How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and a Democratic congressman from the Orlando area mangling gun capabilities.
They all took a recent ride on the AJC Truth-O-Meter, courtesy of PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia.
Want to see how they fared? Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
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Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
Donald Trump on Wednesday, June 15th, 2016, in a Facebook post:
“The Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State.”
U.S. efforts to court “moderate” opponents of Bashar al-Assad may have benefited other Islamic extremist groups such as al Nusra, but any such benefits were an unintended consequence of U.S. policy, not a goal of that policy itself.
That’s different from the argument made by Trump — that the U.S. was actively supporting ISIS or its predecessors. In fact, experts say that assertion is flat wrong. The implication that the Obama administration was actively helping the United States’ enemies is ridiculous. It has always been U.S. policy to oppose AQI and ISIS, and the United States has aggressively fought the group for years.
We rated Trump’s assertion Pants on Fire.
Donald Trump on Monday, June 13th, 2016, in a speech:
Says Hillary Clinton “plans to massively increase admissions (of Middle East refugees) … including a 500 percent increase in Syrian refugees coming into our country.”
Clinton has, in fact, said that in response to the refugee crisis she would raise President Barack Obama’s limit of 10,000 to 65,000. That’s 550 percent more, a bit higher than what Trump said.
But Clinton has also made it clear that they would have to first be vetted by a screening process, an important detail in the context of Trump’s larger point that would-be terrorists have to be kept out of the country.
We rated Trump’s statement Mostly True.
Alan Grayson on Sunday, June 12th, 2016, in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett after the Orlando shooting:
The rifle used by Omar Mateen “shoots off 700 rounds in a minute.”
U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, an Orlando-area Democrat, made a case against assault rifles after the shooting in Orlando, saying the gun’s rate of fire is what made the death toll so catastrophic.
On CNN, he included this claim without any clarification. In other forums, he noted that his claim is only true for the hypothetical semiautomatic rifle converted to an automatic weapon.
Even then, however, experts say the 700-round-per-minute figure is not an accurate portrayal of rounds fired. This is true for many reasons, they said, including reloading time and the potential of overheating the gun.
The debate over how assault weapons ought to be regulated is ongoing and contentious, but the claim Grayson uses is nonetheless misleading.
We rated Grayson’s claim Mostly False.
Hillary Clinton on Thursday, June 2nd, 2016, in a foreign policy speech:
Says Donald Trump “says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.”
Trump did cite that as evidence of how he could navigate a relationship with Russia and work with its president, Vladimir Putin.
But he didn’t go so far as to say it bolstered his foreign policy experience more generally.
We rated Clinton’s statement Half True.
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