Fact checking Nikki Haley’s CNN town hall in Iowa
By CNN Staff
(CNN) — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley participated in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Sunday. Though the former South Carolina governor correctly cited a variety of facts and figures, not everything she said was accurate.
Haley falsely claimed, as she has before, that crime is at an all-time high. While speaking about Covid-19, she falsely claimed that all medications on drugstore shelves are made in China. She also exaggerated the amount of unspent Covid-19 relief money.
Here is a fact check of those claims and several others made by the former US ambassador to the United Nations.
Crime Rate
Haley spoke of her support for gun rights in general and for AR-15 ownership in particular, and of her opposition to red flag laws. She said: “When you’ve got crime at all-time highs, you’ve got illegal immigrants crossing the border, you’ve got mental health crisis as much as it is, the last thing I’m going to do is take away the ability for someone to protect themselves and their family.”
Facts First: Haley’s claim that crime is at “all-time highs” is not even close to true about the United States as a whole. There was far more crime in the US in the early 1990s than there is today; crime has declined steeply over the past three decades, though there have been some intermittent upticks along the way.
We do not yet have national crime data for 2023 or 2022, and even the 2021 data is flawed. But experts say it is clear, based on the figures we do have, that US crime levels are nowhere near what they were in the early 1990s. In 1992, for example, the US violent crime rate was about 758 per 100,000 people. Though there was an uptick in 2020, the violent crime rate remained below 400 per 100,000 people even that year. And there is no sign of a spike between 2020 and the present that would put the country even close to 1990s levels.
In fact, Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant, told CNN during the town hall that there are early signs that the number of murders in 2022 and 2023 declined from previous years.
“The nation did experience a historically large increase in murder in 2020 and another small rise in 2021. That said, the nation’s murder rate in 2021 was nowhere near an all-time high as it was 30% lower than it was in 1991,” Asher said in a message to CNN. “Additionally, murder likely fell nationally in 2022 and preliminary data from big cities is indicative of a possible large decrease in murder occurring nationally in 2023 (albeit still above 2019 levels).”
Haley’s remark at the town hall wasn’t a one-time slip. She made the same false claim about crime supposedly being at an all-time high at a campaign event the day prior.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Roe v. Wade
Talking about her stance on abortion, Haley claimed that the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe V. Wade in 1973 made “abortion anytime, anywhere for any reason” the law of the land.
“Prior to 1973, you had 46 different state laws that dealt with life and dealt with abortion, and the people decided what those were going to be. Roe v. Wade came in and threw out 46 state laws and suddenly said abortion anytime anywhere for any reason, and all Americans had to succumb to that,” Haley said.
Facts First: It’s not true that Roe v. Wade allowed for “abortion anytime.”
Under Roe, abortion was allowed until the fetus was considered viable, which was determined to be around 23-24 weeks of pregnancy. States could ban abortions after that point of viability.
After Roe, the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey Supreme Court decision added that states could even regulate abortions before 23 weeks, as long as their restrictions didn’t create an “undue burden” to a woman’s constitutional right to get an abortion.
It’s possible Haley was referring to part of the Roe decision which said states could decide whether to allow abortions after 23 weeks if necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. Republicans have previously pointed to that exception to support claims that Democrats support abortion any time, until birth, but it does not go so far as to allow “abortion anytime anywhere,” as Haley claimed.
It’s also misleading for Haley to suggest that Roe v. Wade “suddenly” threw out state laws regarding abortion. Prior to Roe, two other court cases, People v. Belous and Doe v. Scott, which reached the Supreme Court in 1971, declared existing state abortion laws unconstitutional.
From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam
Medicine manufacturing
Haley claimed during the coronavirus pandemic that “all” the medicines at local drugstores were made in China.
“When you saw we had Covid, they told you to put on a mask. The masks were made in China. They told you to take a home Covid test. You turned it over, it was made in China. You go down to your local drugstore, all those medicines are made in China,” she said.
Facts First: While it’s unclear whether Haley was referring to Covid-related treatments or medicines more generally, it’s not true either way that they were “all” made in China.
Pfizer in particular notes that Paxlovid, one of the top three antiviral drugs the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists as a treatment for Covid-19, was produced in three main sites, none of which are in China, according to a fact sheet from the pharmaceutical company. That being said, at least one brand of the Covid tests distributed in the US was made in China.
It’s also worth noting the US does rely on China for some drug production. As of August 2019, 13% of the manufacturing facilities supplying the active ingredients in US drugs came from China, according to Janet Woodcock, then director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the US Food and Drug Administration. However, Woodcock noted that at that time, the FDA did not know what percentage of US drug consumption this represents.
Prior to the pandemic at least, only one of the top 100 Medicare prescription drugs by total expenditures sold in the US in 2018 was made in China, according to a report from PharmacyChecker.com, which accredits foreign online pharmacies that sell medicines to customers in the US and worldwide. The report itself noted that “national security vulnerability is less of an issue when it comes to brand name drugs,” which counters Haley’s broader argument that the use and prevalence of China-made products during the pandemic represented a national security risk.
From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam
Social Security
Haley said that political leaders need to start tackling Social Security reform before the entitlement program is not able to fully pay all the benefits owed in a decade or so. She gave a couple of options.
“Instead of cost-of-living increases, we do increases based on inflation,” Haley said.
Facts First: Haley’s statement is misleading. Social Security’s cost of living adjustments are already based on inflation. The annual boosts are intended to help senior citizens and other beneficiaries contend with the annual change in prices.
The formula for determining annual adjustments is specified in the Social Security Act. The adjustments are based on increases in a certain inflation index, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, known as CPI-W.
The adjustment is equal to the percentage increase, if any, in the CPI-W for the average for the third quarter of the current year compared to the average for the third quarter of the last year in which an adjustment went into effect, according to the Social Security Administration.
The annual boost, however, actually hasn’t kept pace with inflation over time. Those who retired before 2000 have seen the purchasing power of their benefits drop by 36%, according to The Senior Citizens League. These folks would need a nearly $517 bump in their monthly benefits just to maintain the same level of buying power as in 2000.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
Climate Change
Haley claimed that India and China “are the problem” when it comes to emissions and the environment.
“The United States is very good when it comes to emissions. If we want to really fix the environment, then let’s start having serious conversations with India and China. They are our polluters. They are the ones causing the problems,” Haley said.
“We need a fair playing field. We’re not the problem. The Chinese and the Indians are the problem,” she continued.
Facts First: This needs context. While it’s true that China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the US comes in second. The US is also the world’s biggest historical polluter and still has larger per capita greenhouse emissions than either China or India.
China is by far the world’s largest emitter of polluting greenhouse gases at nearly 30% of the world’s emissions, but the US is the number two at around 11%, according to 2019 data. India is hovering above 6%, right around the European Union.
While it is true that US emissions are creeping downward, the country has emitted more over the course of history than any other nation. Emissions in developing countries like India are going up as they rely on fossil fuels like coal to power their economy.
And if you look at emissions on a per capita basis, the US leads both China and India. The US emits around 17.6 tons of emissions per person, while China emits about 10.1 tons per person, according to a report from the nonpartisan energy think tank Rhodium Group. India is far lower, at around 2.8 tons per person, according to the World Data Lab.
From CNN’s Ella Nilsen
Covid Relief
Answering a question from a small-business owner about how she would help curb rising costs, Nikki Haley, a GOP presidential candidate, blamed both Democrats and Republicans for passing a $2.2 trillion Covid-19 relief bill with no accountability.
“Let’s start by clawing back the $500 billion of unspent Covid dollars that we know are out there,” she said.
Facts First: Haley’s data is out of date. There is $420 billion in Covid-19 funds left unspent as of April 30, according to federal data.
But more importantly, there is far less money that is unobligated, or not yet legally committed, that Congress could claw back. Only $90.5 billion remains in unobligated and unexpired funds as of January 31, according to the US Government Accountability Office.
House Republican lawmakers have looked into clawing back Covid-19 funds, but the debt ceiling package enacted last week rescinded only about $28 billion of unobligated funds.
From CNN’s Tami Luhby
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