AP FACT CHECK: Trump on trade, guns, White House morale

Despite grappling with unparalleled staff departures, President Donald Trump painted a rosy picture of a smoothly functioning administration getting things done, pushing along gun restrictions and bringing jobs to the United States. It made for another series of grandiose claims this past week.

Speaking at Cabinet meeting, Trump falsely proclaimed background checks were moving through Congress in response to the Florida school shooting and wrongly insisted that NATO countries were “delinquent” by not paying their fair share in a military alliance with the U.S.

All of that helped cap a week in which he misrepresented his effort to create jobs for American workers as part of an announcement on new trade penalties and deflected blame onto former President Barack Obama for Russian activities in the U.S. election.

A look at the rhetoric:

TRUMP: “Background checks are moving along in Congress, and, I think, moving along pretty well.” — Cabinet meeting Thursday.

THE FACTS: There’s been plenty of talk of gun restrictions, but legislation is far from moving along “pretty well.” Action on background checks is stalled due in part to Trump’s shifting positions. After the school shooting, Trump called for stricter gun laws and hinted at support for a more sweeping background check bill backed by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. But after Trump met with the National Rifle Association, the White House said Trump backs narrower background checks.

Trump’s changing views have left Republicans divided in the Senate, where the party maintains a 51-49 majority. Without a clear path forward, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has shelved the gun debate for now. He had been preparing to push ahead with the narrower measure proposed by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to strengthen the existing background check system. That bill has stalled amid objections from some Republicans who view it as an infringement on gun owners’ rights and Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who say the bill does not go far enough.

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TRUMP, on NATO countries: “Some owe billions and billions of dollars of money. They owe billions and billions from past years. Never paid it, and that’s not fair. They want us to protect, and they want us to be a good partner. And then they’re delinquent on payment or they haven’t made payments. Or they haven’t made payments which are fair.” — Cabinet meeting Thursday.

THE FACTS: Most of that is flat wrong. NATO countries do not owe anything to the alliance. They’re not delinquent on payments. There’s no dispute about “payments.”

The issue is how much NATO countries spend on their own armed forces. Trump wants them to increase their military budgets to relieve some of the burden of collective defense borne by the U.S., which spends more on its armed forces than other NATO members combined. So a case can be made that those countries have not contributed a “fair” share.

Although he takes credit for persuading NATO partners to spend more, the results are not yet clear.

They agreed in 2014, well before he became president, to stop cutting military spending, and have honored that. They also agreed then to a goal of moving “toward” spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024. Most are short of that and the target is not ironclad.

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TRUMP: “You know, I read where, ‘Oh, gee, maybe people don’t want to work for Trump.’ And believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House. They all want a piece of that Oval Office; they want a piece of the West Wing. And not only in terms of it looks great on their resume; it’s just a great place to work. …I have a choice of anybody.” — remarks Tuesday in news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

THE FACTS: No, not compared with previous presidents. In Trump’s first year, the turnover rate among his administration’s upper-level officials was 34 percent. That’s higher than any other president in the past 40 years, according to an analysis by Kathryn Dunn-Tenpas of the Brookings Institution. The turnover rate in the first year for the top staff of Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, for instance, were three times lower than Trump’s, at 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively.?

Trump’s turnover rate for top staff has since gone up from his one-year mark because of recent departures. It’s 43 percent as of Wednesday, according to Brookings.?Among the latest departures: economic adviser Gary Cohn, deputy communications director Josh Raffel and communications director Hope Hicks, the third person to hold that post in the Trump administration.

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TRUMP: “You see it — the other day, Chrysler announced they’re leaving Mexico, they’re coming back into Michigan with a big plant. You haven’t seen that in a long time, folks.” — remarks Thursday announcing steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to U.S.??

THE FACTS: This oft-repeated claim by Trump to suggest he is bringing jobs back to the U.S. is not entirely true. Chrysler did announce it will move production of heavy-duty pickup trucks from Mexico to Michigan, but the plant is not closing in Mexico. That plant will start producing other commercial vehicles for global sales and no change in its workforce is anticipated.

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TRUMP: “From Bush 1 to present, our Country has lost more than 55,000 factories, 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs and accumulated Trade Deficits of more than 12 Trillion Dollars. Last year we had a Trade Deficit of almost 800 Billion Dollars. Bad Policies Leadership. Must WIN again!” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump persistently misrepresents the trade balance. The U.S. trade deficit last year was $566 billion, not almost $800 billion. He cites only the deficit in goods, ignoring the surplus in services.

The U.S. in 2017 bought $810 billion more in foreign goods than other countries bought from the U.S., says the Census Bureau. That deficit in goods was offset by a $244 billion trade surplus in services such as transportation, computer and financial services, royalties and military and government contracts.

As for manufacturing, Trump leaves out what is widely regarded as the main reason for the decline in factory jobs — automation and other efficiencies. Trade is certainly a factor as well.

He’s in the ballpark when referring to how many factory jobs have been lost since January 1989, when George H.W. Bush became president: 5.5 million, according to the Labor Department. What he doesn’t say is that despite the loss of those 5.5 million factory jobs, the U.S. economy overall has added a net total of about 40.6 million jobs in that time.

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TRUMP: “If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S. They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!” — tweet March 3.

THE FACTS: He’s wrong that automakers can’t sell U.S.-made cars in Europe while European cars come into the U.S. “freely.” He’s right about a big imbalance, but exaggerating. The EU applies a 10 percent duty on cars made in the U.S. The U.S. applies a 2.5 percent duty on cars made in Europe. The U.S. Census Bureau shows $13.8 billion in U.S. auto and parts exports last year to four leading markets in Europe while the U.S. imported $51.3 billion in vehicles and from five countries in Europe.

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TRUMP: “Why did the Obama Administration start an investigation into the Trump Campaign (with zero proof of wrongdoing) long before the Election in November? Wanted to discredit so Crooked H would win. Unprecedented. Bigger than Watergate!” — tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: Despite his conspiratorial tone, it’s not unusual for investigations to start without proof. They tend to start with suspicions.

Criminal charges brought in the past six months suggest that by July 2016, when the FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, there were indeed reasons for law enforcement to be concerned.

By that point, for instance, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, had learned that the Russians believed they had “dirt” on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people who claimed a relationship with Russian officials.

No evidence has emerged that Obama used this matter to try to help Clinton in the election. Obama has actually been faulted — by some Democrats and by Trump himself in this same tweet — for not doing enough about the level of Russian interference he was being briefed about.

For example, the FBI did not disclose the Russia-Trump campaign investigation before the election. If it had, that might have played to the advantage of Clinton, while exposing Obama to accusations of manipulation. Trump is accusing him of that anyway.

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TRUMP: “Plus, Obama did NOTHING about Russian meddling.” — same tweet, Monday.

THE FACTS: Not so. Obama appears to have done more about Russian meddling than Trump has done.

Before the election, Obama made public the discovery that emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had been hacked by Russian-linked players and he warned about the risk of compromised balloting in the November election.

After the election, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats suspected of being intelligence officers and seized two Russian country estates, in Maryland and New York, that the State Department said were used for intelligence activities.

The Trump administration has not yet penalized any Russian officials for interfering in the 2016 election. Trump has only fitfully acknowledged Russian meddling. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, recently told lawmakers that he had yet to be given authority to strike at Moscow’s cyber operations as this year’s U.S. midterm elections approach.

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Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber, Josh Boak and Eric Tucker in Washington and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

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Auto trade: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current—press—release/ft900.pdf

Brookings report on Trump staff departures: http://brook.gs/2DY9ghE

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Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

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The Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump story explained

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Adult film star Stormy Daniels is suing President Donald Trump over a so-called “hush agreement”.

Daniels claims she and Mr Trump had an affair starting in 2006, but he denies the allegations.

So why is this story important? And what do you need to know?

Who is Stormy Daniels?

Stormy Daniels was born Stephanie Clifford in Louisiana in 1979.

She moved into the adult film industry first as a performer, before in 2004 branching out into directing and also writing.

Her stage name, Stormy Daniels, comes from Mötley Crüe’s bassist Nikki Sixx’s daughter Storm, and the US whisky Jack Daniels – which southerner Ms Clifford chose after reading an ad calling the drink “a Southern favourite”.

You may also recognise her from such films The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and the music video for Maroon Five’s song Wake Up Call.

Anything else?

She also thought of running for a US Senate seat in Louisiana in 2010 but called off her run after she said her candidacy was not being taken seriously.

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What does she allege?

It all goes back to July 2006 – when the White House was merely a twinkle in Donald Trump’s eye.

Ms Daniels says she met him that month at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, a resort area between California and Nevada.

In a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly, published in full in January, she says Mr Trump invited her to dinner and that she went to meet him in his hotel room.

“He was all sprawled out on the couch, watching television or something,” she said in the interview. “He was wearing pyjama pants.”

Ms Daniels alleges the pair had sex in the hotel room (Mr Trump’s lawyer said he “vehemently denies” the allegation.)

If Ms Daniels’ account is true, this would all have happened just four months after the birth of Mr Trump’s youngest child, Barron.

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So what more has she said?

Ms Daniels said Mr Trump suggested he could bring her on to his TV show The Apprentice.

She also recounts watching a shark documentary with the future president.

Ms Daniels says he’s “terrified” of the animal and – look away, shark fans – he apparently told her “I hope all the sharks die.”

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Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks – and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2013

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• Trump’s ‘hatred of sharks’ boosts charities

She claims the pair kept speaking for years afterwards. Ms Daniels said the last time they spoke was in 2010, around the time she called off her US Senate bid.

However, rumours of the affair started to appear before the November 2016 presidential election.

The Wall Street Journal reported just days before the vote that Ms Daniels had been in discussions with ABC’s “Good Morning America” programme to tell all about the reported affair, before abruptly cutting off talks.

Why is the story in the news now?

It’s been building up for a few months and isn’t going away.

In January, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, made a $130,000 (£94,000) payment to Ms Clifford in October 2016, one month before the election.

The Journal said the money was part of a non-disclosure agreement with Ms Clifford, which said she couldn’t discuss the affair publicly.

“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said.

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Mr Cohen denied the payment. In a statement to the Journal, he called the allegations “outlandish”, and said they’d been “consistently denied by all parties” for years.

But in February he announced he had in fact paid Ms Daniels the money.

In a statement to the New York Times, Mr Cohen said neither the Trump campaign nor the Trump organisation knew anything about the payment, which he had made from his own pocket. He says he wasn’t repaid.

“The payment to Ms Daniels was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

• Porn star ‘free to discuss’ Trump story
• The porn star scandal Trump can’t shake

Shortly after the Journal article, Ms Daniels launched her “Make America Horny Again” tour at a South Carolina strip club on the anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration.

The manager of the club, Jay Levy, said he had booked her the day after the Wall Street Journal article about the $130,000 payment.

A leaflet for the launch poked fun of the alleged affair. “He saw her live,” the flier said. “You can too!”

What’s the latest news?

Ms Daniels on Tuesday said she was suing Mr Trump, claiming he didn’t sign the non-disclosure deal, or “hush agreement”.

Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, tweeted about the lawsuit with a link to the documents filed in a California court.

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The next day, reports surfaced saying President Trump had won a restraining order against Ms Daniels in February.

The order, won in private arbitration proceedings, reportedly stopped her from sharing “confidential information” about their alleged relationship.

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“This case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that, I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday.

Ms Daniels’ lawyer called the White House comments “ludicrous”.

CNN reported on Thursday that President Trump was upset with Ms Sanders for the comments, as it was the first time anyone from the White House had indicated that Mr Trump was in any way involved with Ms Daniels.

What’s been the reaction?

South Carolina congressman Mark Sanford is one of the few Republicans to comment. He told the Washington Post the claims are “deeply troubling”.

“If it was a Democratic president and hush money had been paid in the campaign, would there be a series of hearings going on?” Mr Sanford asked. “I think you could probably point to a fair number of indicators that suggest there would be.”

Democrats Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice, representatives for California and New York respectively, asked the FBI to investigate Mr Cohen’s payment to Ms Daniels.

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The Daniels-Trump debacle has also trickled down to a rather more local level.

In Utah, Republican representative Mike Noel introduced a bill to rename a road to Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway.

But Democrat state senator Jim Dabakis told local press that if the bill makes it to the upper house, he would propose a change to rename an adjoining road the Stormy Daniels Rampway.

What could it mean for President Trump?

The allegations surfaced at a tricky time for White House officials, and don’t appear to be going away.

As well as the ongoing investigation into possible collusion with Russia, more and more of Mr Trump’s staff have left or are under scrutiny.

• The White House revolving door: Who’s gone?

The last thing the White House needs is another scandal to respond to.

It’s also raised the spectre of a former president.

Remember that Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings after lying about his affair with staffer Monica Lewinsky.

Lanny Davis, a lawyer who served as special counsel to President Clinton, on Wednesday accused Republicans of “utter hypocrisy” for the way they’re treating Mr Trump compared with how they treated Mr Clinton.

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