Kamala Harris convention speech fact-checked Leave a comment
The Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has given her acceptance speech at the party’s national convention in Chicago.
She spoke about her upbringing, her career and made a number of claims about Donald Trump’s record and what he would do if he won the election.
BBC Verify has looked into some of these.
Would Trump ban abortions across America?
CLAIM: Trump would “enact a nationwide abortion ban”.
VERDICT: This is misleading. Trump has said he would not sign a national abortion ban and that he believes the issue should be left to individual states.
While president, Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v Wade.
Roe v Wade was a ruling that protected the federal constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years until it was overturned in June 2022.
Subsequently, 22 states banned abortion or restricted the procedure to earlier in a pregnancy than had been set by Roe v Wade. In 14 of these states, abortion is banned in almost all circumstances, with 10 not making an exception for rape or incest.
But would Trump limit access to birth control?
CLAIM: “As a part of his [Trump’s] agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control.”
VERDICT: This is misleading. Trump has not said he would do this.
Ms Harris appears to be referring to Project 2025, a document published by a right-wing research group, the Heritage Foundation.
It outlines policies it would like Trump to implement, including limiting access to some contraceptive pills and ending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
The former president responded on his social media platform Truth Social, saying: “I do not limit access to birth control – that is a lie.”
Ms Harris has repeatedly tried to link Project 2025 to Trump but he has distanced himself from it, saying: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
However, according to an investigation by CNN, at least 140 former Trump administration officials have been involved in the project.
- What is Project 2025?
What about a ‘Trump tax’ costing families almost $4,000?
CLAIM: “Trump tax… would raise prices on middle class families by almost $4,000 a year.”
VERDICT: This is based on one estimate of how much Trump’s plan to impose tariffs – or taxes – on imported goods might cost US households. Other estimates are smaller.
The “almost $4,000” figure comes from analysis by the left-of-centre think tank the Centre for American Progress of Trump’s pledge to increase tariffs on all imported goods to 10-20% and all goods imported from China to 60%.
They took the amount the US buys in goods from abroad annually, figured out how much the new taxes on these goods would be and divided this by the number of households in the US.
It works out at $4,600 per household, but when you look at “middle income” families you get a figure of $3,900 a year.
Other estimates are lower. The Peterson Institute reckons the impact would be closer to $1,700 a year.
Trump insists the cost of his tariffs would be felt by foreign countries instead.
It is difficult to assess the exact impact of these taxes but studies, on previous tariffs, have suggested that some of the cost was passed on to American businesses and consumers.
And did Trump tank the immigration deal?
CLAIM: “Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.”
VERDICT: Trump did publicly call for Republicans to vote against the Biden administration’s immigration bill and took credit when it failed.
Donald Trump at the US-Mexico border in Arizona
The majority of lawmakers in the US Senate opposed the proposed measures. Trump did not have a vote, but he did call for his Republican lawmakers to oppose it.
Trump said the bill was “horrendous” as he thought it was not tough enough on immigration.
At a Fox News event in February 2024, he said he was against the deal as passing it would have “made it much better for the opposing side”.
The bill was blocked in the Senate for a second time in May.
Finally – did Trump threaten to leave Nato?
CLAIM: “Trump … threatened to abandon Nato.”
VERDICT: This is true. Trump did threaten to leave the alliance. He has also said the US will remain a member as long as European allies increase their defence spending.
As president, Trump recalled saying “yes, I will leave you” when asked whether the US would quit Nato if other members didn’t commit to more defence spending.
In an interview with GB News earlier this year, he said that the US under his watch would be “100%” committed to Nato as long as European members paid their “fair share” of defence costs.
During his time in office, Trump did put “tough demands” on Nato members to meet their commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defence, according to Rose Gottemoeller, who was Nato deputy secretary general during Trump’s presidency.
In 2016, the year Trump was elected, five countries were spending 2% or more of their GDP on defence. That increased to nine by 2020, the year Biden was elected.
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Source ( BBC News )
