Fact-checking at Donald Trump’s Univision Town Hall

Donald Trump’s town hall in Miami for Univision gave the former president a chance to appeal to Latino and Hispanic voters this week, an important group for swing states like Nevada and Arizona.

At the event, the Republican presidential candidate took questions from an audience of undecided Latino voters in Miami, discussing topics including January 6, 2021, the Capitol riots, immigration and abortion.

Trump repeated a series of misleading and false statements throughout the event, including claims that have followed him on the campaign trail. Newsweek has examined a selection.

“Now you have record inflation…”

Trump claimed that the Biden-Harris administration had overseen record levels of inflation. This is not true. While inflation peaked at 9 percent in mid-2022, with the annual rate in 2022 the highest in four decades, inflation rates reached higher peaks in 1980, 1981, 1979, 1975 and 1974 , as shown by World Bank data.

“Interest rates went from 2% to 10% and you can’t get the money you want to buy a house…”

This is the second time Trump has repeated this false claim this week.

During Trump’s presidency, the lowest average interest rates on record for 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages were 2.65 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.

Now they are not at 10 percent. Freddie Mac data, presented by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, they say the average 30-year fixed mortgage in the United States as of October 10, 2024 was 6.32 percent. The 15-year rate was 5.41 percent.

“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.”

A familiar but unsubstantiated claim is that Trump oversaw the strongest economy in US history. While Trump oversaw stock market gains and low unemployment, his records on those metrics are ones that Biden has surpassed.

PolitiFact found that, by several metrics, Trump failed to oversee historic growth in the US economy, lagging behind the GDP of Democratic and Republican predecessors during his tenure.

“(Undocumented migrants are) coming in. Nobody knows who they are, where they’re coming from, and the people who are most against it are Hispanics.”

In response to a question about who would replace deported migrants working “difficult jobs,” Trump said “hundreds of thousands” of “murderers,” “drug dealers” and “terrorists” were entering the country.

It is not clear what data he used to claim Hispanic voters’ particular concern about immigration or a subgroup of criminals within immigrant populations.

Pew’s March 2024 research showed that fewer Hispanic Americans rated the border situation as a crisis or major problem compared to non-Hispanics. They were also less likely than non-Hispanics to say the border situation is leading to more crime.

Pew’s June 2024 survey also showed that Hispanic voters who supported Trump agreed that “opening America to people around the world is essential to who we are as a nation.”

In May 2023, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released data showing that Hispanic Americans were the group most likely to favor increased legal immigration. Sixty-one percent of respondents agreed that a more diverse country was a better country and was more likely to encourage increased legal immigration.

Other results suggest that Hispanic groups’ views on immigration are more in line with the general view public, not in front As reported The Washington Post, a June 2024 YouGov poll found about half of Hispanic respondents rated immigration as a very important issue, in line with the overall survey response.

Hispanic voters also ranked immigration as the most important issue in the election, which is in line with the overall survey results.

Newsweek reached out to a Trump media representative for comment.

“Under Biden and Harris, they allowed 13,099 convicted murderers, people in prison, into our country.”

Newsweek recently denied thiss. While it is correct that 13,099 non-citizens on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement docket have been convicted of murder, the data spans 40 years. The figures also include people in prisons and jails serving criminal sentences.

Trump can’t deny the fake story about eating pets.

Trump had a chance to push back on false and debunked claims that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets. Instead, he suggested he had read reports of people “eating other things, too.” He tried to shift the blame for spreading the rumor, saying: “All I do is report,” adding that the story “had been in the papers and been reported quite widely.”

Trump even said he would go to Springfield and investigate the claim further, saying, “I’ll be there and we’ll take a look at it and I’ll give you a full report when I do.”

As stated during the televised debate between Harris and Trump, there are no credible reports of animals being injured or abused by immigrants.

“As for Springfield, because I know this situation, you have a city of 52,000 people and they’ve added almost 30,000 migrants to the city.”

This is the second time Trump has made this false claim about Springfield, Ohio, this week.

A statement from the city of Springfield, Ohio says that Clark County (the county seat where Springfield is located) has an immigrant population of approximately 12,000-15,000.

“Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” the statement said.

“There were no guns down there (on Jan. 6). We had no guns.”

This is not true.

In March 2022, Texan Guy Reffitt, 49, was convicted (among other charges) of being unlawfully present on Capitol grounds while in possession of a firearm and carrying firearms during a civil disturbance.

In April 2022, Lonnie Coffman, 72, of Falkville, Alabama, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for bringing loaded guns, ammunition and Molotov cocktail ingredients to Washington on January 6, 2021.

In October 2022, Mark Andrew Mazza, 57, of Shelbyville, Indiana, was sentenced to 60 months in prison for carrying two loaded guns onto Capitol grounds and assaulting officers during the riot.

In July 2023, Christopher Alberts, 35, of Pylesville, Maryland, was sentenced to 84 months in prison on nine counts, including possessing a firearm on Capitol grounds.

In January 2024, Jerod Thomas Bargar, 37, of Centralia, Missouri, was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of home confinement for carrying a firearm while in violation of the Capitol.

In March 2024, 39-year-old John Banuelos was indicted on firearms charges, the Associated Press reported, accused of firing a gun into the air during the riot.

In an article by NewsweekNick Suplina and Justin Wagner of Everytown for Gun Safety said they had identified “12 individuals allegedly linked to the events of January 6 who were arrested in Washington, DC, and charged with firearms offenses.”

A report by the U.S. Capitol Police’s intelligence division also found posts on the now-defunct blog thedonald.win prior to Jan. 6, which the report said contained “various comments (that) promote confronting members of Congress and carrying firearms during the protest.”

Other comments on the site included “Bring your guns. It’s now or never” and “Don’t meet. This is do or die. Bring your guns.”

“I had the most secure border…”

This is debatable. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows that in fiscal years 2017 to 2019, total border apprehensions increased from 415,517 to 977,509, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.

The number dropped to 400,651 in 2020, with a sharp decrease in April 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In the last 12 months of the Trump administration, CBP recorded 516,908 encounters. This figure is higher than the figure for the 2015 fiscal year.