Fact-checking Lara Trump’s ‘Breakfast Club’ interview

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump and wife of Eric Trump, made a series of misleading claims in a major television interview. The Breakfast Club this week

Lara has been involved in her father-in-law’s political career since the 2016 election. The former president endorsed her as co-chair of the Republican National Committee in February 2024 and she was elected the following month.

Having interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris last week, Charlamagne tha God and company Breakfast club hosts DJ Envy and Jess Hillarious sat down Monday with Lara, who ended up making several uninformed and dubious points on January 6, Ukraine and the economy. Newsweek A Republican National Committee media representative has been contacted by email for comment.

Died on January 6

When he refuted claims about the severity of the actions on January 6, Lara said that only one person had died on the day the Capitol was attacked.

“…The only person who died was a woman who was actually there very much supporting Donald Trump that day,” he said.

Lara is referring to Ashli ​​Babbitt, the 35-year-old military veteran who was shot by a law enforcement officer as he entered the speaker’s lobby inside the Capitol.

However, Babbit was not the only person who died on January 6th.

Brian Sicknick, a 42-year-old Iraq War veteran and Capitol Police officer, was injured while physically engaging with protesters and collapsed on his way back to his division office. The Washington, D.C., medical examiner said Sicknick, who suffered two strokes, died of natural causes.

Julian Khater, then 34, of New Jersey was sentenced in 2023 to more than six years in prison for using pepper spray to assault officers, including Sicknick. Khater’s friend and co-defendant George Tanios, 41, was sentenced in 2023 to time already served after spending nearly six months in prison before an appeals court ordered his release, according to the Associated Press reported.

Kevin Greeson, 55, of Alabama, fell to the sidewalk during the riot and died of natural causes of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, according to the medical examiner. Benjamin Phillips, 50, of Pennsylvania, also died of natural causes of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Roseanne Boyland, 34, of Georgia, died of acute amphetamine poisoning. His death was ruled an accident by the Washington, DC, chief medical examiner.

Four police officers also committed suicide after the insurrection: Metropolitan Police Department officers Gunther Hashida, Kyle DeFreytag, Jeffrey Smith, and United States Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood.

Liebengood, 51, died three days after the riots. An official cause of death was not announced, but according to his widow, the officer was sleep-deprived in the days following January 6. He took his own life at home after a work shift.

Smith, 35, was struck by a metal pole thrown by rioters that hit his helmet and face shield. His wife Erin said The Washington Post last February that her husband “wasn’t the same” in the days after the riots.

Smith was granted a short medical leave but was told to return to work despite his wife later saying he was in considerable physical and emotional pain. He took his own life on January 15, 2021.

Hashida, 43, and DeFreytag, 26, both died in July 2021.

He denies that Biden drilled more oil

While Lara was talking about Trump’s plans to increase drilling in the US, Charlamagne tha God said that “Biden has drilled more than Trump.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” Lara replied.

In January 2024, US oil production was reported to have reached its highest volume on record, more than 13.2 million barrels per day in October, official figures showed, surpassing the point most high under the presidency of Donald Trump, 13 million barrels per day in November 2019.

Analysis by The Washington Post, based on data from the Bureau of Land Management also showed that during his first three years in office, Biden oversaw the approval of 178 more drilling permits, compared to Trump.

The real estate story of Trump and the Central Park Five

DJ Envy asked Lara what she thought of the perception that her father-in-law is racist, mentioning Trump’s 1973 housing demand and his comments about the Central Park Five.

Lara responded that “there was never any evidence of anything” in the 1973 housing lawsuit case when the Justice Department sued Trump Management for allegedly discriminating against blacks applying to be tenants of its properties The company was run by Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, and Donald took over at the time.

The lawsuit was settled, allowing the parties to end the dispute without admitting fault. However, Lara’s claim that “there was never any evidence” of discrimination is her judgment, not a matter of fact. The FBI has released materials from its investigations conducted between 1972 and 1974.

Lara then made a confusing statement about the Central Park Five. In 1989, five black teenagers were wrongly accused and convicted of the rape and assault of 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili while jogging in New York’s Central Park. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise said they were coerced into giving false confessions by a prosecution led by Linda Fairstein, head of the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s sex crimes unit. before being convicted of the crimes they committed. don’t compromise

The five, now in their 50s, were exonerated in 2002 when rapist and serial killer Matias Reyes confessed to attacking Meili. The five then sued New York City, but did not receive a settlement until 2014.

Despite his exoneration, Donald Trump has continued to argue his guilt.

“There were so many people. You had a Democratic governor, a Democratic prosecutor who prosecuted these guys and they admitted it…” Lara said.

This may mean that there were Democratic politicians involved in the conviction and prosecution of the Central Park Five, such as former Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo, which is accurate, or further the claim that the Central Park Five admitted to the their positions .

As PolitiFact reports, the five soon admitted to participating in an attack, but retracted their confessions, and none confessed to raping a woman in Central Park, and their convictions were overturned when the culprit proved guilty.

The Central Park Five filed a defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump this week, prompted by Trump’s recent remarks during the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris when he falsely claimed the men were responsible for the crime and that the victim of the incident had died.

Hoaxes about Ukraine and immigration

Lara was later asked about how Republicans had killed the bipartisan border bill at Trump’s request earlier this year.

In February, the Republican-led House killed a bill that would have increased the detention capacity of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and earmarked $20 billion for immigration enforcement. It has been argued that Trump was influential in convincing House Republicans to oppose the bill. Critics say it was a deliberate move to derail immigration victories that Democrats could claim ahead of the 2024 election.

In response, he claimed the bill had also provided “$60 billion for Ukraine” and would have allowed “1.8 million illegal immigrants into our country a year.” The first point misses the context and the second is misleading.

While the bill would have included $60.84 billion in spending on Ukraine, $23.2 billion would have gone to restocking weapons and ammunition systems for the U.S. military, and $13.8 billion to purchase of arms to the US, money that would have ended up in the hands of domestic arms manufacturers.

“This agreement will also help us invest in our own defense industrial base, supporting American jobs across the country and helping us produce weapons and equipment that the United States can send to Ukraine, again , to help them continue to fight back against Russian aggression,” a senior White House official said in February 2024.

The legislation also states that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “will activate the border emergency authority if, for a period of seven consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more foreign nationals found each day … or on any one calendar day, there are a combined total of 8,500 or more foreigners.”

If a hypothetical 5,000 migrants were found per day over a 365-day period, that would equate to approximately 1.825 million migrants, according to Lara Trump’s claim.

However, this estimate has been dismissed by those involved in sponsoring the project. Republican Senator Sen. James Lankford, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told Fox and Friends, “We need to be able to have something that mandatorily deports everybody instead of releasing everybody.

“That’s what it does. Some people think it’s somehow like counting 5,000 every day or releasing them. That’s absurd.”

“Emergency authority is not designed to let 5,000 people in, it’s designed to close the border and turn 5,000 away,” Lankford wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“The Emergency Border Authority only lasts 3 years to force this admin to close the border and give time for the next POTUS to hire more agents and more officers.

“After three years, the emergency authority expires because we should have regained full control of our border by then.”

Powers in the bill would have meant that if 5,000 or more people were encountered every day on average for seven days, the government could take swift action to stop people from entering the country.

It would allow the president and the Homeland Security secretary to “temporarily bar people from seeking asylum, with limited exceptions, when the Southwest border is overwhelmed,” the White House said.

The proposal would also change asylum rules, which would not only require the government to process at least 1,400 asylum applications at ports of entry when emergency authority is activated, but also speed up the process of asylum from years to months in many cases.