True, false and misleading statements from Trump and Palin’s speeches in Denver

Seth Bodine

July 2, 2016

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave speeches at the Western Conservative Summit Friday, July 1 and made many statements based on facts. The Collegian looked back through some of the statements to verify them and organized them into three categories: true, false and misleading.

Sarah Palin

1.) “We are a nation so generous in terms of humanitarianism, we take in six times the amount of migrants than all of Latin America combined,” Palin said.

Conclusion: False

This statement is most likely based on an article released by the Washington Observer, which includes a graph with numbers attributed to the International Migration Report in 2013. The Collegian found that according to the International Migration Report in 2013, all of North America combined had six times more migrants than Latin America. However, Bermuda, Canada, and Greenland are considered to be a part of North America.

Sarah Palin spoke at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver Friday. Photo by Natalie Dyer. — Sarah Palin spoke at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver Friday. (Natalie Dyer / *Collegian*)

According to the report, Latin America had 9 million migrants in 2013. The United States had 47 million, 5.2 times the amount of Latin America.

Even in the 2015 edition of the International Migration Report, the numbers still did not add up. The numbers for the populations in each region have remained roughly the same.

2.) “Trump has been covered in the spotlight for decades, for years and years… the press knows that,” Palin said. “Trump was never called a racist until he decided to run against the Democrats.”

Conclusion: False

The Collegian was not able to verify this claim, and found multiple media accusations of racism before June 2015, including an article from Huffington Post that reported he was once sued by the Justice Department for not renting to Black or African-American people.

3.) “Right now our nation is not really winning,” Palin said. “(We are) $20 trillion in debt with no end in sight.”

Conclusion: Mostly True

According to the United States Treasury, the U.S. sits in $19.3 trillion of debt as of May 2016.

Donald Trump

4.) “One of the things that I am most proud of, is that in the history of the Republican Party, with 17 people running, I had the most votes of anybody that’s ever run for primaries,” Trump said. “I won 37 states.”

Conclusion: Misleading

According to an article in the Washington Post, Trump got the most GOP votes in history. However, the article states that there were also more votes against him.

5.) “We currently have 28,000 soldiers on the line (in South Korea) between them and a madman (North Korea),” Trump said.

Conclusion: True

According to a Politifact article published in Jan. 2016, there were roughly 28,500 military personnel in South Korea.

Collegian News Editor Seth Bodine can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @sbodine120.

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