First night of the GOP convention features more dishonesty than four nights of Democratic National Convention
Here are some of the most noteworthy falsehoods from night one of the RNC.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley attacked Democratic positions on health care.
“They want a government takeover of health care,” she said at the Republican National Convention on Monday.
Facts First: This is true of some Democrats, but it’s not a policy Joe Biden supports. While he does advocate broadening the government’s involvement in the nation’s health care system, he does not back so-called “single payer” programs like Medicare for All, which were pushed by others in the primary.
While Biden has agreed to back lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60, from the current 65, as a concession to the party’s progressive wing, he is not a supporter of Medicare for All, which would have essentially replaced the private health insurance system with a single, government-run plan. That idea was pushed by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Biden would also increase the federal subsidies in Obamacare so more middle-class Americans could afford to buy coverage.
His running mate, Kamala Harris, shifted her positions during her short campaign — at times strongly backing Medicare for All. But when she eventually unveiled her health care plan, it also included a role for private insurance companies. However, she now supports Biden’s proposal.
Abolishing suburbs
Patricia McCloskey, the woman who along with her husband Mark McCloskey pointed a gun at protestors from her St. Louis home in June, claimed that Democrats want to “abolish” suburbs. “They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,” she claimed.
Some background: The McCloskeys drew national attention in late June after they were seen in a viral video brandishing guns outside their mansion at protesters walking on a private street en route to demonstrate outside the St. Louis mayor’s residence.
The mayor lives on a nearby public street and the protesters were going down a street that doesn’t reach the mayor’s house, a St. Louis city official said. The Missouri couple was charged in July with unlawful use of a weapon, a class E felony.
Unemployment
Multiple speakers — including Rep. Vernon Jones, Rep. Jim Jordan and Mark McCloskey — touted the low unemployment rate America has witnessed under the Trump administration. Both Jordan and McCloskey credited the President for the “lowest unemployment in 50 years,” while Jones said President Trump “built the most inclusive economy ever, with record low unemployment for African Americans.”
After dropping to a 50-year low in September 2019, the unemployment rate hovered around that level for five months before Covid-19 hit and millions of jobs vanished.
The unemployment rate for Black workers, meanwhile, fell to 5.4% in August of 2019, a record low for the data, which have been collected since 1972. It was mostly driven a drop in the jobless rate for Black women. The Black unemployment rate rose throughout the winter months.
While the pandemic affected workers across the country, minorities fared worse than White workers. In July, the overall unemployment rate fell back to 10.2% — still higher than during the worst part of the Great Recession — while the jobless rate for Black Americans was 14.6%.
This story is being updated.
