The dynamic of the 2024 presidential election has changed dramatically since President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, former President Donald Trump has tried to dampen the momentum of Vice President Kamala Harris with a series of press conferences and interviews.
But in an Aug. 8 press conference at his Mar-a-Lago home and private resort, an Aug. 12 interview with Elon Musk at X, and an Aug. 15 press conference at his New Jersey golf club, Trump continued to make dozens of false or unsubstantiated claims. NPR counted 162 “lies and distortions” in the Mar-a-Lago press release alone.
Trump, meanwhile, added to a growing body of falsehoods on social media, claiming that video and photos showing a large crowd attending Harris’ Aug. 7 rally at a metro Detroit station were created by artificial intelligence.
“He had NO ONE waiting and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! The same thing is happening with his Fake ‘crowd’ at his speeches,” Trump claimed on August 11, perhaps the easiest claim to debunk in election history.
Here’s a look at some of the recent lies Trump has made while campaigning for another term in the White House.
‘forced landing’
At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump raised eyebrows as he recounted a helicopter ride he claimed to have taken with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
“I got back on the helicopter with him,” Trump told reporters. “We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter together going to a certain place and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing and Willie was, he was a little worried.”
Trump added that Brown had told him “terrible things” about Harris.
Brown later responded that he had never been in a helicopter with Trump and denied saying anything negative about Harris to him.
“Border Island”
Because of the wave of immigration to the United States from across the Mexican border during the Biden administration, Trump has repeatedly claimed that Harris is responsible because he was designated as the country’s “border islander.”
“He’s a border czar. By the way, he was a border czar, 100%,” Trump told reporters of Harris at an Aug. 8 press conference. “And all of a sudden in the last few weeks, he’s not a border czar like nobody ever said.”
Although Biden tasked Harris with working with Central American countries to understand the root causes of immigration and stem the flow of migrants to the United States, he was never given the title of “border islander.”
“20 million” illegal immigrants under Biden
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, about 7.3 million encounters with immigrants trying to enter the country illegally have been recorded since Biden became president. Trump has regularly tried to inflate this number, but has not provided evidence to support his claims.
“Twenty million people came across the border last time – during the Biden-Harris administration,” he said at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “Twenty million people. And it could be much higher. Nobody really knows what that number is.”
‘Virtually 100%’ of US job creation has ‘gone to immigrants’
At a news conference in Bedminster, NJ on Thursday, Trump again resorted to exaggeration and distortion when he made the following claim: “Virtually 100% of net job creation last year has gone to immigrants.”
As the Associated Press reported in its fact-checking of the event, Trump appears to be confusing immigrants who are naturalized US citizens with those in the country illegally. Unemployment rates for native-born Americans are actually lower than for foreign-born Americans.
“The crime rate is going through the roof”
In an interview with Elon Musk on Monday, Trump suggested that crime is increasing in America.
“Our crime rate is going through the roof,” he said.
However, preliminary data from the FBI shows the opposite: homicides fell 13 percent in 2023 and a further 26 percent in the first quarter of 2024. The total number of violent crimes decreased by 6 percent in 2023, according to preliminary figures from the office. and fell another 15% in the first quarter of 2024, according to CNN.
