Fact-Checking the Final Presidential Debate

A team of New York Times journalists fact-checked the debate, providing context and analysis.

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The stage of the presidential debate in Nashville.Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
  • In their final debate, President Trump unleashed an unrelenting series of false, misleading and exaggerated statements as he sought to distort former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s record and positions and boost his own re-election hopes. The president once again relied heavily on well-worn talking points that have long been shown to be false.

  • The president appeared determined to reinvent the reality of the last four years — and the history of the pandemic in 2020 — as he faces judgment on his actions in just 12 days. He once again falsely dismissed the Russia investigations as a “phony witch hunt.” He insisted that aside from Abraham Lincoln, “nobody has done more for the Black community,” an assertion that people in both parties find laughable. And he tried again to wish away the pandemic, saying “we are rounding the turn” even as daily cases of the virus this week topped 70,000 in the United States for the first time since July.

  • The clash between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump was contentious but more well-behaved than their first debate, with fewer interruptions. Mr. Biden made false statements, too: He falsely accused Mr. Trump of having “caused the deficit with China to go up,” and he exaggerated when he suggested that “red states” in the Midwest were having spikes in the virus. But Mr. Trump relied more on questionable and specious arguments about Mr. Biden’s family, Democratic policy positions and his own record, leading Mr. Biden to repeatedly express exasperation by saying, “C’mon, man!”

  • A team of New York Times journalists fact-checked the debate, providing context and analysis.

Michael D. Shear
White House Correspondent

“I was put through a phony witch hunt.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly sought to reinvent the history of investigations into his campaign’s connections to Russia. He did so again on Thursday, insisting that the special counsel inquiry led by Robert S. Mueller III “found absolutely no collusion and nothing wrong.” That is not true. After a 22-month investigation, Mr. Mueller issued a 448-page report that detailed numerous contacts between the president’s aides and Russians, found that the Trump campaign was aware of and welcomed the Kremlin’s operations to sabotage the 2016 election, and also detailed efforts by the president and his advisers to thwart the investigation.

Even though Mr. Mueller said there was insufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump or his associates engaged in a criminal conspiracy, the inquiry did lead to the conviction of several advisers, including Paul Manafort, the chairman of his 2016 campaign.

Ana Swanson
Trade Reporter

“He has caused the deficit with China to go up, not down.”

— Mr. Biden

This is false.

The trajectory of the trade deficit with China — the gap between what America exports to China and what it imports — has gone up or down depending on how you calculate the numbers.

The trade deficit in goods with China fell sharply between 2018 and 2019 as Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods cut down on trade between the world’s largest economies. So far this year, the trade deficit with China is running below last year’s levels, as the United States imports fewer products amid the coronavirus.

But those numbers aren’t a significant improvement from the end of President Barack Obama’s last term — and Mr. Trump’s trade war has imposed significant costs on American businesses and consumers to get to that goal.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods with China was $347 billion in 2016, compared with $345 billion in 2019. Deficits with other countries have grown as Americans have shifted to buying goods from other low-cost countries, and the overall trade deficit is once again trending up.

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Linda Qiu
Fact-check Reporter

“We are rounding the turn.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

The United States is not “rounding the turn” when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, there is now a third surge.

Over the past week, there have been an average of 60,777 cases per day, an increase of 33 percent from the average two weeks earlier, according to a New York Times database. Daily cases topped 70,000 for the first time since July on Tuesday and cases are on the rise in most states, with some setting records. The numbers are deeply concerning to public health officials.

In an interview last week, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said he has long been concerned that the daily caseload has never dipped significantly below 20,000.

Stephanie Saul
Politics Reporter

“He never did a thing except in 1994 when he did such harm to the Black community, and he called them super predators, and he said it, super predators.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that Mr. Biden used the term “super predators” in reference to criminals during debate over the 1994 crime bill. Mr. Biden never used the term, however. It was used by Hillary Clinton, then first lady.

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Ana Swanson
Trade Reporter

“China is paying. They are paying billions and billions of dollars.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false

The United States has taken in more than $60 billion in revenue from the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods.

But Mr. Trump’s frequent claim that the tariffs are paid for solely by China, not by Americans is wrong.

Whether a Chinese manufacturer, American importer or another company ultimately pays the cost of any particular U.S. tariff varies from product to product, depending on the ability of each party to negotiate.

But overall, economic research suggests that the burden of the tariffs has fallen heavily on American firms, and that domestic manufacturers and consumers have ended up paying a substantial portion of the tariffs.

Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“I know more about wind than you do. It is extremely expensive, kills all the birds, it’s very intermittent, got a lot of problems, and they happen to make the windmills in both Germany and China.”

— Mr. Trump

False, at least when it comes to the birds.

Birds that fly into the spinning blades of wind turbines do die in large numbers, with some estimates putting the toll at roughly 570,000 each year. But turbines do not number among the greatest threats to the feathered: Birds die far more frequently from collisions with buildings and cars, which each account for hundreds of millions of annual avian deaths. Cats are thought to fell some 2.4 billion birds a year. (Notably, all the birds are, in fact, not dead; despite recent declines in avian populations, billions of these creatures are thought to soar the skies and speckle the landscape.)

Wind turbine technology is not without its problems. Critics have cited concerns about appropriate land use, as well as noise pollution, among other issues. Mr. Trump has previously complained about turbines’ carbon footprint — which is actually quite low — and fixated on their manufacture in China and Germany, even though the growth of wind energy is also creating jobs in the United States.

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Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Homeland Security Correspondent

“We are trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out without the parents. They come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

This claim by Mr. Trump came as he was pressed over his administration’s efforts to reunite families who were separated as a result of his “zero tolerance” family separations policy. Court documents filed this week made clear that 545 of the migrant children still have not been reunited with their parents. The Trump administration fought for months against providing data on families who were separated, arguing that it was not necessary because the children had already been released from federally overseen shelters and foster homes into the care of sponsors, who are typically relatives or family friends.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the family separations policy have said the administration’s delays in providing information on the families resulted in the loss of essential time to track the families down. Mr. Trump also claimed the children detained at the border are well taken care of. The administration last year came under harsh criticism when it was discovered that children were subjected to sickness and disease in unsanitary cells for weeks longer than legally allowed without adequate soap and toothpaste.

“They want to take buildings down because they want to make bigger windows into smaller windows. As far as they are concerned, if you had no window, it would be a lovely thing.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

This is one of the more unusual attacks that Mr. Trump has made about his opponent’s climate change plan, and few energy experts seem to know what to make of it. Mr. Trump made a similar accusation to Fox News host Sean Hannity earlier this month saying, “I mean, they literally want to take buildings down and rebuild them with tiny little windows, O. K.? Little windows so you can’t see out, you can’t see the light.”

The Green New Deal, a framework for eliminating emissions that is different from Mr. Biden’s climate change plan, does include a goal to “upgrade all existing buildings in the United States … to achieve maximum energy efficiency” within ten years. However, low-energy buildings can have windows of any size.

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Jeanna Smialek
Economics Reporter

“We’re rebuilding it, and we’re doing record numbers. 11.4 million jobs in a short period of time.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

It is true that the economy has added back a lot of jobs since the depths of the pandemic recession, regaining about 11.4 million of the 22 million jobs it lost between February and April. And it’s true that those gains have been historically faster than prior economic rebounds.

But there is an obvious reason for that. People came back into work quickly because they had been temporarily furloughed as states and cities shut down, and businesses brought them back into their jobs as they reopened. The concern now is that job losses are increasingly turning permanent, which could lead to a slower recovery going forward.

“Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. It is filthy. The air is filthy.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Air pollution in China and India is indeed a serious issue — India is one of the most polluted countries in the world. But Mr. Trump is essentially talking about the countries’ contributions to climate change, and on that score, his comments fail to capture the full picture.

China overtook the United States as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2005. Historically, though, the United States is responsible for more cumulative planet-warming emissions being released into the atmosphere.

According to the Global Carbon project, the United States released 399 billion tons of carbon dioxide between 1751 and 2017, more than any other nation on Earth. China is second, with 200 billion tons.

Looked at from a per-capita basis, the average American emits 16.56 tons of carbon dioxide a year, over twice as much as the average Chinese person or European, according to the International Energy Agency.

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Stephanie Saul
Politics Reporter

“You have done nothing other than the crime bill which put tens of thousands of Black men, mostly, in jail.”

— Mr. Trump

Mostly true.

Criminal justice experts and critics say Mr. Biden’s work on crime legislation helped lay the groundwork for mass incarceration that has devastated America’s Black communities. In 1993, Mr. Biden boasted on the Senate floor, “The truth is every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic Senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden.” Mr. Biden’s actions took place at a time when violent crime was surging in many cities. His work culminated in 1994, when as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped pass a vast catchall crime bill known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The law included strong punitive measures desired by law enforcement, created 60 new death penalty offenses, gave states incentives to build prisons, set aside money for 100,000 new police and codified a “three strikes” rule.

While some studies show that the bill lowered the crime rate, which had exploded in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, there is evidence that it contributed to the explosion of the prison population. Mr. Biden has apologized for portions of his anti-crime legislation. The New York Times examined Mr. Biden’s record on criminal justice in 2019.

Thomas Kaplan
Politics Reporter

“He wants to raise everybody’s taxes.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

Mr. Biden wants to raise taxes on high-earning individuals and on corporations, but he has made a clear-cut pledge: He says he will not raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. Mr. Biden has reiterated that pledge repeatedly.

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Michael Crowley
White House Correspondent

“They tried to meet with him. He wouldn’t do it, he didn’t like Obama, he didn’t like him.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

Mr. Trump, facing criticism for his meetings with Kim Jong Un, the pariah dictator of North Korea who has taken no steps to reduce his nuclear arsenal, has repeatedly suggested that Mr. Obama sought to do the same. Neither Mr. Obama nor officials in his administration spoke of such an effort during his presidency. As Mr. Trump has made the claim, top Obama officials have disputed it, including Mr. Obama’s former national security adviser and a deputy national security adviser.

“In all the deliberations that I participated in on North Korea during the Obama administration, I can recall no instance whatever where President Obama ever indicated any interest whatsoever in meeting with Chairman Kim,” Mr. Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper — who traveled to Pyongyang in 2014 — told CNN last year.

Mr. Trump’s comment suggested that Mr. Kim agreed to a meeting because he prefers him to Mr. Obama on a personal level. But many longtime North Korea analysts say that Mr. Kim saw an opportunity to cut a better deal with the United States than was available to him from past presidents.

Thomas Kaplan
Politics Reporter

“He doesn’t come from Scranton.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

Mr. Trump went on to say of Mr. Biden, “He lived there for a short period of time, before he even knew it, and he left.”

Mr. Biden does in fact come from Scranton, Pa. He was born there and lived there until he was 10 years old. Mr. Biden often references his roots on the campaign trail, and he has tried to frame the presidential election as a choice between Scranton and Park Avenue.

In his memoir “Promises to Keep,” Mr. Biden recalls moving from “the Scranton neighborhood I knew so well” to Delaware when he was 10. “My dad was having trouble finding a good job in Scranton, and his brother Frank kept telling him there were jobs in Wilmington,” he wrote.

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Kenneth P. Vogel
Investigative Reporter

“They even have a statement that we have to give 10 percent to ‘the big man.’ You’re the big man, I think.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

This is a reference to a claim and an email provided on Thursday by Tony Bobulinksi, a former business associate of Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, and his brother, James Biden.

In 2017, Mr. Bobulinski was working with Hunter and James Biden on a venture with a Chinese company. In an email, one of the partners outlined a provisional agreement for distribution of equity for the venture indicating that James Biden would get 10 percent and Hunter Biden would get 20 percent for himself, plus 10 percent to hold “for the big guy,” though the explanation of the last share is punctuated with a question mark.

Mr. Bobulinski told reporters on Thursday before the debate that “the big guy” was a reference to the former vice president. But the deal does not appear to have come to fruition. And Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, issued a statement pushing back on the suggestion that the former vice president participated in his family’s business dealings.

“Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” Mr. Bates said. “He has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”

Michael D. Shear
White House Correspondent

“Catch and release is a disaster. A murderer would come in, a rapist would come in, a very bad person would come in. We would take their name, we have to release them into our country.”

— Mr. Trump

This is exaggerated.

A centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s assault on immigration has been an end to what he calls the policy of “catch and release.” But his description on Thursday of the immigrants being released was misleading and inaccurate.

The vast majority of migrants being caught crossing the border were families seeking asylum, not murderers or rapists. Many released into the United States did not return for their court hearings, but previous administrations have implemented programs that increased the number of migrants that showed up.

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Linda Qiu
Fact-check Reporter

“Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump. If you look, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, possible exception, nobody has done what I’ve done.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

Not according to historians. Among modern presidents, historians agreed that the most significant legislative achievements belong to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who shepherded the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act.

A 2017 study that assessed modern presidents based on the analysis of editorials published in Black newspapers ranked Mr. Johnson at the top. Mr. Trump would place in the bottom third, the study’s co-author told The Times.

Jeanna Smialek
Economics Reporter

“We should be bailing them out, now, those small businesses. One in six are going under. They are not going to make it back.”

— Mr. Biden

True.

It’s not clear exactly what data point Mr. Biden is referencing here, but it’s in the ballpark of what small business surveys have suggested could happen if the coronavirus persists and prevents normal activity from resuming.

For instance, a National Federation of Independent Business survey in August found that one in five small businesses said that they would have to close their doors if economic conditions do not improve over the subsequent six months.

Economic conditions have improved along some dimensions since then, but the service sector in particular remains hard-hit amid the pandemic.

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Jim Tankersley
Economics Reporter

“What has been proven to happen is when you do that, these small businesses fire many of their employees.”

— Mr. Trump, on raising the minimum wage.

This is false.

Economic research has not “proven” that when governments raise minimum wages, small businesses lay off workers.

Many recent studies have suggested the opposite: that some state-level increases in the minimum wage have had no negative effect on hiring. In a 2019 study of businesses straddling the New York-Pennsylvania border, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concluded that “As the minimum wage was raised to levels above $10 per hour, leisure and hospitality employment in New York counties, if anything, increased relative to businesses over the Pennsylvania state line. Concerns of diminished employment growth in New York’s leisure and hospitality industry as a result of the rising minimum wage seem not to have been borne out.”

“He went on with fracking, ‘We are not going to have fracking.’ Then he goes to Pennsylvania once he got the nomination, and he just, ‘Oh, we’re going to have fracking.’”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Mr. Biden has never called for a ban on the process for extracting oil and gas known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. He has pledged to end new permits for hydraulic fracturing on federal lands and waters, but said fracking “has to continue because we need a transition” to renewable energy. He has also assured union leaders in critical swing states like Pennsylvania that he will protect existing fracking jobs while pursuing a clean energy transition.

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Nick Corasaniti
Domestic Correspondent, Politics

“He tried to hurt Social Security years ago.”

— Mr. Trump

Partly true.

During his 36-year Senate career, Mr. Biden supported some actions that would slow or reduce spending on Social Security, but also supported others that would protect benefits.

In 1984, he co-sponsored an amendment with two Republican senators that froze for one year nearly all military and domestic spending, including cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits. In 1996, he supported raising the retirement age.

Mr. Biden’s current plan calls for putting more resources behind both programs while increasing benefits, paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy.

Stephanie Saul
Politics Reporter

“She is more liberal than Bernie Sanders.”

— Mr. Trump

This is exaggerated.

Mr. Trump was referring to Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. GovTrack, a service that monitors Congress, ranked Ms. Harris as the most liberal senator of 2019, based on each lawmaker’s patterns of serving as a co-sponsor of legislation. But Joshua Tauber, GovTrack’s founder, told The Times that “we’d be the first to disavow our analysis as proof that Senator Harris is radical.” He noted that the rankings reflect just one aspect of a lawmaker’s job and do not capture the complex views an individual could hold so “our analysis does not reflect the totality of Harris’s political views.” DW-Nominate, an ideological position tracker based on votes, rated Ms. Harris as more liberal than Mr. Sanders but less liberal than Senator Elizabeth Warren in the 2017 to 2019 legislative session.

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Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“We have the best testing in the world by far — that is why we have so many cases.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

The United States has performed more than 128 million tests since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But the total does not reflect a successful testing effort, which public health experts consider a crucial part of the tool kit needed to track and contain outbreaks.

More than 8.4 million Americans have been infected with the virus, and more than 222,000 have died, outstripping any other country, including several that dwarf the United States in population.

Mr. Trump also makes a misleading and false statement about case counts, a sentiment he has expressed before. Cases are not driven by adequate testing; they are identified by it. Several federal officials have in recent months attempted to curb testing in the United States, or dismissed it as unnecessary or even harmful, for fear that ever-increasing case counts identified by testing efforts will reflect poorly on the administration.

When testing increases, more cases of the virus will be caught. But it will also identify individuals who are not infected — an essential metric for public health experts to monitor the virus’s spread, limit budding outbreaks and empower healthy people to safely interact. In New York, for instance, expanded testing has been credited with keeping case numbers relatively low for months.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Health Reporter

“We have 180 million people out there that have great private health care, far more than what we are talking about with Obamacare. Joe Biden is going to terminate all of those policies.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

Mr. Biden does not argue for the single-payer government run health care system often called “Medicare for All.” He is in favor of a “public option,” which would allow the government to compete with private insurers in the health care marketplace.

A public option was the subject of intense debate when lawmakers were writing the Affordable Care Act. The idea did not prevail, but many Democrats including Mr. Biden now want to bring it back.

Public-option plans would allow middle-income, working-age adults to choose a public insurance plan — like Medicare or Medicaid — instead of a private insurance plan. More people — maybe many more — could get government insurance. But only if they wanted it.

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Margot Sanger-Katz
Health Policy Reporter

“What I would like to do is a much better health care — much better — will always protect people with pre-existing.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

The president makes versions of this statement frequently, but his claim that he will “always” protect consumer protections for people with pre-existing conditions is at odds with his record as president.

Mr. Trump has supported legislation that would weaken current protections. He has issued regulations that have expanded health plans that do not have to cover people with pre-existing conditions. And his administration is arguing a case before the Supreme Court that would overturn the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for Americans with a history of health problems. Though Mr. Trump says he has a plan that would protect pre-existing conditions protections, he has never presented one.

Alan Rappeport
Economics Reporter

“I just gave $28 billion to our farmers.”

— Mr. Trump

This is true.

From 2018 through 2019, Mr. Trump’s administration did give about $28 billion to farmers. He did so using a Department of Agriculture fund for the purpose of mitigating the impact of his trade wars with China and Europe. Total farm aid is projected to increase this year to a record $46 billion. Mr. Trump was incorrect, however, when he suggested that China was covering these costs: It is American taxpayer money.

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“I prepaid millions and millions of dollars in taxes.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Mr. Trump said he “prepaid” federal income taxes. In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Trump requested an extension to file his 1040, and each time, he made the required payment to the I.R.S. for income taxes he might owe — $1 million for 2016 and $4.2 million for 2017.

That was not his actual tax bill, though.

“Virtually all of that liability was washed away when he eventually filed,” The Times reported, “and most of the payments were rolled forward to cover potential taxes in future years.”

In each year, Mr. Trump’s actual tax liability was $750.

Michael Crowley
White House Correspondent

“There has been nobody tougher on Russia.”

— Mr. Trump

This is false.

Under Mr. Trump’s presidency, the United States has imposed new sanctions on Russia and expelled Russian diplomats in retaliation for Russian misbehavior. But Mr. Trump has been grudgingly pushed by senior advisers and Congress into punishing Moscow for things like the 2018 poisoning on British soil of a former Russian spy with nerve agent. The strongest sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Russia under his presidency, for instance, were approved by Congress, in a measure passed with a veto-proof majority that Mr. Trump signed grudgingly.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly excused President Vladimir V. Putin’s unlawful behavior and is not known to have confronted the Russian leader about a C.I.A. assessment that Russia offered bounties for the killing of American troops in Afghanistan which drew bipartisan outrage in Congress. Nor has he mentioned the poisoning this fall of Mr. Putin’s leading political opposition figure, Alexei Navalny. He has also dismissed intelligence warnings of Russian election meddling as a “hoax.”

Mr. Trump boasted on Thursday that he has pressured NATO members to spend more money on their collective defense. But numerous NATO leaders believe Mr. Trump has undermined the alliance with his repeated criticisms and even his threats to withdraw from NATO entirely. And although he noted that his administration had sold anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, that was another step he initially resisted and the U.S. insisted that the weapons be placed in storage far from the front lines of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia.

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Linda Qiu
Fact-check Reporter

“His own person who ran that for him, who, as you know, was his chief of staff, said it was catastrophic, it was horrible, we didn’t know what we were doing.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Mr. Trump was quoting Ron Klain, once Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s chief of staff, to claim that Mr. Biden handled the H1N1 pandemic poorly. Mr. Klain, was asked at an event last year about vaccine development and whether the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies was equipped to deal with a flu outbreak, and said that “we did every possible thing wrong.” He added that it was “purely a fortuity that this wasn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history.” But Mr. Klain said this year that his comments solely addressed the difficulties in producing a vaccine for the H1N1 virus, which caused the outbreak.

Thomas Kaplan
Politics Reporter

“He’ll close down the country if one person in our massive bureaucracy says we should close it down.”

— Mr. Trump

This is exaggerated.

At the debate, Mr. Biden responded to Mr. Trump’s assertion by saying, “Simply not true.” Mr. Biden has stressed the importance of following scientific expertise, and he has in the past expressed a willingness to close down the country to slow the spread of the coronavirus in response to advice from scientists. But Mr. Trump’s assertion that Mr. Biden would close it down at the behest of “one person” goes too far.

In an interview with ABC News in August, Mr. Biden was pressed on what he would do “if the scientists say shut it down.” Mr. Biden responded: “I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.” Mr. Biden has shed more light on his views since then. “There is going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy,” he told reporters in early September. Referring to the ABC News interview, he said: “I took that as a generic question if — am I going to follow the science?”

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Mike McIntire
Investigative Reporter

“The bank account was in 2013. That’s what it was. It was opened — it was closed in 2015, I believe.”

— Mr. Trump

False.

An attorney for the Trump Organization told The Times that the bank account Mr. Trump’s company owned in China is still open. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims, the bank account is not listed on any of his public financial disclosures, and his attorney would not identify the name of the financial institution.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Health Reporter

“I’m listening to all of them, including Anthony, I get along very well with Anthony, but he did say do not wear a mask.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

During an interview with “60 Minutes” in early March, Dr. Fauci did say, “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” But the reason, he said at the time, was that there was a dire mask shortage and he was worried about health care providers and sick people “needing them.”

Dr. Fauci has taken strong issue with Mr. Trump’s repeated misleading claims that he argued against mask wearing.

“Anybody who has been listening to me over the last several months knows that a conversation does not go by where I do not strongly recommend that people wear masks,” Dr. Fauci said recently in an interview on ABC News’s “Start Here” podcast.

Dr. Fauci again explained that “very early on in the pandemic,” the authorities did not recommend masks to the general public because they were worried about shortages and hoarding. But that changed, he said, as it became clear that asymptomatic transmission was spreading the virus and that masks helped stop it.

“I have been on the airways, on the radio, on TV, begging people to wear masks,” Dr. Fauci said. “And I keep talking in the context of: Wear a mask, keep physical distance, avoid crowds, wash your hands and do things more outdoors versus indoors.”

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Nick Corasaniti
Domestic Correspondent, Politics

“He said — this is a terrible thing — ‘You are a xenophobe.’ I think he called me racist, even, and because I was closing into China. Now he says I should have closed it earlier.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

On the same day in January that Mr. Trump announced restrictions on travelers from China because of the coronavirus, Mr. Biden referred to the president’s “record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.” It was not clear that Mr. Biden was referring to the travel restrictions, or whether he even knew about them; Mr. Trump had made the announcement only minutes before Mr. Biden took the stage at a campaign event.

For much of the primary, Mr. Biden did not explicitly state his position on the travel restrictions to China. Though Mr. Biden did tweet that “Banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop it,” he was speaking in the context of the United States’ need for a comprehensive plan to respond to the coronavirus. His campaign told CNN in April that Mr. Biden is supportive of the travel restrictions from China.

Jim Tankersley
Economics Reporter

“We learned this president does business in China, has a secret bank account in China.”

— Mr. Biden

This is true.

Mr. Trump maintains a bank account in China, according to his tax returns, The New York Times reported this week.

“The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear,” the Times reported. “The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management L.L.C., which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.”

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Kenneth P. Vogel
Investigative Reporter

“Joe got $3.5 million from Russia, and it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow, and it was the mayor of Moscow’s wife, and you got $3.5 million, your family got $3.5 million.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

This claim is based on an investigative report released last week by Senate Republicans that accused members of Mr. Biden’s family of cashing in on his vice presidency. The report claims that Hunter Biden “had a financial relationship” with Elena Baturina, a wealthy Russian businesswoman and the widow of a former mayor of Moscow. The report bases this claim on an unidentified “confidential document” showing that Ms. Baturina transferred $3.5 million in 2014 for “a Consultancy Agreement” to a bank account associated with a company called Rosemont Seneca Thornton that was associated with Hunter Biden’s business partners. Mr. Biden’s lawyer has said that he was not a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Thornton, had no interest in it and did not have a financial relationship with Ms. Baturina. He did not respond to a question about whether Mr. Biden was paid by Rosemont Seneca Thornton or did consulting work for Ms. Baturina.

Linda Qiu
Fact-check Reporter

“Look at the states having a spike, they are the red states, the states in the Midwest, in the upper Midwest, that is where the spike is occurring significantly.”

— Mr. Biden

This is exaggerated.

Many of the states recently experiencing coronavirus surges are led by Republican governors or are in the Midwest, but “blue” states and other regions have not been spared. Virginia, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington have all seen increasing case counts.

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Noah Weiland
Health Reporter

“We have a vaccine that’s coming, it’s ready, it’s going to be announced within weeks.”

— Mr. Trump

This lacks evidence.

Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration are likely still at least a month away from even considering an emergency authorization for a coronavirus vaccine. Pfizer, which is one of a handful of pharmaceutical companies with vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in the United States, has predicted imminent readouts of its clinical trial data, but said recently that it would not apply for emergency authorization of its vaccine — a step short of a full license — before the third week of November.

Through its crash vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration is already funding the manufacturing of millions of doses of vaccines and developing plans for distributing them if and when the F.D.A. does grant an emergency authorization.

But top health officials have said that a vaccine may not be widely available until next summer. Operation Warp Speed’s top scientist, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, said that Americans would most likely not be widely vaccinated until the middle of 2021, a timeline echoed by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“I had something that they gave me, a therapeutic I guess they would call it — some people would say it is a cure — I was in for a short period of time and I got better very fast, or I would not be here tonight.”

— Mr. Trump

This lacks evidence.

Shortly after he tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, Mr. Trump began a potent combination of treatments, including the antiviral remdesivir, the steroid dexamethasone and an experimental antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron. Days later, after he left the hospital, Mr. Trump hailed the antibody treatment as a “cure” — a statement experts warned is exaggerated and has little evidence behind it.

No treatments have been shown to “cure” the coronavirus. While experimental antibody treatments like Regeneron’s have shown early promise in ongoing trials, experts caution that they have not been fully vetted and remain poorly understood as potential treatments for the virus.

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Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“As you know, 2.2 million people, modeled out, were expected to died… The mortality rate is down, 85 percent. The excess mortality rate is way down and lower than any other country.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Mr. Trump began the debate by citing a statistic that made the rounds in the early days of the pandemic. In the spring, scientists warned that, in the absence of mitigating measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus, some 2.2 million Americans could die. With mitigation, experts projected, those numbers might be closer to 100,000 to 200,000. Months later, the United States has surpassed that more modest mark — and there is not yet an end in sight. With more than 220,000 already dead, cases around the country are yet again on the rise, with some warning that the nation has already begun its third peak.

It’s true that death rates appear to have substantially declined since the pandemic began. Experts have attributed this to a combination of increased testing, better and more tailored treatments, increased measures such as physical distancing and masking and a downward shift in the average age of those infected, among other factors. But it’s unclear how Mr. Trump arrived at the very specific figure of 85 percent. Politifact previously investigated this figure, which the president has promoted before, suggesting it may have come from a chart compiled by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — one of several scientists who has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic and urged widespread reopenings across the country. Excess American deaths attributable to the pandemic — which number in the hundreds of thousands — are also not the lowest in the world.

“We have the best carbon emission numbers that we’ve had in 35 years under this administration.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

The United States is a slightly less polluting country now than it was when President Trump entered office, but those reductions are largely because cheap natural gas prices enticed utilities to drop coal, and because of policies enacted under the Obama administration. Overall U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change, dropped by 14 percent from 2007 through 2019. About 90 percent of that decline in carbon emissions took place between 2007 and 2012.

Many European nations have gone further than the United States, including Britain, which cut emissions 29 percent, and Denmark, which reduced emissions by 34 percent between 2000 and 2016. The United States remains the second highest overall greenhouse gas polluter and the 12th highest per capita polluter in the world. (An earlier version of this article misstated the United States’ global ranking of per capita pollution. It is the 12th highest not the 120th highest.)

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Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“They say I’m immune, whether it’s four months or a lifetime, nobody’s been able to say that. But I’m immune.”

Mr. Trump

This lacks evidence.

Experts have repeatedly noted that immunity to the coronavirus is not yet fully understood. No single person can claim they are “immune” to the virus, in the sense that they cannot be infected again, or even that they cannot experience a second bout of disease.

While experts have noted encouraging signs that many people who recover from coronavirus infections may be able to develop strong and long-lasting immune responses that could at least partially protect them from a second brush with the virus, there is not yet clear data that demonstrates how long these immune responses persist.

Some of these lingering immune responses may protect people from getting serious Covid-19 a second time, for example, but might not make these individuals completely impervious to being infected with the virus, or passing it on to others. Certain individuals may fail to mount protective, long-lasting immune responses to the virus at all. A very small number of people may have already been infected by the virus a second time.

Mr. Trump’s immune status might be particularly tenuous, as he received an infusion of an experimental antibody treatment while sick with the coronavirus. This treatment might have blunted his body’s ability to makes its own antibodies to protect against the coronavirus long-term.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Homeland Security Correspondent

“They did it. We changed the policy. They built the cages.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

This statement came as Mr. Trump was pressed on his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of children from their parents and the more than 500 children who have still not been matched with their parents. The Obama administration only broke up families at the border in rare circumstances — for example, in cases in which there was a doubt about the familial relationship between a child and an accompanying adult. But the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy called for criminal prosecution of everyone who entered the country illegally. After widespread condemnation from lawmakers in both parties, immigration activists and the United Nations, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that attempted to end the practice of family separation.

However, the Obama administration did hold children in the same chain-linked enclosures the Trump administration has used to detain migrants — facilities widely decried by Democrats as “cages.” A federal judge also criticized the conditions and care provided to migrant children that were held in detention facilities during the Obama administration.

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Alan Rappeport
Economics Reporter

“First of all, I called my accountants — under audit. I’m going to release them as soon as we can. I want to do it.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

For years, Mr. Trump has said that he cannot release his tax returns because he is under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Trump was under audit before he became president and all presidents are automatically audited by the I.R.S. However, being under audit does not prevent a taxpayer from making his returns public.

Mr. Trump has suggested that his accountants have advised against him doing so and that it might worsen the outcome of the audit.

Jim Tankersley
Economics Reporter

“Biggest beneficiary, the Black and Hispanic communities”

— Mr. Trump, referring to his Opportunity Zone program.

This lacks evidence.

There is no data yet available showing that Opportunity Zones, a creation of the tax overhaul that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017, have boosted incomes or wealth for Black Americans. The zones confer tax advantages — in the form of reductions in, and in some cases, the elimination of, capital gains taxes — on people who invest in so-called distressed communities designated by state governors and certified by the Treasury Department.

The zones, on average, are higher in poverty and include a larger share of Black residents than a typical census tract in the United States. There are examples of individual projects run by Black developers that have received investment from opportunity funds, which invest in the zones, and of heavily Black communities seeing investment that might not have occurred without the designation. But there is little evidence available to support the contention that the zones have generated sufficient investment to materially enrich Black residents — in part because the federal government has released little data on who is investing in the zones and where their money is going. A report from the Urban Institute this summer, relying on interviews with a wide range of people investing in and attempting to garner investment through the zones, found that “many Black project sponsors have sought to engage with” the zones. “While some of these sponsors have been successful,” it concluded, “others have felt that patterns of discrimination have made it hard to connect with investors.”

Even a recent report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which included economic modeling claiming the zones have generated $75 billion in investment so far, did not make any specific claims of income or job gains for Black residents of the zones.

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“We have the trillion trees program; we have so many different programs.”

— Mr. Trump

This is misleading.

Mr. Trump was asked what he intends to do to address climate change and cited his administration’s involvement with the Trillion Tree Initiative. Begun by the World Economic Forum, the plan to preserve one trillion trees and sequester carbon is considered helpful to address climate change — but useless without also drawing down fossil fuels.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order establishing an interagency council to oversee the United States’ involvement in the Trillion Tree Initiative. Mr. Trump’s order does not actually include any funding or the planting of any trees.

Katherine J. Wu
Science Reporter

“99.9 of young people recover. 99 percent of people recover.”

Mr. Trump

This lacks evidence.

It’s a little unclear exactly what Mr. Trump means by “recover,” but in several respects, this statement — which the president has made before — is lacking in evidence, and may even be misleading. Experts continue to monitor the virus and have attempted to calculate its typical fatality rate. One recent publication estimated that about 1.4 percent of people who catch the coronavirus will die. Young people, ages 25 to 44, might die only 0.1 percent of the time, the researchers said.

But older individuals are known to die at far higher rates — as do people with certain medical conditions, as well as Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American individuals.

Experts have also repeatedly cautioned that the true death rate associated with the coronavirus has not yet been determined with confidence. Both infections and deaths are extremely difficult to tabulate while the pandemic rages on, especially while testing remains woefully inadequate in many parts of the world, including in the United States.

Death is also not the only way in which the coronavirus inflicts suffering on the people it infects. Thousands of people around the world continue to suffer lingering symptoms of Covid-19, sometimes weeks or months after the virus has apparently vacated their bodies. Researchers have said that the long-term consequences of the virus will likely continue to reveal themselves as the years wear on. Since the start of the pandemic, scientists have unveiled many unexpected symptoms and side effects of coronavirus cases — lists that they expect to grow.

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