The president falsely accused a senator of backing “open borders” and misrepresented the cost of a building renovation as he swept through Ohio and Indiana on his way toward wrapping up his pre-election blitz.
What Trump Said
— At a campaign rally on Monday in Fort Wayne, Ind.
President Trump is wrong to equate the Democrats’ positions on immigration with open borders. Although they largely oppose his border wall, his calls to limit legal immigration and his family separation policy, Democratic lawmakers support border security measures.
Mr. Trump is even more wrong when he accuses Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, of supporting open borders, as Mr. Donnelly has often sided with Republicans and the White House on immigration.
In February, Mr. Donnelly voted for a hard-line immigration bill supported by the White House that included funding for Mr. Trump’s wall, and he also voted to defund so-called sanctuary cities. (Those legislative efforts failed.)
Mr. Donnelly said in August that progressive calls to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency were “a terrible idea,” and said that “it’s important that we have strong, and safe, and secure borders, and ICE is a part of that.”
In 2016,Mr. Donnelly voted for “Kate’s Law,” which seeks harsher penalties on immigrants who re-enter the United States illegally after being deported. Mr. Trump often vows to secure its passage on the campaign trail.
NumbersUSA, a group that supports restricting immigration, gave Mr. Donnelly a “C” for his positions in recent years — tied with or higher than the grades for 10 Republican senators and all but one Democratic senator.
What Trump Said
— At a campaign rally on Monday in Cleveland
Richard Cordray, the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio, was the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until last year. The bureau has been repeatedly criticized for a pricey renovation of its headquarters since 2014, but Mr. Trump’s cost estimate is overstated. He is also wrong that the government does not own the building, and it is implausible that it houses “the most expensive elevators in the history of the world.”
The Treasury Department announced the location of the consumer bureau’s headquarters in February 2011, before it was in operation, and noted that “major building renovations were needed to make more efficient use of the space and to update the building to meet current energy and environmental standards,” according to a 2015 inspector general report .
While the consumer bureau is indeed leasing the space, the building is owned by a different federal agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
About $145 million was obligated for renovations, though the inspector general reported at the time that the project could potentially cost about $207 million over all. The report said those “costs appear reasonable.” A 2017 construction progress report obtained by The Daily Caller shows that $124 million had been spent at that point, when 80 percent of the construction had been completed.
The bureau moved into the building late last year, and Ken Sweet, a journalist at The Associated Press, reported this year that the bureau’s office costs topped $240 million. But that figure includes rent as well as the renovations, Mr. Sweet said in an email. While “the cost ballooned under Cordray’s watch,” Mr. Sweet said, Mr. Trump’s statement is “exaggerated.”
As for the elevators, Mr. Trump gave a specific estimate at a previous campaign stop in Ohio: $50 million, which would be a substantial part of the total cost of the renovation.
Neither the 2017 progress report nor the 2015 inspector general report mentions elevators, and it is unclear where Mr. Trump got the figure from. But for context, a 1,070-foot glass elevator in China cost $20 million and an elevator set inside an aquarium in Berlin cost $17.4 million, according to Architectural Digest.
Other Claims
Mr. Trump also repeated numerous claims The New York Times has previously fact-checked:
