Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Festival Park on June 18, 2024, in Racine, Wisconsin.
Washington CNN —
Former President Donald Trump mademore than two dozen false claimsat his Tuesday campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin, including two significant attempts to rewrite Wisconsin history.
Thefirstwas a slightly vaguer than usual version of hisfamiliarlie that he won Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election. He lost the stateby20,682votes.
The second was a version of a false claim Trumpdeliveredin 2020 and again in 2022: hisassertionthat he had saved the Wisconsin city of Kenosha from destruction in 2020 when Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, refused to take action to deal with the civil unrest that followed the police shooting of a Black man.
“By the way, you know, Kenosha: I saved Kenosha, do you know that? When I was president. Right? Right? I saved it,” TrumpsaidTuesday. “Kenosha was — Kenosha was about ready to go down the tubes and the governor wouldn’t move, he just wouldn’t move, and I moved. You know, I’m not supposed to; it’s supposed to be the governor, is supposed to do it, the mayor and the governor.”
Facts First:Trump’s claims that Evers “wouldn’t move” and that Trump was the person who “saved Kenosha” are false, as numerous fact-checkerspointed outwhen he made similar claimsin2020. Evers, not Trump, deployed the Wisconsin National Guard during the rioting in Kenosha — and Evers first deployed theGuard the day before Trump publicly demanded that Evers do so. In other words, Trump insisted that Evers do something that he was already doing.
Trump has repeatedly made a near-identical false claim about another state, Minnesota, that had a Democratic governor and civil unrest in 2020. Though Trump has asserted that he deployed the National Guard to Minneapolis over the objection of Gov. Tim Walz,it was Walz who deployed theGuard to Minneapolis hours before Trump demanded that he do so.
The 2020unrest in Kenosha, which involved both peaceful protests and acts of violence and vandalism, followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake by a White police officer who wasresponding to a domestic disturbance call on August 23, 2020. (State and federal law enforcement laterdecidednot to file charges against the officer.)
On Tuesday, after Trump repeated his false claim, the governor’s office provided CNN with the sametimeline it had sent to reporters when Trump had made the claim in 2020. The timeline, which is corroborated by public evidence, conclusively debunks Trump’s narrative.
Trumptweetedon the night of August 25, 2020, that the“governor should call in the National Guard in Wisconsin.” But the governor had already done so by then.Evers authorized the deployment of 125 Wisconsin National Guard troopsjust after 3 a.m.theday prior to the tweet, thendoubledthe deployment to 250 troops on the afternoon of the tweet – more than four hours before Trump weighed in.
Evers continued to deploy more Wisconsin National Guard troops in the coming days, and he alsoacceptedNational Guard troops from three other states; they were never federalized. Evers did accept limited federal assistance from theUS Marshals Serviceand the FBI, his office said, but that’s no basis for Trump’s claims that he saved the city when Evers wouldn’t.
The idea that the city’s very existence was ever threatened is alsoquestionable, but we’ll leave that aside here.
Other Trump false claims
Trump made lots of other false claims during the Racine rally. Here’s a quick fact check on 12 of them:
·Hesaid“the world was at peace” when he was president in 2020, though therewerenumerous ongoing armed conflicts.
·HesaidDemocrats rigged the 2020 election, which did not happen.
·Hesaidpeople’s votes “tend to disappear” after they are cast, which is just not true.
·Hesaidthe country is “in the middle of the worst crime wave in modern history,” though preliminary statistics show crimedeclined sharply in 2023 and thefirst quarter of 2024.
·Hesaidhe has been indicted more times than notorious gangster Al Capone, who wasindicted at least six times to Trump’s four.
·Hesaidsomebody left cocaine at the White House “about a month ago,” though thathappened about 11 months ago, andsaidit was “hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine,” though photos show the cocaine was in asmall bagworth nothing even remotely close to that amount.
·Hesaidhe went to Washington, DC, the other day for one of his trials, though the tripwas actually for meetings with congressional Republicans.
·Hesaidthen-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down his offer of 10,000 soldiers at the Capitol January 6, 2021; there isno evidence she ever received such an offer, and she wouldn’t have had the power to reject it if she did.
·Hesaidno previous president had taken even 10 cents “out of China” from tariffs; the UShas had tariffs on China since the 1700sand generated billions per year from them under predecessor President Barack Obama — and study after study has shown that Americans pay the tariffs, not China.
·HesaidSyria and Turkey have been fighting over their border “for 2,000 years,” thoughhistorians have said this is nonsense:Turkey and Syria were both part of the Ottoman Empire, and the modern border between them is less than 100 years old.
·Hesaidhe thinks cumulative inflation under Biden is “40 or 50 percent”; it’sactually about 19%.
