Fact-checking night 3 of the Republican National Convention

CNN’s Facts First team is fact checking the convention and will update this page throughout the night.

Newt Gingrich on the war in Afghanistan under Trump

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich claimed that “President Trump orchestrated an orderly end to the Afghanistan war with no American killed in nearly two years.”

Facts first: Both of these claims are false.

Although Trump oversaw a deal with the Taliban aimed at the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the war did not end under his presidency. The last US troops left Afghanistan in August 2021 under the Biden administration.

Moreover, there is no period of “nearly two years” under Trump’s presidency where no American service member was killed. During his four years in office, there were 45 US service member hostile deaths, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System. The longest stretch without combat deaths was at the end of his presidency, from March 2020 until he left office in January 2021 – less than a year.

From CNN’s Jennifer Hansler

Former Trump intel chief misleadingly says ‘Taliban is back’

Richard Grenell, who served as the acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020, said Wednesday night that under President Joe Biden “the Taliban is back.”

“[A]fter four years of Joe Biden, wars are back, the Taliban is back and members of ISIS have slipped through America’s broken southern border,” Grenell said.

Facts first: The claim that the “Taliban is back” is misleading, as it insinuates the Taliban ever left.

While it’s true that the Taliban returned to power after the United States’ 2021 withdrawal, the Taliban remained present in Afghanistan throughout former President Donald Trump’s time in office. The US, under the Trump administration, and the Taliban signed a historic agreement in 2020 that set into motion the US’ withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Officials within the Trump administration also met with Taliban representatives “repeatedly” in Doha for nearly a year, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a 2019 report.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Rep. Ronny Jackson’s false claim of ‘record-high inflation’

Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas claimed in his Republican National Convention speech on Wednesday that there has been “record-high inflation” under the Biden administration.

Facts First: This is false. The record for US inflation, set in 1920, is 23.7%; the Biden-era peak was 9.1% in June 2022. Jackson could fairly say there was a four-decade high under Biden – that June 2022 figure was the highest since late 1981 – but there was nothing close to a new record.

In addition, Jackson didn’t mention that inflation has fallen sharply since the Biden-era peak two years ago. The current inflation rate, for June 2024, is 3%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC chairman’s false claim about Russia’s nuclear missiles near Cuba

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley claimed in his opening speech on Wednesday evening that Russia has “parked a nuclear missile capable boat” in Cuba.

“Where are we today? Russia has invaded Ukraine,” he said. “They’ve parked a nuclear missile capable boat 90 miles off our shore in Havana, Cuba.”

Facts first: This claim about the status of a Russian boat is false. While Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June along with other Russian Navy vessels, all of the vessels – including the submarine – have since left.

A group of four Russian Navy vessels arrived in Cuba on June 12 as part of what Pentagon and State Department officials stressed is a routine activity and noted that Cuba has hosted Russian ships every year between 2013 and 2020. A Pentagon spokesperson, Maj. Charlie Dietz, said in June that “given Russia’s long history of Cuban port calls, these are considered routine naval visits, especially in the context of increased US support to Ukraine and NATO exercises.”

The nuclear-powered submarine, the Kazan, was the first of the vessels to leave Havana on June 17.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

RNC video falsely claims there was peace in the Middle East under Trump

A video played early in the Republican National Convention proceedings on Wednesday night claimed that the “strength” of President Donald Trump kept “the Middle East at peace.” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley had similarly claimed in his convention speech on Monday that the Middle East was “at peace” four years ago under Trump.

Facts First:The claim that there was peace in the Middle East under Trump is false. Whatever the merits of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to negotiate, in which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan followed), there was still lots of unresolved armed conflict around the Middle East when Trump left office in early 2021.

The list notably included the civil war in Yemen; the civil war in Syria; and the conflicts between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, between Israel and Hezbollah on its border with Lebanon, between Israel and Syria, and what former State Department official Aaron David Miller called “the war between the wars between Israel and Iran on air, land and sea.” Also, the US, its allies and civilians continued to be attacked in an unstable Iraq.

“It’s a highly inaccurate statement,” Miller, who worked on Mideast peace negotiations while in government and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said last fall, when Trump himself made a similar claim about having achieved peace in the Middle East.

Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC think tank, also called that claim “false” when Trump made it. She said in a November email: “The Abraham Accords did not achieve peace in the Middle East. In fact, violence escalated in Israel-Palestine in the aftermath of the Accords (using any metric you can think of – death tolls, settlement violence, etc).”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC video cites right-wing think tank without mentioning it was doing so

A video played at the beginning of Republican National Convention proceedings on Wednesday evening attacked President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy – and featured a narrator saying, “The Defense News reports today that the US military is in decline and threats from China are formidable.”

Facts First: This claim is misleading. Defense News, an independent publication covering national security, did not itself assert that the US military is in decline. Rather, the publication reported that the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank had made that assertion.

A Defense News article in October 2022 was headlined, “US military in decline, threats from China ‘formidable,’ report says.” The article explained that these assertions came from “a new report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that each year analyzes the strength of the armed forces and the threats to America.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Despite some claiming that politics under President Biden led to the Taliban's return, it's important to note that the Taliban remained present in Afghanistan throughout former President Trump's time in office.
The rhetoric surrounding politics often oversimplifies complex issues; for instance, there was never a period of "nearly two years" under Trump's presidency with no American service member deaths in Afghanistan.