FactChecking the First 2020 Democratic Debate
Summary
The debate season for the 2020 presidential election kicked off with 10 Democratic candidates taking the stage in Miami and exaggerating or garbling the facts on Iran, wages, Medicare, the opioid crisis and guns.
- Sen. Cory Booker claimed the Iran nuclear deal “pushed back a nuclear breakout 10, 20 years.” The deal pushed back the breakout time from two or three months to one year for at least 10 years.
- Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio said the bottom 60 percent of workers “haven’t seen a raise since 1980.” But two analyses of wage growth for the bottom 50 percent show some increase in wages since then.
- Booker claimed private insurance overhead was 15 percent, while Medicare’s was “only at 2 percent.” But the comparison is disputed, and not apples-to-apples.
- Booker said when Connecticut enacted a permit-to-purchase gun law, “they saw 40 percent drops in gun violence and 15 percent drops in suicides.” Two studies did find an association with such drops in gun violence and suicides, but they didn’t say the decline was caused by that law.
- Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke misleadingly said Purdue Pharma had paid “no consequences … not a single night in jail” for its connection to the opioid crisis. There hasn’t been jail time but the company and executives have agreed to pay hundreds of millions in fines and settlements.
- Booker also said “about 30 percent of LGBTQ kids … do not go to school because of fear,” a statistic backed up by a 2017 survey that found those students missed one day of school or more in the prior month.
The first debate was hosted by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo on June 26, with another 10 candidates set to debate the following night.
Analysis
Iran Nuclear ‘Breakout Time’
Moderator Lester Holt asked all 10 candidates if they would, as president, “sign on to the 2015
