Fact-checking Trump’s rally with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, but not Ron DeSantis

As he rallied with Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott in a final pre-midterm push in Miami, former President Donald Trump reiterated misleading claims about drop boxes, mail ballots and his economic record. He also called Rubio’s opponent, U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a "radical left maniac" and channeled his own expected announcement that he will run to regain the presidency in 2024.

"In order to make our country successful, safe and glorious I will probably have to do it again. But stay tuned," Trump said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for re-election against Democrat Charlie Crist, was notably absent from the Rubio-Scott-Trump rally. DeSantis was holding his own, concurrent event in Sarasota. DeSantis in a recent debate ducked a question about whether he will also run for president in 2024.

On Nov. 5, at a rally for Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump made headlines by bestowing a new nickname on DeSantis — Ron DeSanctimonious. But the former president didn’t repeat the nickname in Miami.

We fact-checked six of Trump’s false and misleading statements.

This is Pants on Fire.

Trump falsely said before the 2020 election that a rigged election would be the only way Democrats would win. A conspiracy to rig an election would require thousands of people conspiring across multiple jurisdictions to commit felonies. There’s no evidence it happened.

After Trump lost, Attorney General Bill Barr told Trump that he did not agree with calling the election "stolen" and that Trump’s statements were "bull----." 

Republican state officials in Nevada, Georgia and Arizona said the election was secure. Dozens of judges, including GOP appointees, rejected Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. 

Drop boxes aren’t "fake." They are a legitimate way for voters to submit mail or absentee ballots to bypass the post office.

States set their own laws about whether they allow local election officials to establish drop boxes. They are commonly used in states where generally all voting is by mail, including in Republican-led Utah. Oregon has used drop boxes for more than 20 years. In Washington state in 2020, about 72% of voters submitted their ballot via a drop box.

The Dinesh D’Souza documentary "2,000 Mules" makes the false argument that drop boxes were used for widespread fraud in 2020.

Elections and law enforcement officials in battleground states have said that they have not received evidence to prove the allegations in the "2,000 Mules" movie that suggests widespread cheating via ballot drop boxes. Barr, attorney general under Trump, also publicly rejected the movie’s premise. We could find only two cases of individuals convicted related to violating rules about ballot drop boxes in Arizona. 

This is misleading. President Joe Biden has approved $80 billion for the IRS to enhance enforcement and operations. But the agency is not doubling in size nor is it newly arming its agents. Although Trump mentioned 88,000 agents, most Republican claims have mentioned 87,000, a figure from a year-old Treasury Department assessment of how many full-time equivalent positions could be funded with the money. Any additions will come as an expected 50,000 people are on track to retire in the next five to six years. And the number from the 2021 plan is not final.

The IRS does have some armed agents, but they are a fraction of the staff. A Criminal Investigation division that has been around for more than a century and its special agents are federal law enforcement officers and carry weapons. There were 2,046 IRS special agents in 2021, a number that has been consistent over recent decades, according to a 2017 report. Those agents target crimes involving money laundering, cybercrime, narcotics and more.

This is misleading. Several demonstrations occurred near the University of California, Berkeley, a week apart. One concerned Trump's executive order barring travel from seven majority Muslim countries on Jan. 28, 2017.

Another involved a planned visit from conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Feb. 1, 2017. That protest began peaceful then became violent. The university blamed "150 masked agitators" for the unrest, CNN reported. 

At a congressional forum about Trump's executive order Feb. 2, 2017, she referred to a group of "young people at Berkeley protesting this unconstitutional order." It is unclear what protest she referenced, but Demings' campaign said she wasn't referring to the violence that broke out Feb. 1, 2017. 

"As we encourage our young people to get involved — I thought it was a beautiful sight," Demings said Feb. 2, 2017. "How can we have a more organized effort so that they can be a major tool in moving our agenda forward." 

This is False. 

Economists offer multiple data points that undermine this assertion. Although unemployment was near historical lows under Trump, growth in gross domestic product was well below what previous presidents achieved, and other metrics such as wages and business investment ranged from decent to mediocre.

This is False.

We found that in inflation-adjusted dollars, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of gross domestic product, it ranks seventh.

PolitiFact senior correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this article.

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