DETROIT, Mich — In a fiery speech perhaps meant to push back on calls for him to exit the race, President Biden touched on issues from the economy to the border during his rally in Detroit Friday.
But just how true were some of those claims? Let's VERIFY.
THE SOURCES
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security
- Reporting from our colleagues at ABC News
WHAT WE FOUND
First, let's dig into what he had to say about Michigan specifically in terms of how many jobs he says he's added here.
In his speech, Biden claimed that 390,000 had been added in Michigan during his administration.
We rate this claim as:
From the month he took office up into the preliminary jobs report from last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed an employment number growth of just under 400,000 jobs in our state.
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But when we broaden it out, Biden also spoke to job numbers around the country.
"Since I became president, we've created nearly 16 million new jobs nationwide," Biden said.
We rate this claim as:
It is true that, since the January that Biden took office, over 15 million new jobs have been added to the economy. But the context here is the big drop-off that happened in the year before he took office due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has led many to dispute that a lot of those jobs under Biden may have been 'rebound' jobs that disappeared when the pandemic began wreaking havoc, and came back as the pandemic backed off.
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When it came to the border, the president made reference to executive action he took early last month after Congress was unable to agree on their own deal.
Biden claimed that, since he took executive action, border encounters had since gone down by over 50%.
We rate this claim as:
In a Monday release, the acting Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) commissioner stated that seven-day average of apprehensions at the southern border had fallen by more than 50% between the enactment of the order and the end of June.
That same release noted that the number of encounters at the southern border dropped more than 50% in the last six weeks.
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The President also criticized statements made by former President Donald Trump, including where he claimed that the former president said there would be a "bloodbath" if he were to lose the election.
We rate this claim as:
Trump did say that at a campaign rally in Ohio earlier this year. However, the context of this statement has been wildly disputed.
Where Biden made this comment amidst references to January 6th and the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential power, Trump's comments came embedded within a monologue of statements and policies involving the auto industry. Trump has asserted that that was said in the context of a potential catastrophe for the auto industry should he lose.
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