'Tour de force': CNN host amazed by fact check of 'wild list' of Trump's debate lies

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale swiftly ran through a list of Donald Trump's false claims during the former president's debate Tuesday night against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Dale conceded Harris offered a couple of falsehoods and made some questionable claims, but he counted nearly three dozen blatantly false claims from the former president.

"The fact check story of the night was a staggering dishonesty of former president Donald Trump," Dale said. "I counted 33 false claims, and that might be a generous count, versus one or maybe two false claims from vice president Harris, although she added a smattering of misleading or lacking-in-context claims. Let's go through this wild list of false Trump claims, some are just egregious lies."

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"On the economy, he said tariffs do not raise prices on Americans – they do," Dale began. "He said his tariffs raked in hundreds of billions from China. Americans paid those billions. He said all of the jobs created under [president Joe] Biden and Harris are merely bounce-back jobs from his administration. No, today's number is millions higher than back then. He said we have the worst inflation ever. No, the U.S. record is 23.7 percent. It is 2.9 percent today, down from a Biden-Harris era peak of 9.1 percent. He said there was no inflation when he was president. Prices actually rose a cumulative 8 percent when he was president. On immigration, he said migrants in an Ohio city, you heard, he said are eating people's cats and dogs. That a baseless, debunked Facebook rumor, just nonsense."

"He said Harris is border czar – no, she never was," Dale continued. "She actually has a more limited immigration-related diplomatic assignment. He said 21 million migrants crossed the border under Harris, that is many millions too high. He said millions of people are entering monthly, there has not been a single month in the millions. He said many of the migrants are from foreign prisons or mental institutions. Even his own campaign has not been able to corroborate that. On abortion, he said every Democrat wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. It is just untethered to reality. Roe v. Wade was supported by more than 80 percent of Democrats. Then he said every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, and a bunch of legal scholars personally told me they did not. He said Gov. Tim Walz said it is fine to execute babies after birth. Tim Walz never said that, and that is illegal in every single state. On foreign relations, he said $85 billion in U.S. equipment was left to the Taliban. That is a massive exaggeration. The Pentagon said the number is $7 billion. He said Iran did not fund terror groups under him – Iran did, although the funding level did decline. He said he ended Russia's Nord Stream pipeline. He did authorize sanctions, but after 90 percent completion, and Russia resumed construction during his own presidency. He said the U.S. has provided far more aid to Ukraine then Europe has. It is the reverse. Europe provided far more aid than the U.S. He said president Biden took millions of dollars from China, he did not. He added a false claim about Biden getting money from Russia – again, nonsense. He said Harris was sent to negotiate peace with Putin right before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Not only did that not just happen, but the Kremlin said Harris has never once even spoken with Vladimir Putin."

"Trump said he rebuilt the entire military, he did not, and then attacking vice president Harris, he said Harris was the first candidate to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary," Dale added. "There were actually 13 others that dropped out before her. He said Harris previously said she wasn't Black – total fiction. He said people don't attend Harris rallies, and thousands do indeed. He said people don't leave his own rallies early – some do. When it came to the 2020 election and his own legal troubles, he said there is so much proof that the 2020 election was stolen. There was not and it was not. He said Nancy Pelosi turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops Jan. 6. There is no evidence she even got such an offer. It was Trump, not the speaker, that had the power to deploy the Guard. He said no judge even looked at the merits of his allegations about the 2020 election. Some judges actually did, and he still lost the cases."

"He said the Justice Department was behind a variety of legal cases it had actually nothing to do with, and then a whole bunch of lies on a variety of topics," Dale concluded. "He said crime is skyrocketing, it is declining sharply. He said the Central Park Five pleaded guilty – they did not. They were wrongly convicted. He said those men killed someone, it was not even a murder case. He said he saved Obamacare when actually he tried to kill it and made it more weak. He said Harris has a plan to confiscate everybody's gun, she does not. In 2019, she supported a mandatory buy-back of assault weapons in particular and her campaign says she does not even support that now."

Host John Berman paused for a moment in stunned silence before reacting to his fact check of Trump's lies, which ran for four minutes without pause.

"Wow," Berman said, as laughter could be heard from someone off camera. "All right, Daniel Dale, get a drink of water, get some calories in you. Thank you so much for that. That was stunning to say the least. That was a tour de force."

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