Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has drifted wide of the facts with his statements on Mexico.
"The Mexican government forces many bad people into our country because they're smart," he said. "They're smarter than our leaders, and their negotiators are far better than what we have, to a degree that you wouldn't believe. They're forcing people into our country. . And they are drug dealers, and they are criminals of all kinds. We are taking Mexico's problems."
Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public policy at Princeton University, finds Trump's assertion to be flat wrong. He pointed to findings from a 2014 paper in the journal International Migration Review. Undocumented migration from Mexico "was driven largely by U.S. labor demand and by the existence of well-developed migrant networks that provided migrants with access to U.S. labor markets" and "Mexican migration is tied to social and economic circumstances on both sides of the border." As has been the case for decades, a combination of economic and family factors accounts for most of the migration from Mexico to the United States.
Politifact rates the claim Pants on Fire.
Ben Ferguson, a conservative CNN radio host and author questioned Trump's financial commitment to the GOP. He said Trump has "given more money to Democratic candidates than Republican candidates." Trump has actually been evenhanded in doling out cash, but since 1989, he's contributed over $350,000 more to Republicans running for federal and state offices, campaign records show. The difference in donations is almost entirely captured in Trump's recent giving. Since 2012, Trump has donated $463,450 to Republicans and just $3,500 to Democrats.
Trump defended himself as having no viable Republican options in overwhelmingly blue states like New York. "Everyone's Democratic," he told Sean Hannity in 2011. "So what am I going to do - contribute to Republicans? Am I going to contribute to Republicans for my whole life when they get heat when they run against some Democrat and the most they can get is 1 percent of the vote?"
Sanders Mostly False on poverty
One plank of Bernie Sanders' presidential platform is his focus on decreasing poverty and income inequality in America. Sanders: "It is an international embarrassment that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth."
Sanders was referring to a 2012 UNICEF report in which the U.S. ranked 34th out of 35 countries with a childhood poverty rate of 23.1 percent, besting only non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member Romania. In another report on 29 similarly affluent countries, American children rank 25th in safety, 27th in education, and 23rd in housing and environment. Since the reports define poverty as a household earning less than a certain percentage of the national income, countries with higher levels of income inequality are also more likely to have higher rates of poverty.
The 2012 UNICEF report Sanders pointed to agrees with him, but two studies released since then, including another one from UNICEF, show that while the U.S. does consistently have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty, there are several OECD members with higher rates, notably Israel and Mexico. Politifact rates the claim Mostly False.
Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Website used: factcheck.org
