Fact Checking Donald Trump’s Final Rally

Donald Trump headed to Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday to deliver what could be his final ever campaign rally.
Trump has said he won’t run for president in 2028 if he is unsuccessful in this election and will not be eligible to run again if he wins due to the 22nd Amendment which limits presidents to two terms each. Polls and forecasts show a close contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala as voters mark their ballots.
Newsweek went through the key claims for at the Michigan rally. A media representative for Trump has been contacted via email for comment.
Among Trump’s newest claims is that he ended plans by Chinese auto manufacturer BYD to build a new plant in Mexico. He claimed he had been told, “They’ve given up that plant” over his threats to tariff Chinese imports, boldly adding, “So I saved Michigan, and I saved Detroit.”
The plans have not been abandoned. In September, unnamed sources told reporters BYD would not make any major announcements until after the U.S. election. A BYD executive later said that it had not postponed any decision. There is no evidence it has “abandoned” the plan.
This is misleading. Harris has said that she will not increase taxes on those earning under $400,000 a year. The plans will see the top marginal income rate raised to 39.6 percent, from the current 37 percent, and the rate on two Medicare surtaxes increased from 3.8 percent to 5 percent for those earning more than $400,000.
Those making more than $1 million a year would see investment earnings taxed the same as regular income instead of at the capital gains rate, which is lower. And people with more than $100 million in assets would have to pay a minimum of 25 percent on their income and their unrealized capital gains.
Harris has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.
Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said the move would be part of “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”
Trump began speaking about the British WWII prime minister as he addressed criticism over his own pronunciation and gaffes.
The stuttering claim is disputed. According to the International Churchill Society, founded in 1968 after his death to preserve his “historical legacy,” ,while the British leader had a speech impediment that he trained to cope with, it was a lisp, not a stutter, it’s suggested he dealt with.
Trump keeps falsely claiming that 101,000 people attended his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, following the first assassination attempt against him. Thomas Matthew Crooks killed firefighter Corey Comperatore and injured others in the attempt.
Newsweek analysis of the Butler rally grounds showed at most, 59,000 people could have attended if all corners of the site were packed, which they were not.
The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), not the United States Border Patrol, endorsed Trump in October. The NBPC says it has a 90 percent membership rate among eligible Border Patrol agents.
Trump has kept falsely saying that Springfield, Ohio, which has been the center of a misinformed and misleading right-wing conspiracy about migrants, has a majority migrant population. There is no evidence for this.
A statement by the city said Clark County—the county seat Springfield sits in—has an immigration population of approximately 12,000-15,000 people.
This is based on an inflation tracker that shows that on average, Americans have paid $30,000 in cumulative costs since January 2021.
However, the analysis does not include increases in wage rises that ameliorate some of these costs. The Washington Post noted figures from the U.S. Treasury showed that “as of the end of 2023, the median American worker could afford the same goods and services as they did in 2019, with an additional $1,400 to spend or save per year.”
This is incorrect. As reported by Poynter, in August 2024 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced a “benchmark revision” to employment figures for March this year.
Using unemployment insurance tax records, the BLS revised previous figures by 818,000 jobs. It was not a “fraudulent” claim, but a part of estimate recalculations. The final revised number will be issued in February 2025.
This appears to refer to October’s employment figures showing 28,000 private sector jobs were removed from the industry. However, this is preliminary data with month-on-month increases between August and September 2024 of 192,000 jobs.
Preliminary figures say that around 93,000 jobs have been lost since the start of the year. Around 44,000 were lost between September and October 2024 due to strike activity, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trump is right that 150,000 more civilians were classified as unemployed in October 2024 compared to September 2024. His claim that they are “depression-type numbers” needs some context.
The current employment rate is 4.1 percent, compared to the Great Depression, where roughly a quarter of the population was out of work. Unemployment has been steadily increasing since April last year, but is lower than its most recent peak in July.
This is unevidenced. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for October 2024 show that the number of employed foreign-born civilians increased while the number of employed native-born decreased.
However, that population includes legally migrated civilians, naturalized citizens, undocumented workers, refugees, and temporary workers, and the data does not show which of those groups of people received the most jobs. Trump appears to be referring to undocumented migrants, not all foreign-born workers.
Data shows that the number of unemployed workers and the unemployment rate for both native- and foreign-born civilians increased in the past year.
As reported by PolitiFact, this is based on a Tax Foundation analysis of what would happen if Harris abolished Trump’s 2017 Tax and Jobs Act, due to expire in 2025. However, as reported by Reuters, Harris is planning to extend these cuts, but only for those earning under $400,000.
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