FACT CHECK: Trump Flew To Texas To Hold A Rally For Ted Cruz – Here Are 3 Checks On Their Claims
President Donald Trump held a rally in Houston, Texas, Monday night in support of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign.
Here are three checks on their claims.
Claim 1 (Cruz): “Beto not only opposes the wall, but he says we have too many border walls and fences already, we need to tear down the border walls we already have.”
Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Cruz’s Democratic challenger in the upcoming midterms, has been outspoken in his opposition to Trump’s border wall and has at times been critical of the current barriers.
In April 2017, O’Rourke tweeted, “We already have a border wall that we don’t need. Don’t need more walls and militarization at a time that the border has never been safer.”
He stated in a January 2017 interview with KFOX14 that “the 600 miles of fencing that we have is bad enough in terms of a poor use of taxpayer resources, a marginal return on safety and ensured – absolutely guaranteed, everybody needs to know this – that more migrants would die trying to come into this country.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Cruz’s office to ask for examples of O’Rourke specifically calling for current barriers to be destroyed, but did not hear back by press time.
Claim 2 (Trump): “The number of Americans working has just reached the highest in the history of our country – all-time high.”
The number of nonfarm payroll employees in the U.S. reached a record high in September, with 149.5 million Americans employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To a certain extent, this is expected – as the U.S. population grows, so do employment levels.
But a strong employment market has contributed to the growth as well.
The labor force participation rate was 62.7 percent in September, which is roughly equivalent to the rates witnessed over the last five years. Labor force participation peaked in 2000 when it reached 67.3 percent from January to April.
Claim 3 (Trump): Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert “is leading by like 60 points.”
Gohmert, who is running in Texas’ 1st congressional district, is leading the race by an estimated 44.4 points and is projected to win the general election with 70.6 percent of the vote, according to an analysis done by FiveThirtyEight.
The congressman has easily won re-election since he began serving in 2005. He faces opposition from Democrat Shirley McKellar, who has run against him in every general election since 2012. In 2016, Gohmert won the district with 73.9 percent of the vote, compared to McKellar’s 24.1 percent.
Texas’ 1st congressional district is the 18th most Republican district in the country, according to the 2017 Cook Partisan Voter Index.
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