Fact Check: The Third, GQP Debate

Let’s begin our journey by posting the truest thing spoken last night:

“You’re just scum.” And that, he is:

Mr. Ramaswamy, you had your turn. Now, STFU.

Yes, Vivek is a sexist pig but that’s what sells to the GQP base. He might need some skin bleach to make him even more appealable to the racist, xenophobic, and bigoted bunch.

Darling Nikki:

• “I will make sure we claw back the $500 billion of unspent covid dollars that are out there instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after Middle America.”
  • This figure is a common GOP talking point, but it is wildly exaggerated. When Congress passed a bill last year to provide the IRS with an additional $80 billion in funding over 10 years, that money would be used in part to hire 86,852 full-time employees in the next decade. But many would not be enforcement “agents” but employees hired to improve information technology and customer service

The Scum/Puttin’s Puppet:

• “Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden got a $5 million bribe from Ukraine. That’s why we’re sending $200 billion back to that same country.”
  • This is baseless. Congressional Republicans released an FBI document from 2020 this year that makes a shocking allegation about President Biden — that he and his son Hunter were involved in a foreign bribery scheme with a Ukrainian business executive. The identity of this FBI source and any connection to Ukraine remain unknown,and theFBI has not publicly confirmed any tipsthe person supplied in the document. Moreover, the person was interviewed by telephone in 2020 about conversations that took place as many as four years earlier.
• Putin’s Puppet: “Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties. It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm.”
  • Ramaswamy, who advocates cutting a deal with Russia that would allow Moscow to keep the Ukrainian territory it has seized, often paints an unflattering portrait of a country that is on a war footing.
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed decrees that ban religious organizations with ties to Russia and suspended 11 Ukrainian parties with ties to Russia; most are small, but one, Opposition Platform for Life, has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament. Both actions were aimed at Russia and earned Russian protests. He also consolidated the country’s television outlets into a single TV platform, citing the need for a “unified information policy” under martial law. The stated aim was to combat Russian propaganda on independent TV channels, but the effect is to limit freedom of speech.

Ramaswamy on the 2016 and 2020 elections

• Pandering to the GQP base: “This media rigged the 2016 election, they rigged the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden laptop story and they’re going to rig this election unless we have accountability,” Ramaswamy said.
  • Ramaswamy’s own 2022 book “Nation of Victims,” he writes that the “2016 election wasn’t stolen in a literal sense” and that he hadn’t seen “convincing evidence” that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged.
  • “The fact that all of our governmental institutions so unanimously found no evidence of significant fraud is telling. Furthermore, I’ve talked to many Republicans at all levels of government, and not one has ever presented convincing evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump; very few have seriously tried. I don’t believe that most Republican politicians actually think the election was stolen,” Ramaswamy wrote.
• Ramaswamy has previously argued that the media spread an unfair narrative of Russian collusion in the 2016 election that robbed Trump of the ability to do the job after he was elected. However, a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee backed the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help then-candidate Donald Trump.

• Ramaswamy claimed that Ohio “passed a constitutional amendment that now effectively codifies a right to abortion all the way up to the time of birth without parental consent” because of a “Republican culture of losing.”
  • Facts First: This is false.
  • The passage of ballot measure Issue 1 on Tuesday establishes a person’s right to an abortion in the Ohio state constitution. The measure does not explicitly say that abortion is allowed under any circumstance, nor does it change Ohio’s parental consent and notification law.

More on this Ohio Scum’s lies found here:

Uncle Tim:

• “Obama sent millions to Iran. Frankly, President Biden has sent billions to Iran.”— Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C)
  • .This is misleading. In both cases, the president returned money that was Iran’s in the first place — to facilitate the release of Americans detained in Iran.
• “I certainly wouldn’t allow — not allow — for governors — former governors, Democratic governor of Virginia who talked about infanticide. … I think it’s unethical, unethical and immoral to allow for abortions up until the day of birth.”
  • This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.
  • The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful, emotional and even moral decisions.

Are gas prices higher?

• Scott said gas prices are “40% higher right now than they were just a little over two years ago.”
  • This is false. A gallon of regular gas costs about $3.40 per gallon on average this week, compared with $3.41 per gallon in November 2021, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Prices did spike over the course of 2022 (to as high as $5 per gallon in June 2022), in part because of the war in Ukraine, but they have since come down.

Meatball Ron:

• “She [Haley] welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were.”
  • DeSantis is echoing an attack ad by a super PAC supporting him — which earned Three Pinocchios.
• “Not only is he (President Biden) not helping the Jewish students, who are being persecuted, he is launching an initiative to combat so-called Islamophobia. No, it’s antisemitism that’s spiraling out of control,” DeSantis said.
  • Facts First: This is misleading. While the Biden administration announced last week that it is developing a national strategy to counter Islamophobia, the White House already released a national strategy to combat antisemitism in May.
• “We had Floridians that were over there after the attack. He [Biden] left them stranded. They couldn’t get flights out. So, I scrambled resources in Florida. I sent planes over to Israel and I brought back over 700 people to safety. There could have been more hostages had we not acted.”
  • Facts First: DeSantis’ statement, which appears to say Biden failed to evacuate Americans out of Israel, is both untrue and needs context.
  • National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced on October 12 that the US government would begin arranging charter flights for Americans seeking to leave Israel on October 13. The first US government flight out of Israel landed in Athens on October 13. On October 30, State Department spokesman Matt Miller said the agency was suspending charter flights due to a lack of demand.

Krispy Kreme Christy:

• “Customs and Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed. There (were) 200,000 encounters a month over the last 11 months.”
  • This is accurate. A record of migrant encounters published by Customs and Border Protection shows monthly totals approaching or exceeding 200,000 over the past year. In September, the agency reported more than 269,000 encounters at the border.
  • It’s worth noting, though, that number represents events, not people. One person could try crossing the border multiple times and every attempt would increase the tally.