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Donald Trump in Dallas gets Hillary Clinton/Syria claim right, other facts wrong

By W. Gardner Selby June 17, 2016

Stumping in Dallas, Donald Trump revisited a few flawed claims and one claim about Hillary Clinton that was mostly right.

Trump said Clinton seeks a 550 percent increase in refugees from Syria settling in the U.S.

That’s Mostly True, PolitiFact concluded this month. Clinton has said that in response to the refugee crisis she would raise Obama's limit of 10,000 to 65,000--550 percent more.

But Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, also has made it clear that the refugees would have to be vetted first 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.

After predicting he’ll save "your Second Amendment," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said in Dallas: "And Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment, remember that. Now," he said, it’s "more sophisticated than that, but the end result will be she will abolish the Second Amendment, just remember that."

That’s False, PolitiFact concluded last month. Gun advocates say Trump’s claim is backed up by Clinton’s openness to a gun buyback program and her disagreement with a Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment. On the other hand, researchers spotted no evidence of Clinton saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly that she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. In contrast, the presumptive Democratic nominee has repeatedly said she wants to protect the right to bear arms while enacting measures to prevent gun violence.

Trump also revisited what he describes as his early opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "You know, I was against the war in Iraq and I was against it from the beginning," he said.

In February, PolitiFact rated False a Trump claim that he’d been "loud and clear" against the war in Iraq. Perhaps Trump felt this way privately, but he made no publicly reported comments in the lead-up to the Iraq War that reflect this sentiment. PolitiFact could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion, and he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. He only started publicly denouncing the war after it started.

In Dallas, Trump predicted he’d be a great president against taxes while Clinton would impose huge increases. "We already have the highest taxes anywhere in the world," Trump went on.

In May, PolitiFact rated False a statement by Trump that that "we’re the highest-taxed nation in the world." A range of metrics don’t bear that out. Data from 2014, the most recent year available from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, shows the United States wasn’t the most highly taxed by the typical metrics and actually places near the bottom or around the middle of the pack among those countries with advanced economies.

Trump reminded the Texas crowd that he fared well in the Republican primaries, adding that in Florida, home state to Marco Rubio, the senator who also sought the nomination, "I won 66 out of 67 counties; that never happened before," Trump said.

Pants on Fire! Going back even just a few decades, there are several instances of candidates winning all 67 counties. For instance, that feat was repeated by both parties in 2000, when Vice President Al Gore won all 67 for the Democrats and Texas Gov. George W. Bush won all 67 for Republicans.

Trump, who spoke at Gilley's South Side Ballroom, was slated Friday to raise money in San Antonio and Houston and to hold an evening rally in The Woodlands near Houston.

Anything else catch your ear?

See Donald Trump’s Truth-O-Meter report card. See Hillary Clinton’s PolitiFact record.

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Donald Trump in Dallas gets Hillary Clinton/Syria claim right, other facts wrong