Inspection: Walz Makes Unsubstantiated Assertions Regarding Trump's Stances on Abortion and Economic Issues
Here's a fact check of the two assertions. The Harris-Walz team remained silent on the matter.
Walz's Inaccurate Abortion Statement
During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Walz discussed Minnesota's abortion law. He then shifted the topic to Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. He declared: "Donald Trump is advocating for a nationwide abortion ban."
Facts Straight Up: Walz's claim is unfounded. Trump is not advocating for a nationwide abortion ban. Trump has stated since spring that he wants abortion policies to be determined by individual states, not the federal government for the whole country. Trump also announced last week that he would veto any federal abortion ban that Congress passed.
Trump expressed on social media last week: "EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!)"
As a 2016 presidential candidate, Trump supported a federal abortion ban at 20 weeks of pregnancy (with exceptions for rape, incest, and when the mother's life was at risk). He reiterated this stance as president. However, he is not supporting a federal ban in his current campaign.
Trump hinted in March that he might endorse a federal ban at 15 weeks. Instead, he announced in April that he wanted abortion policies left to the states. He has maintained this position since. And he has repeated since April that he would not sign a federal ban; he reiterated this during last month's presidential debate.
It's fair game when Walz mentions that Trump refused to commit during last month's debate to vetoing a federal ban. (Trump argued that "I won't have to," implying such a ban would never be passed by Congress.) And since predictions about the future can't be validated, we do not evaluate when Walz states Trump "will" implement a nationwide ban. (Walz has repeatedly alluded to Project 2025, a conservative think tank initiative, where many former Trump administration officials were involved, though Trump himself was not. The project has advocated for the enforcement of an ancient law banning the mailing of abortion medication and devices, which some critics warn could effectively ban abortion without new legislation.)
But Walz goes beyond discussing past events or predicting the future, making a claim about what Trump is allegedly advocating for at this moment. And that claim is inaccurate.
Walz's team shared the clip of the inaccurate claim on his social media platforms on Sunday, repeating the claim in the captions.
Walz's Distorted Economic Statement
Walz asserted in the Sunday interview that residents of Ohio, a state he visited Saturday, "understand when (Trump) left office, we had more people unemployed, proportionally, than during the Great Depression."
Facts First: This is false. The unemployment rate was 6.4% when Trump left office in January 2021, down from a pandemic-era peak of 14.8% in April 2020. Conversely, the unemployment rate was above 20% for years during the Great Depression, which lasted from roughly 1929 to 1939, and was above 10% for almost the entire 1930s.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a similar but more constrained inaccurate statement during her debate with Trump in September, saying that "Donald Trump left us with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression." Even with the significant "since" qualifier, that wasn't true; the unemployment rate was higher than 6.4% as recently as 2014.
Walz's team's social media post, featuring the inaccurate abortion claim, continues to circulate, contributing to the politicized conversation surrounding reproductive rights. The ongoing debate in politics often involves interpretations and misinterpretations of politicians' stances on various issues.
Despite Walz's assertion that Trump is advocating for a nationwide abortion ban, which has been proven unfounded, the discussion around abortion policies remains a heated topic in American politics. The issue has long been a point of contention, with proponents arguing for individual state rights and opponents advocating for federal legislation to protect reproductive rights.
