CHICAGO — President Joe Biden, in an often fiery speech, addressed a Democratic convention for which, until just a few weeks earlier, he had expected to be the one accepting his party’s nomination.
The audience in the United Center was appreciative, interrupting Biden with chants of "Thank you, Joe."
With his address, Biden outlined his purpose to the party: pass the torch to a new leader. Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, became the party’s nominee after Biden announced in July that he would cede the nomination he had already clinched, following age-related concerns visible in his June 27 debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
Biden focused his address on threats to democracy from extremism, at times raising his voice in anger. "We came together in 2020 to save democracy," he said.
Harris made a surprise trip to the lectern earlier in the evening, speaking briefly and garnering thunderous applause. "When we fight," Harris started to say, before the crowd completed the phrase, "we win."
Shortly after an energetic speech from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton praised Biden. Alluding to Harris’ status as the second woman ever to head a Democratic ticket, Clinton name-checked other pioneering Democratic women, including presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm in the 1970s and vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in the 1980s.
Multiple speakers during the hourslong program criticized Trump-era policies, including the Supreme Court appointments that enabled the overturning of the abortion decision Roe v. Wade, by repeating the slogan, "We’re not going back."
Here are fact-checks of statements by a range of speakers at the convention’s first night.
Abortion
Biden: "And you know, Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide."
Since April, Trump has repeatedly said he believes abortion legislation should be "left up to the states." Trump also told reporters in April that he wouldn’t sign a national ban.
As president, Trump endorsed a 20-week national abortion ban that House Republicans backed. Earlier in this election year, he floated support for 15- or 16-week federal abortion bans, news outlets reported.
Trump hasn’t said whether he supports other ways abortion could be restricted across the country, including using the Comstock Act to ban mailing abortion pills or other equipment used in abortion procedures.
DNC video advertisem*nt: Trump said, "There has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions.
Mostly False.
Trump made this comment during a March 2016 MSNBC town hall, but the ad failed to acknowledge that Trump walked back the comment the same day after facing criticism. He said it was doctors, not women, who should be punished for performing outlawed abortions.
In the years since he made that statement, we found no evidence that Trump has repeated it or that he currently supports penalties for women who get abortions.
President Joe Biden speaks Aug. 19, 2024, at the Demoncratic National Convention in Chicago. (AP)
Health care
Biden: "Instead of paying $400 a month for insulin, seniors with diabetes will pay $35 a month."
Half True.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in 2022, capped out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month for Medicare enrollees starting in 2023.
Drug pricing experts told PolitiFact that most Medicare enrollees likely were not paying $400 a month before these changes, and research supports that. One government estimate found that people with diabetes enrolled in Medicare or private insurance paid an average of $452 a year — not a month. Uninsured users, however, paid more than twice as much on average for the drug, or about $996 annually.
Costs and other factors vary, experts said, so it is possible that some Medicare enrollees might have paid that much in a given month.
Biden: "Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare."
Mostly False for Social Security and Mostly False for Medicare.
In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization.
More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security: "There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting." However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump’s campaign website says that not "a single penny" should be cut from Social Security.
On Medicare, Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the health care program for seniors.
During his presidency, Trump released four successive annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare. However, experts are divided on how much those cuts would have hurt beneficiaries had they been enacted.
Immigration
Biden: "The result of the executive action I took: Border encounters have dropped over 50%. In fact, there are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office."
Mostly True.
Biden’s data needs context. Illegal border crossings in July were lower than in December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office.
But experts caution against attributing changes in immigration to a single policy. The executive action, which limits people’s ability to apply for asylum at the southwest border, took effect in June, so it’s unclear whether the declining trend will continue.
In July, Border Patrol encountered migrants crossing between ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border about 56,408 times, a 52% drop from the approximately 117,900 in May.
From October 2020 to January 2021 — Trump’s last few months in office — Border Patrol encountered immigrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border about 71,200 times, on average. In December, Trump’s last full month in office, there were 71,140 encounters.
Crime rates
Biden: "On (Trump’s) watch the murder rate went up 30%, the biggest increase in history."
Half True.
The number of murders in the U.S. rose by 5,795 from 2019 to 2020, when Trump was president. That’s a jump of about 35%, making it the largest one-year increase since such data began being systematically recorded in the early 1960s.
However, crime data analysts generally attribute most of the reason for the murder spike to a confluence of the coronavirus pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder, not Trump’s actions.
Economy
Biden: The average semiconductor industry salary "will be over $100,000 a year, and you don't need a college degree."
Mostly False.
The average salary in the semiconductor industry is around $170,000, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, and Oxford Economics. This figure includes all jobs within the industry and not only those that don’t require a college degree.
The most a person makes without a four-year degree is about $70,000, according to a 2021 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics.
Biden: During his tenure there has been the "smallest racial wealth gap in 20 years."
Half True.
Biden referred to 2022 Federal Reserve data that showed a modest decrease in the wealth ratio between white and Black Americans. For every $100 the average white family had in wealth, the average Black family had $15.75.
That was the smallest gap in 20 years. However, economists use two measures to assess the racial wealth gap. By a different measure — the dollar amount difference in wealth — the gap widened between white and Black Americans to its largest disparity since 1989.
Biden: "We have 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average tax rate (is)? 8.2%."
False.
Today, the richest Americans pay an effective tax rate of more than 20% on the income the government counts under the current tax code. Biden’s 8% figure compares their tax payments with an amount that includes income that is not currently taxed under law. This makes it a theoretical figure, not something anyone is supposed to pay under the law.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks Aug. 19,2024, at the Democratic National Convention in Chciago. (AP)
Trump and the rule of law
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Trump "fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions."
It’s unclear whether Trump fell asleep during the Manhattan trial that ended with the former president found guilty on all counts. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported that Trump "appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest." But Trump and his team have rebutted the he-was-sleeping claims.
Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a scheme to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t prevent Trump from running for president following his conviction. Convicted felons have run for president in the past.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.: Trump calls for "the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those in the Constitution."
True.
In 2022, Trump said on Truth Social that election fraud could be the basis for the "termination" of rules found in the U.S. Constitution. We rated Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.
"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" Trump wrote.
There is no mechanism for the "termination" of constitutional rules because of undesired election results.
Days later Trump sought to walk back his words, posting again on Truth Social, "The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution," and called it "disinformation and lies."
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio., speaks Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (AP)
Project 2025
U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio: Sen. J.D. Vance has "been busy writing the foreword to the book from the Project 2025 guy."
True.
In June, before Trump selected him as his running mate, Vance, R-Ohio, wrote on X that he was "thrilled to write the foreword" for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ forthcoming book, "Dawn’s Early Light." Marketing materials for the book also feature Vance’s name on the cover as foreword author.
The Heritage Foundation led Project 2025 and Roberts, who has promoted the work, has often been described as the project’s leader and architect. The Trump-Vance campaign has sought to distance itself from Project 2025, and Vance has said Roberts speaks neither for him nor the campaign.
IVF
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.: "Want to have a child, but need IVF? Too bad. That’s shut down, too (under Trump)."
False.
In February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children, prompting some clinics in the state to pause in vitro fertilization treatments. After backlash, Alabama lawmakers passed legislation to shield IVF providers from civil or criminal liability and clinics resumed treatment.
Some Republicans in Congress say they believe life begins at conception, and that fertilized eggs should be granted full rights and legal protections. But Trump hasn't embraced that position.
On April 8, Trump released a video on his abortion position in which he said that abortion legislation should be left to the states and that he supports making it "easier" for families to have babies, not harder. "That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments, like IVF, in every state in America," Trump said. "I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby."
The Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform, written by appointees of the RNC and the Trump campaign, supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. (Trump doesn’t include this on his core promises list.) If established by legislation, fetal personhood would provide legal rights to embryos and fetuses and could curtail the practice of IVF, experts say.
COVID-19 pandemic
U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.: "While schools closed, and dead bodies filled morgues, Donald Trump downplayed the virus. He told us to inject bleach into our bodies."
Mostly False.
At a 2020 White House press briefing, Trump asked William Bryan, a Department of Homeland Security undersecretary, to study whether ultraviolet light could be effective "inside the body" to treat COVID-19 or whether disinfectants could combat the virus "by injection inside."
After Bryan said his lab did not study disinfectant injection, Trump clarified that using disinfectants "would not be through injection." Trump later told reporters he was being "sarcastic" when referring to injections.
Garcia’s statement contains an element of truth; Trump did suggest studying these possibilities. However, Trump never instructed Americans to inject disinfectants to combat COVID-19.
PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero and Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this story.
Our convention fact-checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew.
