Night 3 of the Republican National Convention

Summary

Former President Donald Trump’s newly selected running mate, JD Vance, accepted the Republican Party’s vice presidential nomination on the convention’s third night, which featured claims about the economy, immigration and foreign policy.

• Vance wrongly said that workers’ wages “stagnated” for much of his life until they “went through the roof” under Trump. Inflation-adjusted wages had been rising over several presidencies before Trump took office.

• Vance said “Trump was right” to oppose “the disastrous invasion of Iraq.” But there is no record of him opposing the war before it started in 2003 or the congressional resolution authorizing the war in 2002.

• Media personality Kimberly Guilfoyle said that “President Trump handed Biden a booming economy.” But when President Joe Biden took office, the U.S. had just experienced a rare drop in gross domestic product in 2020, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and unemployment remained high.

• Rep. Matt Gaetz falsely said Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed a “border czar.” Harris wasn’t appointed to lead immigration issues. Instead, Biden assigned her to lead a group of actions intended to “address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” 

• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich falsely claimed that Trump wanted to keep Bagram Air Base when U.S. troops were being withdrawn from Afghanistan. Trump had negotiated an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 that called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from all bases.

• North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum misleadingly blamed “Biden’s red tape” for increasing the price of gasoline. The cost of gas is primarily fueled by global supply and demand factors beyond a president’s control, experts say.

• Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told the convention crowd that he “went to prison so you won’t have to.” Navarro was sentenced to prison after a jury convicted him in 2023 on two counts of contempt for refusing to comply with a 2022 subpoena from Congress.

• Vance noted then-Sen. Biden’s support for NAFTA in 1993 and called it “a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.” But economic studies say the trade deal had a relatively small overall impact on jobs.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed that Trump had succeeded as president in “eliminating illegal immigration.” That’s false. The number of border crossings did drop in his first year in office, but they were never eliminated. And they began growing in his second year.

• Abbott claimed that neither Biden nor Harris had visited the southern border before he began busing migrants to other parts of the country. But Harris had gone to El Paso, Texas, almost a year before his busing policy began.

• Rep. Michael Waltz channeled the false Trump talking point that Biden is converting the military to electric tanks. While the military is moving toward the electrification of its vehicle fleets, that does not apply to combat vehicles.

Analysis

Wages Were Rising Before Trump

In his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination, JD Vance falsely claimed that workers’ wages “stagnated” for much of his life until they “went through the roof” under Trump. Inflation-adjusted wages over several presidencies before Trump took office.