AP FACT CHECK: Pence presses a distorted case on economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence and fellow Republicans pressed a distorted case Wednesday that President Donald Trump took over a moribund economy from Barack Obama and supercharged it. That's not what happened.
Speakers at the Republican National Convention also hailed Trump for protecting the health insurance of people with preexisting illness, flipping reality on its head as his administration tries to overturn the law that guarantees those protections.
A look at how some of the the rhetoric from the convention's third night compares with the facts:
ECONOMY
PENCE: “Four years ago we inherited ... an economy struggling to break out of the slowest recovery since the Great Depression. ... In our first three years we built the greatest economy in the world.”
THE FACTS: That's a highly misleading portrait. Obama started the longest expansion in U.S. history and prevailed over most of it.
The expansion was indeed slow, but growth under Trump has basically been the same: 2.3% in the final four years of Obama compared with 2.5% in the first three years of Trump. Trump took office with unemployment at a low 4.7%, steady job growth and a falling federal budget deficit.
And Trump's record on economic growth is about to get crushed by the current recession brought on by the pandemic, a public-health crisis that the White House said early on would not hurt the economy.
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GOV. KRISTI NOEM of South Dakota: “In just four years, President Trump has lifted people of all races and backgrounds out of poverty. He shrunk government and put money back into the pockets of hardworking, ordinary Americans.”
THE FACTS: Only this is true: Americans did get money back in the form of tax cuts and in direct government payments after the economy plunged into a recession...
