https://www.apnews.com/ffc60235c26c470c9...ight-story
Quote:OBAMA: “It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don’t like. I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people.” — rally Friday at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
THE FACTS: Trump may use extraordinary rhetoric to undermine trust in the press, but Obama arguably went farther — using extraordinary actions to block the flow of information to the public.
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OBAMA: “The actions we took during that crisis returned the economy to healthy growth and initiated the longest streak of job creation on record.” — Illinois rally.
THE FACTS: He’s right on jobs, but whether the economy experienced “healthy growth” is a matter of dispute.
As measured by the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy’s output, the U.S. economy expanded at an average annual rate of 2.2 percent from 2010, after the Great Recession ended, through 2016, Obama’s last year in office. That is the weakest growth of any post-recession recovery since World War II.
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OBAMA: “Their sabotage of the Affordable Care Act has already cost more than 3 million Americans their health insurance. And if they’re still in power next fall, you better believe they’re coming at it again. They’ve said so.” -- Illinois rally.
THE FACTS: Obama is cherry-picking survey results, overlooking a recent estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found the number of uninsured Americans basically unchanged under Trump.
He’s also blaming Republicans for all the problems with health insurance, ignoring the fact that premiums started going up sharply under his watch.
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OBAMA: “And by the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high.” — Illinois rally.
THE FACTS: That’s true, though it was a long time coming. According to the Census Bureau, in 2016 the typical household earned $59,039, adjusted for inflation, nearly matching the peak it reached in 1999. Another way of looking at those figures , of course, is that the U.S. middle class essentially went 17 years, Obama’s two terms included, without a raise.
