Print      
Where president’s pronouncements missed the accuracy mark last week
By Calvin Woodward and Jim Drinkard
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In President Trump’s estimation, the US border isn’t merely porous, it’s ‘‘wide open.’’ Darkness and danger are everywhere, even Sweden. American infrastructure isn’t just in need of improvement but it’s in ‘‘total disrepair and decay.’’ The health law is not only flawed, but it’s an ‘‘absolute and total catastrophe.’’

His apocalyptic view of everything he intends to fix leaves no nuance, but that’s where reality often resides. For example, Trump himself actually likes parts of former president Barack Obama’s health overhaul, such as the extended coverage for older children. And the United States remains an economic powerhouse able to transport goods in a stressed system of roads, bridges, and ports that are not in total decay.

Some statements from the past week:

►TRUMP: ‘‘Obamacare covers very few people.’’

►THE FACTS: That’s only true if you consider more than 20 million people to be ‘‘very few.’’ That’s how many are covered by the two major components of the law: expanded Medicaid and subsidized private health insurance.

The Medicaid expansion, adopted by 31 states and the District of Columbia, covers about 11 million low-income people, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The other component is HealthCare.gov. The federal website and state-run online insurance markets have signed up 12.2 million people for this year, according to an Associated Press count this month, based on federal and state reports.

Altogether, since Obama’s law passed in 2010, the number of uninsured people has dropped by about 20 million and the uninsured rate has declined below 9 percent, a historic low.

►TRUMP, repeating a week-old assertion that Sweden is an example of violence and extremism due to immigration: ‘‘Take a look at what happened in Sweden.’’

►THE FACTS: Trump was ridiculed in Sweden after he warned at a rally in Florida that terrorism was growing in Europe and something terrible had happened in Sweden the previous night. There had been no extraordinary trouble that night in Sweden, a country welcoming to immigrants.

Two days later, though, a riot broke out after police arrested a drug crime suspect. Cars were set on fire and shops looted, but no one was injured. Attacks in the country related to extremism remain rare.

►TRUMP: The United States is providing security to other nations ‘‘while leaving our own border wide open. Anybody can come in. But don’t worry, we’re getting a wall. . . . We’re getting bad people out of this country.’’

►THE FACTS: His wide-open border claim is bogus. The number of arrests of illegal border crossers — the best measure of how many people are trying to cross illegally — remains at a 40-year low. The US government under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama roughly doubled the ranks of the Border Patrol in the past decade or so.

In addition, the number of people expelled from the country since Trump took office Jan. 20 has not been disclosed. No available data support his claim, made Thursday, that immigrants in the country illegally are being expelled at a rate ‘‘nobody has ever seen before.’’

This month, Homeland Security officials have said 680 people were arrested in a weeklong effort to find and arrest criminal immigrants living in the United States illegally. Three-quarters of those people had been convicted of crimes, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said.

The government has not provided information about who was arrested in that roundup, so it’s impossible to determine how many gang members or drug lords were in that group. It is also unclear how many of those ‘‘bad people’’ have actually been deported.

That roundup was largely planned before Trump took office and was alternately described by the Trump administration as a routine enforcement effort and a signal of his pledge to take a harder line on illegal immigration.

►TRUMP: ‘‘We have authorized the construction, one day, of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. And issued a new rule — this took place while I was getting ready to sign. I said who makes the pipes for the pipeline? Well, sir, it comes from all over the world, isn’t that wonderful? I said nope, comes from the United States, or we’re not building it. American steel. If they want a pipeline in the United States, they’re going to use pipe that’s made in the United States.’’

►THE FACTS: Trump’s executive order leaves lots of wiggle room. The order states new, expanded, or repaired pipelines in the United States must use US steel ‘‘to the maximum extent possible’’ and allowed by law. That’s not an all-USA mandate.

What’s judged possible in the Keystone XL project remains to be seen. Pipes are already purchased. Contrary to his statement, Trump has not approved the project. Rather, he revived it by asking TransCanada to resubmit its application.

TransCanada has said the majority of steel would be from North America, but that includes Canada and Mexico.

Trump’s order on US steel has little effect on the Dakota Access project because it is nearly complete.

►TRUMP on arrests of people in the country illegally: ‘‘It’s a military operation because what has been allowed to come into our country, when you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before and all of the things, much of that is people who are here illegally. And they’re rough and they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people. So we’re getting them out.’’

►THE FACTS: He was wrong in calling immigration enforcement a military operation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responsible for finding and deporting immigrants in the country illegally, is a civilian law enforcement agency. Military personnel were not responsible for recent raids that resulted in the arrests of 680 people.

Kelly contradicted Trump on the nature of plans to step up border enforcement: ‘‘There will be no use of military forces in immigration,’’ Kelly said. ‘‘There will be no — repeat, no — mass deportations.’’