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A claim made by Gov. Scott Walker about President Barack Obama was our most-clicked item in May 2015.
False, False, False, Pants on Fire.
May 2015 was kind of a rough month for some of the people we fact checked -- particularly if you consider our High Five, the items that got the most page-views during the month.
The three most-clicked items were rated False. And the fourth-most popular got a Pants on Fire, for a statement we rated as not accurate and making a ridiculous claim.
The fifth item wasn’t a Truth-O-Meter item, but rather an article that examined Gov. Scott Walker’s whereabouts.
So, let’s get at it. Here are the five.
1. Scott Walker: As president, Barack Obama has not gone to the Texas-Mexico border
On a campaign trip to Iowa, Walker was asked about his position on immigration reform. He began his answer by saying: "Number of things. Border security for sure. Unlike this president, I’ve actually gone to the border and been there with the governor of Texas."
Obama certainly hasn’t been a frequent visitor, but as president he did go to the border once, in May 2011 to give a speech on immigration reform.
Our rating: False.
2. Scott Walker: Thomas Jefferson said "that government is best which governs least."
Walker made that claim in a tweet. That sentiment might match closely with Jefferson’s views. But the Thomas Jefferson Foundation lists the quote as one of the many that are mistakenly attributed to Jefferson. The quote likely came from the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, in 1837, the foundation says.
Our rating: False.
3. Ben Carson: "There are more young black males involved in the criminal justice system than there are in higher education."
The Republican presidential candidate made that statement during a speech at a charity fundraising event in Milwaukee. It didn’t hold up because Carson didn’t provide evidence to support it and we couldn’t find any, either.
The latest federal figures we found show 75,000 black males ages 18 to 24 who were in prison in 2013,and in the range of 690,000 to 779,000 who were in college. But we couldn’t find any recent figures for the number of black males ages 18 to 24 arrested, in jail, or on probation or parole at any particular time.
Our rating: False.
National Republican Senatorial Committee: Democrat "Russ Feingold announced his Wisconsin Senate run today from…California."
It didn’t take long for the 2016 rematch between Feingold and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who defeated Feingold in 2010, to produce claims to be fact checked.
The GOP committee made its claim based on the fact that Feingold -- who days earlier announced his candidacy in a video -- had been teaching a course at Stanford University. We found that tweets and other evidence showed Feingold was in Wisconsin at the time of his announcement.
Our rating: Pants on Fire.
Home and away: An accounting of Scott Walker's travels
In this article, we provided a rundown of Walker’s whereabouts -- as best as they could be ascertained with available records -- in 2015. The amount of time Walker has been spending in Wisconsin has become an issue the more he travels to pursue a 2016 presidential bid.
During the first three months of 2015, Walker spent an average of at least 14 nights per month in Wisconsin, either at the governor’s mansion in Madison or at his home in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa.
Through mid-May of 2015, Walker had been in other states or out of the country on at least 59 of the 134 days, or 44 percent.
Our Sources
PolitiFact Wisconsin items as noted
