Former President Trump gave voice to plenty of conspiracy theories and discredited statements throughout Tuesday’s night time’s debate, embracing a number of false claims largely circulated by the far-right.
Trump used his platform throughout the extremely watched Philadelphia debate against Vice President Harris to amplify a sequence of debunked assertions, a few of which have been refuted in actual time by the ABC Information moderators.
Along with doubling down on fabricated claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets, Trump additionally referenced “execution” of lately born infants, repeated false claims about migrant voting as he claimed he gained the 2020 election, and wrongly accused President Biden of taking international funds.
Assaults on Haitian migrants
Trump elevated a simmering conspiracy theory to a brand new stage with a line that’s certain to affix the pantheon of well-known presidential debate moments: “In Springfield, they’re consuming the canines.”
He was swiftly fact-checked by moderator David Muir who famous “there have been no credible reviews of particular claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused” by Haitian migrants.
Trump didn’t again down on his declare regardless of repeatedly being corrected by Muir, saying on the finish of the alternate, “We’ll discover out.”
The false allegation concerning immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, was given a nationwide highlight by Trump’s GOP operating mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who on a social media post Monday referenced “reviews” of cases of pet abduction for slaughter.
Vance backed down considerably from his allegations, sourcing them to constituent inquiries to his workplace, however couching with, “it’s potential, after all, that every one of those rumors will change into false.”
Vance embraced the right-wing meme machine generated by the backlash to his declare: a social media frenzy to submit AI generated pictures of Trump defending, using and in any other case interacting with cats, geese and hybrid cat-ducks.
The memes performed into right-wing “based mostly” tradition, the place statements on- and off-line are supposed to elicit damaging reactions from left-wing “woke” observers.
The crescendo of memes-versus-revulsion culminated on the debate, the place Trump flatly claimed immigrants “are consuming the canines” earlier than a nationwide viewers.
Vance defined his celebration of Springfield memes as a means to attract consideration to a metropolis in disaster.
“If each single factor that the media says about this story is fake, the verifiable details are that this group has had their lives destroyed by 20,000 migrants coming in and uprooting life,” Vance advised CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in post-debate protection.
However metropolis residents and officers have painted a extra nuanced image of a group overwhelmed by a sudden inhabitants increase and an financial system revitalized by a renewed workforce.
Renewed false claims about his 2020 election loss
Trump has for years refused to just accept his defeat within the 2020 election, and the talk was no totally different as he pushed again on the concept he had accepted the loss to Biden.
“No, I do not acknowledge that in any respect,” Trump mentioned, telling Muir that current feedback wherein he spoke about shedding by “a whisker” have been made “sarcastically.”
Muir commented that he didn’t detect sarcasm and added that dozens of authorized challenges introduced by Trump and his allies following the 2020 election have been dismissed. Trump claimed “no decide checked out it.” In reality, the false claims underpinning the lawsuits pushed numerous bar associations to reprimand the attorneys that filed them.
Audits by a number of states, in addition to feedback from federal officials and election directors present that there was no widespread fraud within the 2020 election. And judges appointed by each Democratic and Republican presidents dismissed legal challenges for lack of proof or lack of standing, whereas the Supreme Court docket additionally turned away circumstances across the 2020 election.
Trump has repeatedly solid doubt on the reliability of mail-in ballots and of U.S. elections as a complete, and did so once more on Tuesday night time. He additionally repeated a well-liked declare on the suitable that Democrats are registering unlawful immigrants to vote within the upcoming election.
“A variety of these unlawful immigrants coming in, they’re attempting to get them to vote. They’ll’t even communicate English,” he mentioned.
It’s a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and a number of information shops have debunked the assertion that migrants coming into the nation are being signed up in droves to vote in November.
Assertion of post-birth abortion
Trump continued to attempt to depict Democrats and Harris as radicals on abortion by doubling down on false claims that Democrats assist abortion “after start” and “executing” infants.
It’s a declare he’s repeated many occasions earlier than, and it’s been broadly debunked. As ABC Information anchor Linsey Davis mentioned throughout her real-time reality verify on Tuesday, there isn’t any state within the nation the place it’s authorized to kill a child after it is born. Infanticide is against the law in each state.
“Nowhere in America is a lady carrying a being pregnant to time period and asking for an abortion. That isn’t taking place; it’s insulting to the ladies of America,” Harris mentioned on stage.
Late-term abortion are extraordinarily uncommon. In accordance with well being analysis group KFF, they’re costly and provided by few suppliers. They happen due to points like fetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment, in addition to boundaries to care that trigger delays in acquiring an abortion earlier in a being pregnant.
“I might dare anybody who makes these sorts of claims towards ladies, sit down with someone who has needed to have an abortion later in being pregnant and inform her that what she did was elective,” mentioned Lauren Brenzel, the marketing campaign director of the poll initiative in Florida to guard abortion entry. “We’re speaking about ladies who’ve lives deliberate for his or her kids, who’ve names for his or her kids, who’ve constructed a life of their thoughts round what being a father or mother to that youngster will appear to be, and who’ve confronted devastating losses due to their very own well being or due to the well being of the kid that they have been carrying.”
Fourteen states at the moment ban abortion nearly fully, whereas 11 have gestational bans that limit abortion at a sure level in being pregnant. A further 16 states ban abortion at or close to “viability,” the purpose the place a fetus can survive outdoors the womb
Falsely accused Biden of taking cash from abroad
Trump on Tuesday additionally accused Biden of taking cash from international sources that influenced his actions as president and vice chairman.
There’s no proof, nevertheless, that Biden ever earned revenue from abroad throughout his time in workplace or afterwards.
“You understand, Biden does not go after individuals as a result of supposedly China paid him thousands and thousands of {dollars}. He is afraid to do it. Between him and his son, they get all this cash from Ukraine. They get all this cash from all of those totally different international locations. And then you definitely surprise why is he so loyal to this one, that one,” Trump mentioned.
Biden has mentioned he by no means took abroad cash, and a Home Republican investigation failed to seek out any proof that Biden earned revenue abroad.
Whereas the president’s brother and son Hunter Biden did conduct enterprise with China and Ukraine, the investigation was likewise unable to ascertain that Biden noticed any monetary profit from his household’s dealings.
Trump stopped wanting making a declare that circulated among the many MAGA wing earlier than changing into central to the GOP investigation: that Biden accepted a bribe from international governments. That assertion was based mostly on a tip to the FBI from a now-indicted info, accused of fabricating the declare out of political animus for Biden.