Presidential Debate: Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
By Denise Rivette
“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” That quote from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan begins a pointed commentary penned by Jonathan Turley and published in The Hill on the fact checking that took place during the Harris-Trump debate last week. The commentary calls out ABC News moderators on their uneven fact checking.
Turley picked out three of the unevenly checked claims that are being widely disseminated by supporters.
Crime is down under the Biden-Harris administration.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent and nonpartisan organization and thinktank, “The United States has two primary ways of measuring the nation’s crime rate: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Earlier this week, the FBI released 2022 UCR data that showed a drop in the nation’s violent crime rate. There is little doubt that murder declined last year, but NCVS data released in September showed that total violent crime victimization rose in 2022. The divergence between the nation’s two crime measures makes it uncertain whether violent crime actually went up or down in 2022.”
Harris has not supported transgender operations for undocumented migrants in prison.
In a 2019 interview on Transform the Whitehouse, Kamala Harris did state that she proudly advocated for the prison system to provide surgery for a transgender woman in custody and, further, she changed the policy in the prison system for every transgender person to receive the medical care that “they desire and need.” While she did not mention undocumented migrants, she did state that the provision was for “every transgender person in the prison system.” You can view the video HERE. The discussion in question begins at the 5:45 mark.
You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and probably after birth.
The ABC commentators’ fact check said that wasn’t true. It is true that nowhere in the United States is abortion after birth legal, that would be murder. However, according to Axios reporting, “six states and Washington, D.C., do not impose any term restrictions.” According to KFF, “Access to abortions later in pregnancy has always been limited; there are few providers that offer the services and the costs are often prohibitive. Changes in the landscape of abortion access in the U.S. post-Dobbs has led to an increase in out of state travel for abortion services as well as an increase in delays. It is still unknown whether this has led to an increase in the share of abortions that are performed later in pregnancy.”