47%, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters in the November election.
Trump won voters over 45 against Harris, with 52% supporting him. Slightly fewer than half, 47%, voted for Harris.
Like all surveys, AP VoteCast results are not an official count of how young people voted, instead providing an estimate that is subject to sampling error. However, other survey estimates also provide no signal that supports Trump’s claims.
California water policies misrepresented around wildfires
CLAIM: Trump told Hannity that rather than let it go into the Pacific Ocean, California Gov. Gavin Newsom “can release the water that comes from north” to help fight ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles. “There is massive amounts of water, rainwater and mountain water that comes due with the snow, comes down when — it as it melts,” he continued. Trump also claimed that “they turned off the spigot from up north in order to protect the Delta smelt.”
THE FACTS: About 40 percent of Los Angeles city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to northern California, where the Delta smelt fish live, and the state has limited the water it delivers this year. Yet the southern California reservoirs these canals help feed are at above-average levels for this time of year.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has enough water in storage to meet roughly three years of water demand, said Deven Upadhyay, the agency’s interim general manager.
“We can deliver what our agencies need,” he said.
Some fire hydrants in Los Angeles ran dry in early efforts to fight the fires, prompting a swirl of criticism on social media, including from Trump.
But state water supplies are not to blame for hydrants running dry and a key reservoir near Pacific Palisades that was not filled. The problem with the hydrants was that they were overstressed, and the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty because it was undergoing maintenance.
Newsom has called for an investigation into how the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power managed both issues.
The farms-versus-fish debate is one of the most well-worn in California water politics and doesn’t always fall along party lines. Some environmentalists think Newsom is too friendly to farming interests. But that debate is not connected to fire-related water troubles in Los Angeles.
Two complex systems of dams and canals channel rain and snowmelt from the mountains in northern California and route it south. Both transport water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an estuary that provides critical habitat to fish and wildlife including salmon and the delta smelt.
The delta connects inland waterways to the Pacific, and keeping a certain amount of water flowing through helps support fish populations and the waterway itself.
Jan. 6 attacks on police downplayed
CLAIM: Asked by Hannity why he pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police at the Capitol, Trump said, “They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote.” He noted that some of the rioters engaged with police, “but they were very minor incidents.”
THE FACTS: Rioters at the Capitol engaged in hand-to-hand combat with police and many of the rioters were carrying weapons, including firearms, knives, brass knuckle gloves, a pitchfork, a hatchet, a sledgehammer and a bow. They also used makeshift weapons, such as flagpoles, a table leg, a hockey stick and a crutch, to attack officers. One officer was crushed in a doorframe and another suffered a heart attack after a rioter pressed a stun gun against his neck and repeatedly shocked him. One rioter was charged with climbing scaffolding and firing a gun in the air during the melee.
The rioters broke through windows and doors, ransacking the Capitol and briefly occupying the Senate chamber. Senators had evacuated minutes earlier. They also tried to break into the House chamber, breaking glass windows and beating on the doors. But police held them off with guns drawn.
About 1,100 of the rioters had been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds of them receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years, before Trump on Tuesday pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the riot. Approximately one-quarter had been charged with assault or physical violence.
It is true, however, that hundreds of people who went into the Capitol but did not attack police or damage the building were charged only with misdemeanors.
Inflated immigration numbers
CLAIM: Trump said during his interview with Hannity that it “was a gross miscarriage of common sense” to let 21 million enter the U.S. illegally.
THE FACTS: That figure is highly inflated. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports more than 10.8 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through December 2024.
That’s arrests, not people. Under pandemic-era asylum restrictions, many people crossed more than once until they succeeded because there were no legal consequences for getting turned back to Mexico. So the number of people is lower than the number of arrests.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest available estimate, at least 11 million people were living illegally in the U.S. as of January 2022, 79% of whom entered before January 2010.
FEMA did not end temporary housing assistance for Helene survivors
CLAIM: “The government wouldn’t do it any longer, which is ridiculous,” Trump said during a visit to North Carolina on Friday, referencing temporary housing in hotels provided to survivors of Hurricane Helene by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
THE FACTS: FEMA is still paying for survivors to stay temporarily in hotels through its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program.
“I want to be clear, this program is not ending for Western North Carolina,” Brett Howard, federal coordinating officer, said in a statement on Monday. “We understand the great need survivors have at the time and this program will last as long as necessary.”
The agency reviews the eligibility of households in the program every two weeks to ensure they still meet the requirements for receiving temporary housing in hotels. Households deemed ineligible can petition the decision.
As part of its most recent review, FEMA found that out of 2,700 households it checked in on, approximately 740 were no longer eligible for the Temporary Sheltering Assistance program, according to Monday’s statement.
Survivors are now given three weeks notice before they must check out of their hotel room, rather than seven days, “due to the extenuating circumstances in Western North Carolina,” the statement reads.
“The length of eligibility for an individual survivor will be based on their individual circumstances,” Howard added. “FEMA staff are working daily with survivors and on their cases to help them find permanent housing solutions.”
Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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