Two federal agencies this month took steps that would allow the oil and gas industry to release more methane, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. Critics warned that methane is more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping the Earth’s heat, but some gave wildly divergent figures to describe how much more potent.
CNN’s Jake Tapper examines claims made by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the cost of “Medicare-for-all.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say a “Koch brothers-funded study” shows “Medicare-for-all” would save money. But the study’s author say they are misrepresenting his work.
Q: Did Sen. Bernie Sanders say that Christianity is an insult to Muslims?
A: He didn’t say that. He criticized a statement made by a presidential nominee as Islamophobic.
President Donald Trump said it’s “not true” that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “safer than the people that live in the country,” providing several crime statistics he claimed represented the “toll of illegal immigration.” Sen. Bernie Sanders made the opposite claim, saying: “I understand that the crime rate among undocumented people is actually lower than the general population.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders claims that “the average American worker today, despite the strong economy, is not getting ahead.” Not so. Hourly wages have been rising faster than inflation for years, and that trend has continued under President Donald Trump.
Results of a national survey published in 2017 show that 13 percent of U.S. gun owners who purchased a firearm in the past two years did so without a background check. Sen. Bernie Sanders was wrong when he said recently that the figure was three times as high.
The Republican tax plan was signed into law just last month, and Democrats already have a well-worn, and misleading, talking point about it.
In a televised debate on taxes, Sen. Ted Cruz denied that he ever called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” But in a 2011 interview, Cruz gave the definition of a “Ponzi scheme” and said, “That is exactly how Social Security operates.”
Democrats have used outdated or inflated figures to attack the GOP tax plan, when sticking to the facts would have served them just as well.