FACT CHECK: 3 Claims From Trump’s Rally In Florida

David Sivak | Fact Check Editor

President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Estero, Florida, Wednesday night ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Here are three checks on his claims.

Claim 1: “Thirty-three percent of the people in this country believe the fake news is, in fact – and I hate to say this – in fact, the enemy of the people.”

Trump may have been referring to an August poll done by Ipsos that found that 29 percent of Americans – or nearly a third, as some news outlets reported – consider the press to be the “enemy of the people.”

Quinnipiac has also been tracking the question in recent months. In a September survey of 1,038 voters, it asked, “Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?”

Twenty-one percent of voters chose “enemy of the people,” including 47 percent of Republicans, 18 percent of independents and 3 percent of Democrats.

The polling institute has asked the question on four other occasions in 2018, with 21 to 26 percent of voters choosing “enemy of the people.”

Trump often uses the expression when speaking about the media.

Claim 2: Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum “wants to abolish ICE.”

In response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the Southwest border, Gillum, the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, joined a growing list of Democrats calling for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The agency is primarily responsible for immigration enforcement within the interior of the country, as opposed to Customs and Border Protection, which enforces immigration laws at the border.


“I support a comprehensive immigration overhaul that includes abolishment of ICE in its current form to be replaced with a more compassionate and focused agency that actually keeps us safer. #AbolishICE,” he tweeted in July.

Gillum wants the Department of Justice to take over the responsibilities of ICE.

Claim 3: “Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant children are made automatic citizens every year because of” birthright citizenship.

The U.S. grants automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, including the children of those in the country illegally. (There is an exception for the children of foreign diplomats.)

Pew Research Center estimates that 275,000 children were born to illegal immigrants in 2014, down from a peak of 370,000 in 2006. The Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for lower levels of immigration, puts the number at 297,000 births to illegal immigrants.

There are 4.5 million U.S. citizens under the age of 18 who have a deportable or inadmissible parent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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David Sivak

Fact Check Editor
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