By Hope Yen and Calvin Woodward
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – Facing pivotal November elections, President Donald Trump is misrepresenting the history of African-American voting and exaggerating his influence in boosting income and controlling prescription drug prices.
He laments in campaign speeches on behalf of Republican candidates that Blacks’ support for Democrats had become “habit,” having voted for them “for 100 years,” and insists his administration’s policies are changing that. In fact, most African-Americans were effectively blocked from the right to vote until 1965. Much of the income gains he claims for Blacks and other minorities came during the Obama administration.
On drug costs, Trump says he is “bringing them down.” But few drugmakers have actually lowered prices as a result of his pressure.
And in remarks at the hot core of the debate over his new Supreme Court justice, Trump distorted the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser in a mocking turn on a rally stage before the Senate elevated the judge to the high court on the weekend.
A look at the past week’s claims:
BLACK VOTE
TRUMP, on Black support for Democratic candidates in recent elections: “It’s only habit. It’s habit, because for 100 years, African-Americans have gone with Democrats.” – Kansas rally Saturday.
THE FACTS: No, Black Americans did not primarily vote Democratic for 100 years, or anywhere close to it.
Most African-Americans for much of U.S. history were disenfranchised, then effectively deterred from voting via poll taxes and literacy tests until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting.
African-Americans who could vote before then generally backed Republican candidates until the 1932 election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His New Deal programs of economic relief won their support and helped spur a longer-term shift of Black voting from Republican to Democratic.
The Voting Rights Act eliminated literacy tests, clamped down on poll taxes that the 24th Amendment had banned in federal elections a year earlier and required a number of mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination to get advance federal approval to make changes to their election laws. Before that, only an estimated 23 percent of voting-age blacks were registered nationally, says the Library of Congress, but by 1969 that had jumped to 61 percent.
MEDIAN INCOME
TRUMP: “How does your African-American, how do you vote for somebody else? I’ve done more for them in two years… And their median income is the highest. But not only for African-Americans, for Asian.” – Minnesota rally Thursday.
THE FACTS: He’s wrong about median income now being the highest for African-Americans. He also exaggerates the economic gains he’s accomplished for blacks and Asian-Americans.
The median income last year for an African-American household was $40,258, according to the Census Bureau. That’s below a 2000 peak of $42,348 and also statistically no better than 2016, which was Democratic President Barack Obama’s last year in office.
Many economists view the continued economic growth since the middle of 2009, in Obama’s first term, as the primary explanation for recent hiring and income gains. More important, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening and the administration appears to have done little, if anything, to address this problem specifically.
As to Asian-Americans, the median income for a typical household last year was $81,331. That’s no better than their median income of $83,182 in 2016.
KAVANAUGH
TRUMP, as if recounting the questioning of Christine Blasey Ford at her Senate hearing: `How did you get there?’ `I don’t remember.’ `Where is the place?’ `I don’t remember.’ `How many years ago was it?’ `I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ `What neighborhood was it in?’ “I don’t know.’ `Where’s the house’ `I don’t know.’ Upstairs, downstairs, where was it?’ `I don’t know. But I had one beer, that’s the only thing I remember.’ And a man’s life is in tatters. A man’s life is shattered. … They want to destroy people. These are really evil people.” _ Mississippi rally Tuesday.
THE FACTS: He’s wrong to say Kavanaugh’s accuser could not recall whether the alleged sexual assault happened upstairs or downstairs or any level of detail regarding the likely location. She described in vivid detail being in a locked upstairs bedroom with Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge while others were downstairs at a small house party. Trump also falsely stated that she did not remember how many years ago this happened. She identified the summer of 1982, when she was 15.
It’s true she could not identify the house, or remember how she got there or home, but said it was within a “20-minute drive” between her house and a country club in the Bethesda, Maryland, area.
Researchers say it is common for people who have experienced a trauma to retain a searing memory of the event but not circumstances surrounding it.
DRUG PRICES
TRUMP: “You might have seen last month where I called up some of the drug companies. I said, `Folks, you just raised up the drug prices. You can’t do that.’ And they all reduced them. Do you believe it? That’s when I said, `I’ve a lot of power.’ Pfizer, right? You saw that. Pfizer, Novartis, they raised their drug prices and I’m bringing them down. I said, `What are you doing with raising them?’ `I’m sorry, Mr. President, we’ll reduce them immediately.’ I said, `Man, this is a powerful position.”’ – Minnesota rally Thursday.
THE FACTS: His account is overstated.
His call with Pfizer was at the beginning of July, not last month. It came right after he criticized Pfizer on Twitter for raising prices of about 40 drugs on July 1. Pfizer reversed those increases, meaning prices returned to their June 30 levels, though only until Jan. 1, 2019, at the latest. Novartis was one of several drugmakers that said they wouldn’t raise any prices for the rest of 2018, but they’d already done so on nearly all of their drugs earlier in the year.
Few drugmakers actually lowered prices as a result of Trump’s pressure. A few drugs had price cuts for business reasons.
More broadly, an Associated Press investigation of brand-name prescription drugs found 96 price increases for every price reduction in the first seven months of this year. There were fewer price increases this year from January through July than in comparable prior year periods, but companies still raised prices far more often than they cut them.
AP analyzed 26,176 U.S. list price changes for brand-name prescription drugs from Jan. 1 through July 31 in the years 2015 through 2018, using data supplied by health information analytics firm Elsevier.
IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
TRUMP: “The new platform of the Democrat Party is to abolish ICE — the brave, brave people of ICE. In other words, they want to abolish immigration enforcement entirely.” – Mississippi rally Tuesday.
THE FACTS: While some Democrats in the House and Senate have raised the prospect of eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no top Democrats in the House or Senate have called for such a move. Those Democrats who have expressed openness to eliminating ICE have said they would not abandon border enforcement, which is largely carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Associated Press writers Linda Johnson in Trenton, New Jersey, and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.
