Live: Fact-checking Trump VP JD Vance’s 2024 RNC speech in Milwaukee

PolitiFact live fact-checked the third night of the 2024 Republican National Convention, featuring a speech from former President Donald Trump’s newly-announced running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio.

Vance, once a fierce critic of Trump, won his Senate seat in 2022 with the Republican presidential nominee's backing. He would be one of the youngest vice presidents in U.S. history. Here’s a look at Vance’s past comments and how he’s fared on PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter.

This is exaggerated; while wages were stagnant for much of Vance’s life, there was no sharp divide after Trump’s election when wages skyrocketed.

A key metric for inflation-adjusted worker pay — median usual weekly inflation adjusted earnings for full-time wage and salary workers — shows that this figure stagnated from 1984, when Vance was born, until the mid-2010s.

Then, after about 2014, when Democrat Barack Obama was president and Vance was in his early 30s, they started rising, by about 4% for the final three years of his term.

From the roughly three years between Trump’s inauguration to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, this figure also rose about 4%. (Pandemic-era data points are unreliable because while wages seemed to spike, it was because lower-wage workers were more likely to be laid off, raising the median wage of those still employed.)

After the pandemic’s economic impact settled down around the start of 2022, this statistic has grown by about 2% in two and a half years under President Joe Biden. 

False.

The strongest evidence in favor of this assertion is the unemployment rate. During Trump’s presidency, the unemployment rate fell to levels untouched in five decades. But his successor, Biden, matched or exceeded those levels.

The annual increases in gross domestic product — the sum of a country’s economic activity — were broadly similar under Trump to what they were during the final six years under his predecessor, Obama. And GDP growth under Trump was well below that of previous presidents.

Wage growth also didn’t set records under Trump. Adjusted for inflation, wages began rising during the Obama years and kept increasing under Trump. But these were modest compared with the 2% a year increase seen in the 1960s. 

Another metric — the growth rate in personal consumption per person, adjusted for inflation — wasn’t higher under Trump than previous presidents. For many families, this statistic serves an economic activity bottom line, determining how much they can spend on food, clothing, housing, health care and travel. 

In Trump’s three years in office through January 2020, real consumption per person grew by 2% a year. Of the 30 nonoverlapping three-year periods from 1929 to the end of his presidency, Trump’s periods ranked in the bottom third.

Donald Trump Jr. criticized left-wing activists during his remarks, saying they even "want to put you in jail for making a meme." We rated a similar claim Mostly False. 

While Trump Jr. did not elaborate on a specific case, a case involving social media influencer Douglass Mackey comes up a lot under this theme. Mackey was convicted in March 2023 of participating in a conspiracy to deprive people of their constitutional right to vote.

Mackey shared online memes before the 2016 presidential election that encouraged Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s supporters to "vote" by text message or social media, which are not legal ways to cast a vote. In October 2023, Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison. 

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said "Joe Biden advised against the mission that killed Osama bin Laden."

This is largely accurate. It’s difficult to know for sure what Biden told former President Barack Obama in advance of the May 2011 raid to kill bin Laden, because their conversations were largely private. However, Biden has made conflicting statements about what he told Obama.

In 2012, Biden said he told Obama "don’t go," after Obama asked senior officials whether they should go ahead with the raid.  Biden said he wanted Obama to take additional steps to confirm bin Laden was at the compound. Other Obama-era officials confirm that Biden was skeptical of the mission. 

In 2015, Biden said that he later told Obama privately, "I thought he should go, but to follow his own instincts."

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said, "During last month's debate, (Biden) claimed no service members have died during his administration." This is accurate; here’s some context.

In the June 27 presidential debate, Biden said, "I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did." We rated Biden’s claim False.

Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bomber attack amid the Biden administration’s U.S. evacuation. The service members’ families read their names aloud at the convention, holding photos. 

Three soldiers died in a January drone strike in Jordan.

A video of Trump called on Republicans to protect the vote "because these people want to cheat and they do cheat."

That echoes his longstanding, ridiculous statements about the 2020 election.

Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits that sought to challenge the 2020 election. State election officials, including Georgia republicans, and Trump administration officials said the results were legitimate. 

We previously rated Trump’s statement that "facts have now come out to show conclusively" that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t legitimate as Pants on Fire. Although there are anecdotal examples of voter fraud, they were not enough to change the outcome of the election — and some people charged with fraud said they had voted for Trump or were Republicans. There is small-scale voter fraud in every federal election cycle.

Elections are administered by thousands of local jurisdictions, making the idea of "rigging" a national election absurd. 

Florida Rep. Michael Waltz asked the audience, "You didn’t see any spy balloons under President Trump, did you?" He was referring to the Feb. 4, 2023, incident in which the U.S. Air Force shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast after it had crossed above part of the U.S. 

During a Feb. 4, 2023, press briefing following the incident, a senior defense official told reporters that People's Republic of China government surveillance balloons had "transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration." But retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck said the U.S. had failed to detect them at the time. 

Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said Biden is "focused on building electric tanks." That’s inaccurate. 

A 2022 U.S. Army climate strategy document outlined a strategy to transition to "fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050." Tactical vehicles carry troops or fuel; they are different from combat vehicles such as tanks, which the strategy document does not mention.

Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett told PolitiFact in 2023 that the Army is focusing strategy on tactical wheeled vehicles, not tanks. 

Former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle said, "President Trump handed Biden an economy and a strong nation. All Joe had to do was leave it alone and take a nap." Her characterization of the economy Biden inherited is exaggerated.

The coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020. The worst economic effects eased within a few months, but as the virus remained a serious public health threat through January 2021, when Biden took office, it still had a significant drag on the economy.

By Biden’s inauguration, the unemployment rate had halved its early pandemic peak of 14.8%, but it was still higher than the 3.5% it was before the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of employed Americans had risen by 9% since its low point in April 2020, but it remained down 6% from its pre-pandemic high.

By early 2022, about a year into Biden’s term, many key economic statistics had returned to roughly their prepandemic levels. Inflation would soon hit 40-year highs, partly due to Biden’s policies but largely due to supply chain problems. 

Retired Staff Sergeant David Bellavia, co-founder of Vets for Freedom, said that under Biden and Harris’ watch, "military recruitment has plunged and confidence in the armed forces has reached a 20 year low."

Both of these statements are accurate. The 2024 active-duty force is the smallest since 1940 and the U.S. Army missed its recruitment goals in both 2022 and 2023. The reasons for the changes are complex and not all are related to the Biden administration.

Experts say recruitment issues are because of young people’s concern about the military’s physical and psychological impacts; competition from the nonmilitary labor market; and lingering effects on education from the COVID-19 pandemic.  

A 2023 Gallup poll found that at 60%, confidence in the military was the lowest since 1997. Declining trust is a theme across many American institutions. Out of all the institutions Gallup polled about, military confidence was the second highest, behind only small business. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum described President Joe Biden's electric vehicle policies as "Biden's EV mandates." This is False. The Biden administration has set a goal — not a mandate — to have electric vehicles comprise half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.

Later in his remarks, Burgum sought to contrast Biden’s electric vehicle policies with what Trump would do if reelected. "He will let all of you keep driving your gas powered cars," Burgum said. 

The Biden administration has introduced new regulations on gas-powered cars but those policies do not ban gas-powered cars. They can continue to be sold, even after 2030.

Former White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said the Trump administration is responsible for "ending the ISIS caliphate," the entity in the Middle East being sought by the Islamic State, a terrorist movement. This is partially accurate.

Experts told PolitiFact that in 2020, Trump’s last year in office, ISIS was significantly weaker but not gone. They also said Trump largely built on President Barack Obama's strategy to fight the group. 

"Trump more fully resourced the strategy and deserves a fair share of the credit for its ultimate success — but he did not invent it," Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, told PolitiFact in 2020. "As for ISIS, it no longer has significant territorial holdings, and its top leader has been killed. It is weaker than when Trump came to office, organizationally and ideologically and territorially. Trump again deserves some credit. But again, that was mostly due to the implementation of a strategy that he inherited."  

Toward the end of Trump’s term, ISIS continued to operate as an insurgency in Iraq and Syria, where it conducted at least 600 attacks from January to May 2020, said Will Todman, an associate fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Since Trump left office in 2021,the group or its affiliates have continued to claim responsibility for various attacks since then, notably an attack in Russia in May 2024 that killed more than 140 people. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said that Biden "halted permits for clean U.S. natural gas export facilities."

This needs context. In January, Biden paused federal approval of new U.S. liquefied natural gas, or LNG, projects, over fears that large increases in natural gas exports could contribute to planet-warming emissions, which Biden has pledged to cut. On July 1, a Trump-appointed federal judge reversed Biden’s freeze after several Republican-led states challenged the plan.

But Biden’s decision didn’t stop the nation’s ability to export natural gas; it paused only the government’s consideration of new projects. The U.S. has seven operational LNG terminals and at least five that are expected to come online in coming years, The Associated Press reported. Biden’s pause on permits doesn’t affect those projects, the AP said, but it could delay more than a dozen others that are in planning stages.

Under Biden, the U.S. has become the world’s top exporter of liquified natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Trump’s former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, said "your favorite Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, created your favorite committee, the Jan. 6 Committee, which demanded that I violate executive privilege."

This needs context. Navarro was sentenced to prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from a House select committee investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021. 

A federal judge in 2023 ruled that Navarro failed to prove his claim that Trump asserted executive privilege that would have legally kept Navarro from complying with the subpoena.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts in March denied Navarro’s request that he not start serving his prison sentence pending appeal. The Supreme Court has granted former presidents some rights of executive privilege, but within limits. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas and to see the border crisis that they created." 

This is False. Both Harris and Biden have visited the border. 

In June 2021, Harris visited the border in El Paso, Texas, with Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Biden has visited the U.S. southern border twice. Once in January 2023 where he met with Abbott in El Paso, Texas, and a second time in Brownsville, Texas, in February. Trump went to the border that same day and the two candidates held dueling border speeches. 

Tom Homan, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director during Trump’s administration, said Trump "created the most secure border in our history" and under Trump, "we cut illegal immigration by 90%, the lowest level in 45 years."

That’s misleading. Illegal immigration during Trump’s administration was higher than it was during both of former President Barack Obama’s terms. 

Illegal immigration between ports of entry at the U.S. southern border dropped in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, compared with previous years. But illegal immigration began to rise after that. It dropped again when the COVID-19 pandemic started and immigration decreased drastically worldwide as governments enacted policies that limited people’s movement.

In the months before Trump left office, as some pandemic travel restrictions eased, illegal immigration was rising again. 

It’s difficult to compare pre-COVID-19 data with data since, because of changes in data reporting. But, taking into account challenges in data comparisons, a PolitiFact review found an increase of 300% in illegal immigration from Trump’s first full month in office, February 2017, to his last full month, December 2020. 

One way to get close to a 90% decrease in illegal immigration is by comparing data from May 2019, the month during the administration that had the highest apprehensions, with April 2020, the month with the lowest enforcement actions in calendar year 2020. But choosing those data points would be cherry-picking.

Former Amb. Callista Gingrich said, "Biden’s FBI has even stated that practicing Catholics present an elevated risk of domestic terrorism, simply because of their faith." This is missing context.

Republicans have pointed to a memo leaked in 2023 from an FBI office in Richmond as evidence that the Biden administration is persecuting Catholics for their faith. The FBI withdrew the memo, which warned of possible threats from "radical traditionalist" Catholics, from its systems shortly after it was leaked.

The Justice Department’s inspector general investigated the memo leak and found that although there was "no evidence of malicious intent," the FBI’s Richmond office "incorrectly conflated" activists’ religious beliefs with the likelihood that they would engage in domestic terrorism. The inspector general’s report said it "did not find evidence that anyone ordered or directed" FBI agents to investigate Catholics because of their religion.

Peter Navarro, who formerly served as Trump’s White House trade adviser, said Democrats will "come for … parents who are just standing up for the kids at school board meetings." This is inaccurate.

In a 2021 memo, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to address criminal threats against school officials. His memo noted that "spirited debate about policy matters" by parents is protected by the Constitution. 

Navarro was released from prison the same day he spoke at the convention, after serving four months for contempt of Congress. 

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Biden adopted "failed" policies, whereas Trump orchestrated "an orderly end to the Afghanistan war, with no American killed in nearly two years."

This needs more information. Trump reached a deal Feb. 29, 2020, with the Taliban to end the Afghan war within 18 months, which includes seven months of theBiden administration. However, three U.S. service members were wounded in combat and four died in noncombat-related deaths during Trump’s administration after that deal was made, according to Defense Department data. 

On Feb. 9, 2020, two U.S. service members died in Nangarhar Province. They were the last military service members to be killed in combat in Afghanistan during Trump’s presidency. No additional service members were killed in action in Afghanistan until after Biden took office. On Aug. 26, 2021, during the Biden administration’s U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, suicide bombers attacked Kabul’s airport, killing 13 U.S. service members.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said Vice President Kamala Harris "was appointed the border czar."

That’s Mostly False. In March 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris to work with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the root causes motivating people to migrate to the United States.

Republicans began calling Harris the "border czar" soon after that. But Harris repeatedly clarified that her role was not managing the border.

Harris and Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas highlighted the differences in their roles on immigration in June 2021 when they visited the border in El Paso, Texas. In comments to reporters, Harris said she was addressing "the root causes of migration, predominantly out of Central America." Mayorkas, meanwhile, said, "It is my responsibility as the Secretary of Homeland Security to address the security and management of our border."

Trump didn’t start a new armed conflict, but escalated use of force in other countries

Richard Grenell, the former acting director of U.S. National Intelligence, said that "under President Trump" there were "no new wars."

This needs context. While president, Trump did not enter the U.S. into a new, sustained armed conflict with another country, or seek new congressional authorization to use military force. He criticized American involvement in Middle East conflicts and took steps to withdraw troops from Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Trump used military force in other countries under the broad use-of-force authorization granted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For example, his administration ordered airstrikes and drone attacks, supplemented allied militaries with U.S. troops, deployed special operations forces in the Middle East and beyond, and ordered the killing of Iran’s Gen. Qassim Soleimani.

Trump increased commitments and resources in Iraq and Syria to fight the militant Islamic State group, which included sending additional service members.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said, "Under Trump we prospered. We were richer." Using one key measure, inflation-adjusted per capita disposable personal income, he’s wrong.

This measure hit a high during Trump’s administration just before the coronavirus pandemic, at $48,014. When the pandemic recovery began in January 2022, under Biden, the amount was nearly identical. But by May 2024, it had risen to $50,491. That’s 5.2% higher now than it was during Trump’s best prepandemic month, after accounting for inflation.

Using another measure, median household income, the results are a little murkier but still don’t hand Trump a clear win.

The high of $78,250 came in 2019, when Trump was president, but began falling in 2020, his final year in office, and continued to fall under Biden in 2021 and 2022. Data for 2023 is not yet available. Still, 2022 median household income under Biden was higher than it was in either of Trump’s first two years, 2017 and 2018.

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Ranjan Jindal, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Researcher Caryn Baird and Audience Engagement Producer Ellen Hine contributed to this story.