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PolitiFact’s coverage of the 2016 Democratic National Convention

By Adam Thorp August 2, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the first female candidate of a major American political party and the Democrats who supported her provided ample opportunities for fact-checkers. PolitiFact reported nearly 50 fact-checks and other stories from Philadelphia. Here are summaries and links to all of our coverage of the Democratic National Convention.

Day 4

Fact-checking Hillary Clinton's acceptance of the Democratic nomination.

On the final day of the Democratic National Convention, we fact-checked Hillary Clinton on her foreign policy accomplishments, the state of the economy and Donald Trump.

The backstory of the Muslim soldier’s dad who said Donald Trump ‘sacrificed nothing’

Khizr Khan, the father of a captain in the U.S. army who was killed by a suicide bomber, condemned Donald Trump for his rhetoric and proposed policies towards Muslims-Americans like himself and his son.

Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech, annotated.

We looked at Clinton’s historic acceptance speech, line by line.

Day 3

Fact-checking the third night of the Democratic National Convention.

Speeches by Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg and Barack Obama were crammed into the third night of the Democratic National Convention. We fact-checked all of them when they touted their own accomplishments and attacked the Republican ticket.

Day 2

Fact-checking Bill Clinton and the second night of the Democratic National Convention.

Bill Clinton headlined, and we looked into his account of his wife’s accomplishments. We also fact-checked a series of criticisms of the Republican nominee’s stance on women.

Bill Clinton’s DNC speech, annotated. We went through Bill Clinton’s speech to provide some context. It turns out that the last ten years have provided quite a few opportunities to check claims about Hillary Clinton’s back-story.

Day 1

Fact-checking the first night of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. The Democratic convention opened with a series of appeals for party unity. We fact-checked Elizabeth Warren on Trump, Bernie Sanders on inequality and Michelle Obama on slaves and the White House.

Michelle Obama correct that the White House was built by slaves

In laying out the arc of American history that led to her husband’s presidency and Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, Michelle Obama noted that she wakes up "every morning in a house that was built by slaves." We looked into the slaves who worked to build the White House. Some of our readers objected to our conclusions; you can find their responses here.

Other coverage

Live fact-checking the DNC

A live blog collected our staff’s coverage of Philadelphia via Twitter.

Hillary Clinton’s top 10 campaign promises

We asked experts to look at ten of Hillary Clinton’s campaign promises.

PolitiFact Sheet: Hillary Clinton email controversy

Keep track of the complications behind HIllary Clinton’s private email server with the fact-sheet.

Bernie Sanders on the Truth-O-Meter

Sanders managed to navigate his rapid ascent in American politics without receiving a single Pants on Fire! rating—and we’ve checked him more than a 100 times. We looked back at his record and highlighted some of our fact-checks of his statements.

7 things Clinton might mention in her acceptance speech

In advance of Clinton’s speech, we highlighted some issues we thought she was likely to address, and some Clinton fact-checks related to each of those areas. Not every fact we listed turned up in her speech, references to the seven subject areas we picked out certainly did.

All 227 Hillary Clinton fact-checks

Also in the lead-up to Clinton’s speech, we reviewed the number of times Clinton registered on the Truth-O-Meter. She had been fact-checked 227 times at that point, starting in 2008; the flurry of post-speech fact-checks increased her total to 235.

Tim Kaine on the Truth-O-Meter

As Kaine prepared to take the stage, we looked back at his PolitiFact file. We found that three-quarters of the statements we checked were True, Mostly True or Half True. His file goes back to his time as the governor of Virginia. More recently, we rated many of his strong expressions of support for Clinton and Obama.

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PolitiFact’s coverage of the 2016 Democratic National Convention