Monday, October 10, 2016

Fact Check Assignment



 I am choosing the first topic, the second presidential debate that took place on Sunday, October 9th. I am choosing this topic because it interests me as the election quickly approaches and I have yet to make a decision on which candidate I will be voting for. The issues that I will be investigating from the debate are as follows: Trumps claim that Hilary failed to bring back jobs that she promised to upstate New York, Trumps alleged "Sex Tape" tweet, Clinton laughing at a rape victim during a trial that she was working on, Trump claiming that Hilary deleted 33,000 emails after getting a subpoena, and Clinton saying that intelligence experts are saying Russia is behind the hacking. 


1. Trumps claim that Hilary failed to bring back jobs to upstate New York as she had promised. Politifact had fact checked this claim made by Trump during the debate and found that Clinton had promised to bring 200,000 jobs to upstate New York during her campaign for State Senate in 2000. Politifact found that by the end of Clinton’s time in office those jobs that she had promised had not been added to the region. This determines that Trumps claim was true. Hillary had not brought jobs to upstate New York and Trump went on to say that this is an example of how she would lead the country, meaning making empty promises that will fall through. 

2. Trump was asked during the debate if he has the right temperament because of his tweet about former Miss Universe. Trump then denied tweeting about Alicia Machado and her involvement with a sex tape during the debate. Politifact has determined that trump did in fact tweet 'Did crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate" on September 30th at 5:30 a.m. Trumps claim that he had not tweeted about Alicia Machado has also been fact checked by Factcheck.org and they too have confirmed that Trump has in fact tweeted this. Donald Trump lied during the debate. Trump went on to defend himself saying that tweeting is the modern day form of communication and that he is not "un-proud" of his tweets. 

3. The third issue that I have investigated and checked the facts about was Trumps claim that Hilary had "laughed" at a rape victim during a trial she had been working on in 1975. Trump had said at the debate: "Clinton was laughing at the girl who was raped on two separate occasions”. The Washington Post fact checker determined that Trump had mixed up the story and that Hilary did not in fact laugh at the victim. Clinton was representing the man who was accused of rape, and the charges had been lowered. Clinton can be heard laughing on tape while discussing that her client had passed a lie detector test, which she went on the say that she would no longer trust lie detector tests because he had passed, which is when Clinton can be heard laughing after making a joke about the polygraph machine.


4. Trump claimed that Hilary deleted 33,000 emails after receiving a subpoena for any Benghazi related emails to be turned over. According to Politifact, Clinton’s team deleted 33,000 emails three weeks after the subpoena was received. Although though the emails had been deleted, the team argued that any emails that were relevant to the Benghazi scandal had been turned over, and anything that had been deleted was not relevant to the case. Also, Clinton’s team had put in a request months prior to the subpoena to have the emails deleted. Trumps claim is determined to be half true.


5. At the debate Clinton says that intelligence officials are saying that Russians are responsible for the political hacking attacks in the U.S.  Trump argued that she doesn’t know this for sure. Factcheck.org has determined that Hilary’s claims are correct and that intelligence officials id in fact determine that Russia is responsible. Hilary was correct and Trump was wrong in saying that Clinton was unsure.

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