"While not all Republicans are standing behind Trump, he said that at least the Republican Party got "60% more votes than it received eight years ago." Meanwhile, according to Trump, "the Democrats, on the other hand, received 20% fewer votes than they got four years ago."
There's only one problem: four years ago, Barack Obama was an incumbent president, and his presence on the ballot was merely a formality. Did the Democrats really get 20% fewer votes this year than in an election where the sitting president didn't face a significant challenge?
The answer is no. In fact, CNNestimates that there were a total of 31,377,481 votes cast in the 2016 Democratic primary season, compared to 8,571,580 in 2012, according to the Federal Election Commission. So, rather than a 20% decrease, that's a whopping 266% increase in total votes. Perhaps Trump misspoke, and meant to refer to the 2008 Democratic primary, which featured record turnout. In 2008, Democrats received a total of 37,235,154 votes -- or 20% more than in this cycle.
As far as Trump's claim that there were 60% more votes cast in 2016 than 2008? CNN estimates that there were a total of 31,155,487 votes cast in the 2016 Republican primary fight, compared to 20,790,899 votes reported by the FEC in 2008. That's not quite as big a leap as Trump claimed, coming in at a still significant 50%. We rate his claim about the Democratic vote tallies as false."
Finally, on Hillary Clinton's legacy CNN's Amy Gallagher analyzed Trump's sweeping claims and accusations.
"Trump rattled off a litany of events he claimed would make up "the legacy of Hillary Clinton."
"After 15 years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before. This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness."
In essence, the briefest way to check his claim is simply to read this sentence. If there were 15 years of wars in the Middle East and trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, and even if it can all be laid at the feet of US foreign policy, we are actually talking about the legacy of at least two presidential administrations and four secretaries of state: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. At the very least, Trump is overstating Clinton's influence -- she did not become secretary of state until 2009. As a result, we rate his claim that the state of the Middle East and Libya are Clinton's personal legacy as false."
I rest my case.
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