President Donald Trump's joint press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was rife with misinformation, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale told anchor Wolf Blitzer on Thursday evening.
"What stood out to you from the news conference that we just heard, at least so far?" asked Blitzer.
"Wolf, I heard three false claims that we fact checked over and over for months, if not years," replied Dale.
To begin with, he said, "The president ... said that the U.S. is in for — as in providing — aid to Ukraine for $200 billion more than Europe collectively has. In fact, he has that reversed."
Dale cited the German think tank Kiel Institute and said Europe collectively has provided "significantly more wartime aid to Ukraine than the United States."
"It's about $250 billion in aid allocated to Ukraine by Europe, collectively," versus just $123 billion committed by the U.S. — and it's a similar breakdown if you only count aid that has already been sent," said Dale.
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Dale also shot down Trump's repeated falsehoods about tariffs.
"On the subject of tariffs, we heard the president repeat his claim that we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China as a result of the tariffs he imposed during his first presidency," Dale continued. "That money came to the U.S. Treasury from Americans. Study after study has found that it is U.S. consumers who bore the brunt of those tariffs, and it's U.S. importers who make the tariff payments," Dale said.
"Finally, Wolf, he said that before I came along, no president had taken in 10 cents in such tariffs," he added. "Well, aside from the question of who pays them — again, usually Americans — the U.S. has had tariffs on China and other countries since the 1790s. It was taking in billions a year in tariffs on Chinese products under, for example, President Barack Obama. So certainly not true there either."
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