Fact check: A US presidential debate and support for UK pensioners

This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact-checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.

Fact checkers sift through the claims around presidential clash

Over the last week, Full Fact and much of the rest of the world have been looking at what is happening in US politics.

In advance of the first live head-to-head debate between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump, we took a look at the misinformation circulating online.

There was the false claim that California did not assign any delegates to Ms Harris at the Democratic National Convention (actually it assigned 482); the claim that US fact checkers had found she lied 113 times in her convention speech (this was false, the fact check in question analysed only five claims); and claims that Ms Harris is not eligible to be president, based on her parents’ citizenship when she was born — this is not true, Ms Harris was born in California and is eligible to run.

Similarly we have seen many claims and conspiracy theories regarding the attempted assassination of Mr Trump in July. Old images circulated of the former president taken before the shooting and were used to falsely demonstrate he had no injuries.

We have also seen photos edited to claim incorrectly that Mr Trump’s secret service agents were smiling in the aftermath of the attack.

This week we have looked at screenshots purporting to show an article claiming Melania Trump has filed for divorce (the screenshots were not real and were shared as part of an experiment).

Then, following a 90-minute session on Tuesday night described as “contentious” and “fiery”, we looked at several claims from Mr Trump and Ms Harris’s debate.

Ms Harris claimed “Donald Trump left us with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression”, but that was not true. Unemployment in the United States was 6.4% in January 2021 when Mr Trump left office. That is some way below the 24.9% at the height of the depression. It has also been higher than 6.4% since, for example it was 10% in 2009 following the worldwide financial crash.

Mr Trump claimed that “crime here is up and through the roof”, but that is not supported by the data either. FBI data shows reports of violent crime in the US have fallen in the last year, while survey data shows most types of violent and property crime have been declining since the mid-1990s.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift emerged as a champion of critical thinking in the hours after the debate, urging her followers to “do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take”. Full Fact chief executive Chris Morris shared his thoughts on what this intervention means and the challenges presented by generative AI.

It is not quite right to say support for pensioners has been ‘scrapped’

Back in the UK, Full Fact examined a claim from former prime minister Rishi Sunak that the government has “scrapped” the winter fuel payment and “hundreds of pounds of additional cost-of-living support” for pensioners. This isn’t quite right.

It is correct that most pensioners will no longer receive the winter fuel payment from this year, but some are still eligible for it so it is not correct to say it has been “scrapped” entirely.

It is not clear which “additional” payments Mr Sunak had in mind.

There was an additional cost-of-living payment given to pensioners in 2022 and 2023, but these were ‘one-offs’, and it is not clear there was ever a plan to continue them this year.

Pensioners are also still eligible for the Household Support Fund, which was extended by the Conservative government and has been further extended by the Labour government until April 2025.