During a special town hall that aired Oct. 16, former President Donald Trump joined Fox News host Harris Faulkner for a discussion before an all-female audience. The talk aimed to focus on issues of particular interest to women ahead of Election Day, Nov. 5.
With polls showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading among women voters, Trump’s record on reproductive rights issues is under particular scrutiny.
Fox aired the special “The Faulkner Focus” episode a day after recording it in Cumming, Georgia, outside Atlanta, on Oct. 15. That’s the same day Georgia election officials said they saw record-breaking first-day early voting figures with more than 328,000 votes cast.
Fox News was also expected to air an interview with Harris on “Special Report With Bret Baier.”
Trump often distorted the facts as he answered questions about child care, abortion and the economy.
Here are 12 fact-checkable moments.
Reproductive rights
Trump: “I’m the father of IVF.”
When one participant asked Trump about his stance on in vitro fertilization, Trump called himself the “father of IVF.”
There is hyperbole here, of course: The first successful IVF treatment took place in 1978, when a baby named Louise Joy Brown was born in England; Trump had no connection to that.
His public support for IVF largely began during the 2024 campaign amid Democratic criticism that Republicans want to restrict or eliminate the practice.
In February, the conservative Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children, prompting some clinics in the state to pause IVF treatments. After backlash, Alabama lawmakers passed legislation to shield IVF providers from civil or criminal liability and clinics resumed treatment.
In April, Trump released a video on his abortion position in which he said that he supports making it “easier” for families to have babies.
“That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments, like IVF, in every state in America,” Trump said.
Trump has also recently proposed having the government cover IVF costs or requiring insurers to do so. He hasn’t said how he would do this.
Trump: “Every legal scholar, the great ones,” including Democrats and Republicans, wanted abortion to be sent back to the states.
False. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision in June 2022, numerous legal scholars wrote briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold it.
Some legal scholars who favor abortion rights have criticized Roe’s legal underpinnings, saying that different constitutional arguments, based on equal protection, would have provided a stronger case. But legal experts, including some who held this view, said those scholars would not have advocated for overturning Roe on this basis.
Child care
Asked about how he would reduce high child care costs, Trump said his daughter Ivanka Trump urged him to “do tax credits for women, for the child tax credits…Then, I did it.”
Trump in 2016 pledged to “rewrite the tax code to allow working parents to deduct from their income taxes child care expenses for up to four children and elderly dependents.” He didn’t keep that promise.
A 2017 congressional tax bill that passed under Trump increased the per-child credit, but it didn’t significantly overhaul existing child care provisions in the tax code. Families got additional child tax credits, some of which were refundable for households that didn’t earn enough to pay taxes.
The credit for each child younger than 17 doubled from $1,000 to $2,000, plus $500 for nonchild dependents. The credits were partially offset by another provision of Trump’s tax bill — the disappearance of the personal and dependent exemption. The child credit also wasn’t targeted only toward parents who needed to pay for child care.
In 2021, the Biden administration approved the American Rescue Plan Act, which expanded the child tax credit that year to $3,600 per child younger than 6, and $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17.
National security
Trump said it is “true” that the Biden administration views conservative women as domestic terrorists.
An audience member told Trump, “I want to thank you for coming into a room full of women that the current administration would consider domestic terrorists.”
Trump agreed, saying, “That is true, by the way.”
The federal government has no blanket designation of “domestic terrorist” for politically conservative women.
Trump may have been referring to a controversy over federal law enforcement’s reaction to differences of opinion over curriculum being voiced at school board meetings. But we rated False a statement that “parents that go to school board meetings” and question the curriculum are being “flagged by the Department of Justice and the FBI for attending a meeting.
In October 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote a memo directing the FBI and federal prosecutors to hold meetings nationwide on criminal threats against school personnel. But that memo focused on tracking criminal conduct, not parents’ views about school curriculum. Internal FBI guidance showed a “threat tag” was created to track threats against school officials, not to flag parents exclusively for voicing views on curriculum.
The remark could also be referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s labeling of conservative parents’ rights groups, including Moms for Liberty, as “extremist.” The center issued an annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022 that included that designation.
However, the center is a nonprofit group unaffiliated with the federal government, and its decision to label some socially conservative organizations as extremist or hate groups has been criticized both by conservatives and by some liberals.
FEMA and hurricane response
Trump: “When Elon (Musk) had the Starlinks” they “were confiscated by FEMA, by basically the top people, because they didn’t want it to go there.”
Starlink, a satellite internet provider, is a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s commercial spaceflight company, SpaceX. Starlink distributed user terminal devices to help people connect to the internet in hurricane-hit areas after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Social media posts falsely said the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration were “blocking” deliveries of Starlink devices and other supplies to hurricane-affected areas. Others falsely said FEMA was confiscating donations and supplies.
North Carolina Emergency Management told PolitiFact in a statement that the State Emergency Response Team knew of no delayed disaster relief flights. The statement also said the FAA was coordinating with state and local officials to ensure safe flights in congested airspace. The FAA can temporarily restrict flights to keep airspace safe during hurricane response.
FEMA delivers supplies and donations to states; the states and state-designated groups distribute the supplies, including volunteer agencies that specialize in managing donated items.
Trump: The federal government is “offering (hurricane victims) like a little pittance.”
Trump appeared to be referring to FEMA’s Serious Needs Assistance program, which provides $750 that covers essential items such as “food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies.”
But that payment is intended as a quick, emergency payment and storm victims can apply for further aid. The federal government is also offering millions of dollars to victims to help with home repair and temporary housing.
In January 2024, FEMA announced changes to disaster relief to make it easier for victims to get help. One measure, which took effect in March, included giving wider access to an immediate $750 per person impacted by extreme weather, which can include storms, hurricanes, fires and tornadoes.
Energy and the economy
Trump: “When I took over, we were No. 3 and No. 4 in energy in terms of production. When I left, we were No. 1, by far.”
Trump misleads for energy overall, but he has a point on oil.
In 2017, when Trump took office, China ranked No. 1 in the world in total energy production, with the United States second, Russia third and Saudi Arabia fourth. In 2020, his last year in office, the same four countries ranked the same. And the same four countries were in the same order in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. When Trump took office in 2017, U.S. energy production was 82% of China’s. That fell to 79% in 2020.
Trump is more accurate on oil production. In 2017, U.S. production trailed Russia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. vaulted to first in 2018 and has remained in that slot since.
The U.S.’ edge over Russia and China has widened under the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump: “I had interest rates at 2%. They went to 10% (under President Joe Biden).”
This is exaggerated on both ends.
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached a low of 2.65% shortly before Trump left office, but rates had fallen amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic hit in early 2020, mortgage rates were about 3.5%. For Trump’s entire term prepandemic, the average rate was 4.12%, and the peak rate under Trump was 4.94% in November 2018.
Trump has a point that mortgage rates are higher under Biden, because the Federal Reserve has raised rates to stem inflation. But they never went as high as 10%.
The peak rate under Biden was 7.79% in October 2023. It has since dropped to 6.32%.
Immigration
Trump: In Springfield, Ohio, there are “32,000 people coming into a 50,000 community. They are taking over the school.”
Trump’s numbers are inflated, based on statements by city officials.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said in September that the city added 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants in the past four years. Most immigrants in Springfield are Haitian, but not all.
In July, City Manager Bryan Heck cited a higher number of 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians arriving in Springfield over the last four years in a community of just under 60,000. Most of the immigrants who recently settled in Springfield are allowed to temporarily live and work in the country legally.
The number of Haitian children in the Springfield schools has grown, but these children have not displaced other students.
Trump: Vice President Kamala Harris “was made the border czar.”
We’ve rated statements that Harris oversaw U.S. efforts to limit illegal immigration as the “border czar” Mostly False.
In March 2021, Biden assigned Harris to work alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States. These issues include economic insecurity, corruption, human rights and violence. Border security and management is the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.
In June 2021, Harris visited El Paso, Texas, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They outlined their responsibilities to reporters. Harris said she was addressing “the root causes of migration, predominantly out of Central America,” and Mayorkas said, “It is my responsibility as the Secretary of Homeland Security to address the security and management of our border.”
Trump: “I gave you the largest tax cuts in the history of our country.”
When it was passed, Trump’s tax cut was, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of gross domestic product, it ranked seventh. (GDP is the total monetary value of the goods and services a nation produces.)
Trump: “13,099 murderers were released into our country.”
In a letter, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said there were 13,099 noncitizens convicted of homicide who are not in immigration detention. But the data represents people who entered the country in the past 40 years; there is no evidence that all 13,099 people entered under the Biden-Harris administration.
Many people are not in immigration detention because they’re in law enforcement custody serving sentences. Immigration law generally requires the people convicted of aggravated felonies, such as homicide, to be detained once they have served their sentences. But a Supreme Court ruling, not the Biden-Harris administration, said people cannot be held indefinitely in immigration detention. So, people from countries that do not accept deportation flights must be released.
By Matthew Crowley, Louis Jacobson, Samantha Putterman and Amy Sherman, PolitiFact staff writers. PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this report.