The highlights from Donald Trump and Joe Biden's clash in the final Presidential debate. Video / AP
US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden sparred in their final presidential debate, hoping to sway undecided voters in the November 3 election.
Here's a look at how their statements during the debate stack up with the facts:
TRUMP: "All he does is talk about shutdowns. But forget about him. His Democrat governors Cuomo in New York, you look at what's going on in California, you look at Pennsylvania, North Carolina. Democrats - Democrats all. They're shut down so tight, and they're dying."
BIDEN: "Look at the states that are having such a spike in the coronavirus. They're the red states. They're the states in the Midwest or the states in the Upper Midwest. That's where the spike is occurring significantly."
THE FACTS: Neither of them is right. Coronavirus isn't a red-state problem or a blue-state problem. It's a public health problem that affects human beings, no matter where they live or what their politics are.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden on the debate stage in Nashville. Photo / AP
Some Republican-led states that were quick to reopen saw a surge of virus cases in the summer and are still struggling to get their transmission rates down. Florida's test positivity rate is about 12 per cent, indicating widespread transmission. South Dakota is approaching 35 per cent.
Democratic-led states like New York that were hit hard in the initial wave closed down and got their virus transmission rates down to very low levels. But they're now seeing rebounds in certain communities, prompting them to target renewed restrictions.
Nevada and Pennsylvania have Democratic governors and high transmission rates of 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively, based on a 14-day trend.
TRUMP: Wind turbines' fumes "kill all the birds" and give off more "fumes" than natural gas.
FACTS: Not so. The US Department of Energy says "wind turbines do not release emissions that can pollute the air or water (with rare exceptions), and they do not require water for cooling".
The US Fish and Wildlife Service says: "The most comprehensive and statistically sound estimates show that bird deaths from turbine collisions are between 140,000 and 500,000 birds per year."
It also says that 599 million birds are killed a year colliding with buildings, 6.6 million birds by hitting communication towers and 214 million birds from hitting cars and other vehicles.
TRUMP: The Paris accord meant "we were going to have to spend trillions of dollars ... They did a great disservice. They were going to take away our business."
THE FACTS: The Paris accord, an international agreement that aims to halt the rise in global temperatures, is based on voluntary emission reductions. No nation was forced to do anything.
TRUMP: Speaking about children who were separated from parents at the US-Mexico border: "They are so well taken care of, they're in facilities that are so clean."
THE FACTS: That is false.
At the height of the separations in 2018, Border Patrol facilities were cramped well beyond capacity with migrants who were kept in squalid conditions, according to watchdog reports and the lawyers responsible for a federal settlement that governs how children are cared for in immigration custody.
Migrants in a US border detention facility in June 2018.
Long-term facilities for adults and children were at capacity, meaning the administration held people in the small border stations for much longer than the 72 hours normally allowed by law.
The stations are hardly meant for long-term care. Children were not provided hot meals, families slept on the floor on top of Mylar blankets. Flu and sickness ran rampant, and hundreds of small children were kept together without adequate care.
TRUMP: On immigrants who are released from custody in the US to wait out their cases being allowed to stay: "They say they come back, less than 1 per cent of the people come back. We have to send ... Border Patrol out to find them."
THE FACTS: That's false. There are far fewer no-shows for immigration hearings among those who are released pending their cases. According to Justice Department Statistics, most come back for their hearings.
BIDEN: "He says about the Poor Boys, last time we were on a stage here, said - I told them to stand down and stand ready. Come on. This guy has a dog whistle as big as a fog horn."
THE FACTS: That is not exactly what Trump said and that is not the name of the neo-fascist group.
During the last debate, on September 29, Trump was asked if he would condemn white supremacist and militia groups that have shown up at some protests in the US. He said, "Give me a name" and Biden chimed in by saying, "Proud Boys", a reference to the far-right extremist group that has shown up at protests in the Pacific Northwest.
"Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," Trump said. He did not tell them to "stand ready", though it's debatable whether there is a material difference.
BIDEN: "Not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under Obamacare, they did not lose their insurance, unless they chose they wanted to go to something else."
THE FACTS: He's wrong about Obamacare.
Then-President Barack Obama promised if you liked your health insurance, you could keep it under his Affordable Care Act, but that's not what happened for some.
When Obamacare took effect in 2014, several million people lost individual health insurance plans that no longer met minimum standards established by the law. A backlash forced the White House to offer a work-around, but the political damage was done.
Health insurance is such a complicated area that almost any action has the potential for unintended consequences.
TRUMP: On his taxes: "They keep talking about $750, which I think is a filing fee. Tens of millions of dollars [in income taxes] I prepaid."
On his China bank account: "I was a businessman in 2013 and I closed the account in 2015."
THE FACTS: Trump is not being honest about his taxes.
Reporting by the New York Times, which obtained his tax records, contradicts his claims.
The IRS does not charge taxpayers a filing fee, though tax preparation services do. The US$750 that Trump paid in 2016 and 2017 was to the federal government, not a tax preparation service.
It's not clear what Trump is talking about with regard to prepaying his taxes, but what matters is what he ultimately owed the government.
Americans often have income tax payments deducted from their paychecks. The Times reported that Trump, starting in 2010, claimed and received an income tax refund that totalled $US72.9m, which was at the core of an ongoing audit by the IRS. The Times said a ruling against Trump could cost him $US100m or more.
Nor did Trump close his Chinese bank account, according to Alan Garten, a lawyer for Trump's company. He told the Times that the account remains open, though the company's office in China has been inactive since 2015.
TRUMP: "Joe got $3.5 [million] from Russia. And it came through Putin because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow, and it was the mayor of Moscow's wife. And you got $3.5. Your family got $3.5m. Someday you're going to have to explain why."
THE FACTS: There is no evidence of this. Trump is falsely characterising a recent report by Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who investigated Biden's son, Hunter, and his business dealings in Ukraine.
The report did not allege that Joe Biden got US$3.5m or that Russia President Vladimir Putin had anything to do with such a payment. Nor does the report allege that Hunter Biden pocketed the money.
The report said the sum went instead to an investment firm he co-founded. Hunter Biden's lawyer has told reporters that his client had no interest in and was not a founder of the firm.
TRUMP: On the toll of Covid-19 in the US: "So as you know 2.2 million people, modelled out, were expected to die."
THE FACTS: This was his first line in the debate, and it is false. The US death toll from the pandemic was not expected to be that high.
Such an extreme projection was merely a baseline if nothing at all were done to fight the pandemic. Doing nothing was never an option and public-health authorities did not expect more than 2 million deaths.
A giant face mask decorates a house in San Francisco on October 22. Photo / AP
Trump often cites the number to put the reality of more than 220,000 deaths in a better light and to attempt to take credit for reducing projected mortality.
At an April 1 briefing, when Trump and his officials discussed an actual projection of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, the President held out hope of keeping deaths under 100,000. "I think we're doing better than that."
He has repeatedly moved the goal posts to make the massive mortality and infection numbers look better.
TRUMP: "We're rounding the turn. We're rounding the corner. It's going away."
THE FACTS: No, the coronavirus isn't going away. It's coming back. New cases are on the rise towards their summer peak. Deaths have also been increasing.
According to data through October 21 from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the US rose over the past two weeks from more than 42,300 on October 7 to nearly 60,000 on October 21.
According to data through October 21 from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths in the US rose over the past two weeks from 695 on October 7 to 757 on October 21.
- Associated Press writers Cal Woodward, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Seth Borenstein, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker, Josh Boak, Stephen Braun, Michael Balsamo, Hope Yen, Amanda Seitz and David Klepper contributed to this report
