Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates
President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Monday
night in Boca Raton, Fla. for the final presidential debate before the
election.
Highlights
- Live Updates
- All
- Fact-Checks
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Fact-Check: Bilateral Talks With IranMr. Obama said on Monday that a front-page report in The New York Times on Sunday was “not true,” that the United States and Iran have not agreed to meet after the American election, in one-on-one talks over the Iranian nuclear program. Read More
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Fact-Check: Trade War With ChinaMr. Romney said that the United States was currently engaged in an unacknowledged trade war with China — and that China was winning, as evidenced by its trade imbalance with the United States. Many economists agree that what is happening now are skirmishes on the sidelines, not a full-scale trade war in which both sides lose heavily.
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Fact-Check: On the Side of DemocracyMr. Obama spoke of the role the United States has played during the Arab Spring uprisings, saying, “We have stood on the side of democracy.” But that is not true across the board.Read More
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Fact-Check: Drawing 'Red Lines' on IranAt some points in the campaign, there has been a clear difference in where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney would draw a “red line’’ beyond which they would not let Iran go toward a nuclear weapon. But more often than not, it has been more like a red smudge, giving both candidates maximum flexibility, while each tries to sound more determined to stop the Iranian program.Read More
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Fact-Check: Trade Cases Against ChinaPresident Obama said, “We have brought more cases against China for violating trade rules than the other — the previous administration had done in two terms.” It is true that the Obama administration has brought eight cases against China in the past four years — an average of two a year — before the World Trade Organization.
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Fact-Check: 'Obamacare' and Military SpendingWhen Mr. Romney was asked how he would find the money to pay for the increased military spending he seeks, he said: “We do it by getting — by reducing spending in a whole series of programs. By the way, No. 1 I get rid of is ‘Obamacare.’ ” But repealing the health care law would actually increase the federal deficit.
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Fact-Check: Romney Investments and OutsourcingMr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of investing in companies that shipped jobs overseas. Is this true?Read More
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Fact-Check: Fund-raisers in IsraelAfter Mr. Romney complained that Mr. Obama had not visited Israel during a trip to the region, Mr. Obama responded by contrasting the trip he took to Israel as a candidate with the one that Mr. Romney took as a candidate.Read More
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Fact-Check: Romney Position on Troops in AfghanistanHas Romney changed his view on an Afghan withdrawal and timeline? Yes, about an hour into the debate, Mr. Romney seemed to tweak his long-held position on Afghan troop withdrawals.Read More
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Fact-Check: A 'Pivot' to the PacificMr. Obama spoke of his administration’s “pivot” to the Pacific, but Mr. Romney’s defense advisers say that President Obama’s plan to shift from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and move national security resources toward Asia and the Pacific – read, China — is rhetorical flourish, not real policy. “The so-called pivot is hollow,” Roger Zakheim, one of Mr. Romney’s defense advisers, told reporters earlier this month. But is it? Read More
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Fact-Check: The Case of China and Cheap TiresPresident Obama again brought up the tire case, saying that China was flooding the United States with cheap tires and that he put a stop to it and saved jobs. But in fact, many economists criticize the administration’s action.Read More
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Fact-Check: Mission Creep in LibyaMr. Obama noted more than once that Mr. Romney had called the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya “mission creep” and “mission muddle.” Here, Mr. Romney can make a strong case.Read More
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Fact-Check: 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt'?Mr. Obama just stated that when Mr. Romney argued in late 2008 that Detroit auto companies should be denied a government bailout and instead turn to the private marketplace, no private financing was available. This is consistent with what auto executives have said. Read More
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Fact-Check: Troops on the Ground in SyriaMr. Romney said at the debate that “we don’t want to have military involvement” in Syria. And with that statement, he essentially put himself in a place pretty close to where President Obama and Mr. Biden have been: that America’s options are limited if putting ground troops into the country is off the table.Read More
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Fact-Check: Leaving Afghanistan in 2014?Mr. Obama said at the debate that he wanted to “transition out of Afghanistan in a responsible way.” But when is the United States leaving? In every major conversation with the Afghans and the Pakistanis, American officials talk about their plans for an “enduring presence” of American troops — mostly behind high walls — who would stay in Afghanistan for years to come.Read More
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Fact-Check: Romney's Bipartisan SuccessEarlier in the debate, Mr. Romney said that bipartisan cooperation with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature allowed him as Massachusetts governor to balance the state’s budget for four straight years and propel the state’s schools to first in the nation on standardized tests. Many experts, however, say those claims are less than fully credible.Read More
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Fact-Check: 'Apology Tour'Mitt Romney stated that President Obama went on a foreign “apology tour.” Is this true? News organizations have repeatedly found the claim that Mr. Obama has apologized for American values and principles to be inaccurate.Read More
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Fact-Check: Sanctions on IranMr. Obama has a lot of history on his side with his assertion that Iran’s economy is being crippled by sanctions imposed over the past few years and that Iran’s oil sales have plummeted. Mr. Romney called for tightening them more. Read More
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Fact-Check: How Close Is Iran to a Bomb?Mr. Romney said at the debate that Iran was “four years closer to a nuclear weapon.” How close is that?
Damon Winter/The New York TimesMitt Romney responded to a question during the debate in Boca Raton, Fla.
The answer depends on three factors. The first is how long it would take Iran to manufacture bomb-grade uranium. The second is how long it would take to fashion that uranium into a weapon – without getting caught, and getting bombed, along the way. And the third is how long it would take to make the weapon small enough to fit atop a Shahab III, Iran’s longest-range missile.Read More
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Fact-Check: The Size of the NavyOn military matters, Mr. Romney repeated a challenge to the Obama administration that he has used with repeated intensity: that the United States Navy is the smallest since 1917. Yes, today’s Navy is much smaller than in past generations. But Navy commanders also point out that each individual warship at sea today is far more capable than any individual predecessor in that class of vessel. The commander in chief, Mr. Obama, made the same point in the debate, saying that today’s Navy includes aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines far beyond comparison to the fleet early in the last century.Read More
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Fact-Check: Romney's Shifting Tone on IranMr. Romney’s remark that he wants to use “peaceful and diplomatic means” to persuade Iran not to pursue its nuclear program was a striking departure from the more hawkish tone he has used throughout the campaign. Read More
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Fact-Check: Defense CutsHas President Obama promised large cuts to the military? The looming cuts to the military that Mr. Romney alluded to were not the president’s doing. They are the bipartisan product of a messy deal he reached last year with House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avert default.Read More
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Fact-Check: Debt as a National Security RiskIn the debate, Mr. Romney cited the United States’ growing debt as a major national security risk.
Many analysts share that assessment, including retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I believe the single biggest threat to our national security is our debt, so I also believe we have every responsibility to help eliminate that threat,” he said last year. “We must, and will, do our part.”
The general thrust of the argument is that the United States’ huge deficits and debt might force cuts to its spending on human and built infrastructure, as well as research and development. The debt might also undermine confidence overseas in the United States’ ability to lead.
It’s a broad argument about national priorities. But on the more specific question of whether the amount of United States debt held by China poses a threat, the Pentagon has said, generally, no.
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Fact-Check: Massachusetts Test ScoresMr. Romney said that grade-school students in Massachusetts, where he served as governor, took the national lead in test scores, because “Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis.” Mr. Obama countered, “but that was 10 years before you took office.” They are both right.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress commonly called the nation’s report card, does show that Massachusetts took the top spot shortly after Mr. Romney took office in 2003. But education experts have attributed that to a 1993 school reform law passed under another Republican governor, William Weld, and Mr. Romney, himself, has given that law much of the credit for his state’s progress.
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Fact-Check: A Quick Note on GeographyA small note on global geography to Mr. Romney.
During a discussion concerning the bloodshed in Syria – and Iran’s role — Mr. Romney said: “Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.”
Yes, Syria and Iran are allies. But Iran has a lengthy and sovereign coastline that stretches along the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and then linking to the Arabian Sea – which, in turn, leads to the Indian Ocean and onward to the world’s high seas.
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Fact-Check: Obama Reaction to Iran UprisingsMr. Romney said President Obama had been “silent” in the face of Iran’s opposition uprising in 2009 and 2010. That is a common criticism with some truth, but it is not the whole story.Read More
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Fact-Check: Arming Syrian RebelsOn the question of whether to arm the Syrian rebels, President Obama and Mr. Romney have a genuine difference of opinion. Mr. Obama has steadfastly refused to give the Syrian rebels heavy weapons to take out President Bashar al-Assad’s fighter jets and tanks, and even light arms have been transferred at the behest of two neighboring Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
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Fact-Check: Romney on RussiaMr. Obama attacked Mr. Romney for describing Russia as America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” ”When you were asked what was the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda, you said Russia,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Romney during the debate. “And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” Mr. Romney did characterize Russia that way, although he also cited other more immediate security threats.Read More
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Fact-Check: A Status of Forces Agreement?President Obama suggested that Mr. Romney was mistaken in seeking to keep 10,000 American troops in Iraq. But the Obama administration initially sought to do just that — and ultimately never managed to negotiate an agreement to allow any American troops in Iraq.Read More
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Fact-Check: The Strength of Al QaedaMr. Romney said Al Qaeda remained “an enormous threat,” and Mr. Obama said his administration had “decimated” its leadership. Who is right? Both are.Read More
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Fact-Check: Conditions on Foreign AidOn foreign aid, Mitt Romney has been much more explicit than President Obama: he would make aid to Egypt, and other “Arab Spring’’ states, conditional on how they formed their governments. He has not said what the conditions would be, but aides have: the country has to be tolerant of other religions, enshrine basic human rights, educate girls, preserve peace treaties (especially Egypt’s treaty with Israel) and move toward Western forms of justice.
Mr. Obama has been less specific, but his aides note that cutting aid can become a two-way street. For example, the $1.3 billion in military aid given annually to the Egyptian military was the price of the peace treaty with Israel. Cut the aid and it might be easier to jettison the treaty.
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