Fact check of third and final presidential debate

Last Wednesday, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump took the stage in the third and final presidential debate in Vegas. Each candidate made hefty claims about their own policies as well as jabs at one another, so as it concluded the begging question at hand was: What is the truth?

Politifact provided some insight into what statements were true and which ones were not.

Claim: Trump: “I believe if my opponent should win this race, which I truly don’t think will happen, we will have a Second Amendment which will be a very, very small replica of what it is right now.”

Factcheck: Although more accurate than previous claims Trump has made that Clinton wants to “abolish the Second Amendment,” this statement still garners further explanation.

Clinton has said and continues to say she supports the right to bear arms, but with stronger gun control. According to her campaign website, Clinton plans to expand background checks to more gun sales, take on the gun lobby by removing the industry’s legal protection for illegal and irresponsible actions and revoking licenses from dealers who break the law and keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals and the severely mentally ill by supporting laws that stop domestic abusers from buying and owning guns.

Claim: Clinton: “We have 33,000 people a year who die from guns.”

Factcheck: Politifact rated this claim mostly true because, although the number is accurate, it leaves out the important fact that two-thirds of these deaths are suicides, not homicides.

Claim: Trump: “The single-biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern borders, just pouring, and destroying their youth and is poisoning the blood of their youth and plenty of other people.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated Trump’s claim that heroin “pours across our southern borders” as true. The vast majority of heroin in the United States comes from Mexico and South America.

Claim: Clinton: “Indeed, he said women should be punished, that there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.”
Factcheck: Politifact found this claim against Trump as half true. Trump did say something to this effect, but his campaign retracted the statement within a matter of hours, and Trump clarified that he meant doctors should be punished for providing abortions, not women who undergo the procedure.

Claim: Trump: “Hillary Clinton wanted the wall. Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated this claim as half true. Clinton did vote in 2006 for 700 miles of fencing along the U.S./Mexico border, but not for the taller, longer concrete wall that Trump vows to build.

Claim: Clinton: “He said as recently as a few weeks ago in Phoenix that every undocumented person would be subject to deportation.”

Factcheck: Politifact deemed this claim to be mostly true. On Aug. 31, Trump said that anyone in the country illegally who wants lawful status has to go back home and apply for re-entry, and that those who came illegally are subject to deportation.
However, Trump also said “then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain,” which suggests he doesn’t intend to deport literally every undocumented person.

Claim: Trump: “I don’t know Putin.”
Factcheck: Politifact deemed this claim to be “full flop,” meaning it is a complete change in the candidate’s previously stated position. In 2013, Trump is on record as saying, “I do have a relationship (with Putin).” In 2014 he said, “I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin” and said the Russian leader had sent him a present. In 2015, he said, “I got to know him very well” in reference to Putin due to their joint appearance on 60 Minutes.

Claim: Clinton: “You encouraged espionage against our people.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated this claim against Trump as half true. Trump said at a press conference in South Florida that he hoped Russia was able to find “the 30,000 emails that are missing.” That was a reference to Clinton’s emails specifically, however, not Americans’ emails more broadly.

Claim: Trump: “Her plan is going to raise taxes and even double your taxes.”
Factcheck: Politifact found this claim to be mostly false. The vast majority of taxpayers would see no change to their tax bill or even tax cuts under Clinton’s economic plan. The richest payers would see increases, but not even the typical richest taxpayer would see their taxes double.

Claim: Clinton: “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated this statement as true. The Director of National Intelligence, which speaks for the country’s 17 federal intelligence agencies, released a joint statement saying the intelligence community at-large is confident that Russia is behind recent hacks into political organizations’ emails.

Claim: Trump: “Just like when you ran the State Department, $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion? You ran the State Department, $6 billion was either stolen. They don’t know. It’s gone, $6 billion.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated this claim as “pants on fire” which is their lowest rating reserved for only “the most ridiculous falsehoods.” In March 2014, a State Department Inspector General alert looked at previous audits and warned that files for over $6 billion worth of contracts from 2008 to 2014 — spanning the entirety of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 — “were incomplete or could not be located at all.”  The paperwork was missing, but the $6 billion itself was not missing or stolen. It had been doled out in contracts.

Claim: Clinton: In the 1970s, Trump was “getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings.” In the 1980s, “he was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses.” In the 1990s, “he insulted a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, called her an eating machine.”
Factcheck: Politifact found these charges to be true.
The Justice Department sued Trump, his father and their company under the Civil Rights Act in 1973. In many instances, the government said, prospective black tenants were blocked from renting in his buildings.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a 1985 casino license disclosure form shows that Trump’s father lent him $14 million between the late 1970s and early 1980s, which was when Trump was launching his real estate career.
Machado, then 19 and Miss Venezuela, was crowned Miss Universe in May 1996, the first year the organization was owned by Trump. Three months into her reign, Machado’s weight became a storyline and Trump called Machedo an “eating machine,” according to various news reports.

Claim: Trump: “She gave us ISIS, because her and Obama created this huge vacuum, and a small group came out of that huge vacuum because when — we should never have been in Iraq, but once we were there, we should have never got out the way they wanted to get out. She gave us ISIS as sure as you are sitting there.”
Factcheck: Politifact deemed this claim to be mostly false.

ISIS’ roots predate Clinton’s tenure at the state department. The terrorist group can be traced back to 2004, when George W. Bush was president.
Experts said, however, that it’s possible that Clinton-backed policies such as voting for the war in Iraq and intervening in Libya may have contributed to the power of ISIS.

Claim: Clinton: “He also went after a disabled reporter, mocked and mimicked him on national television.”

Factcheck: Politifact deemed this statement to be true, citing video evidence showing that Tump did mimic the man’s oddly angled right hand while flailing his arms and shouting in a strange voice.

Claim: Trump: “I will tell you what isn’t fictionalized are her e-mails, where she destroyed 33,000 e-mails criminally, criminally, after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress.”
Factcheck: Politifact rated this claim as half true.

Clinton’s staff received a subpoena for Benghazi-related emails on March 4. An employee managing her server deleted 33,000 of Clinton’s emails three weeks later. However, the FBI found no evidence that the emails were deleted deliberately to avoid the subpoena or other requests. Clinton’s team requested for the emails to be deleted months before the subpoena came.

Claim: Clinton: “(Trump) is the first candidate ever to run for president in the last 40-plus years who has not released his tax returns.”
Factcheck: Politifact found this to be mostly true. Every other major nominee for the past 40 years have released their tax returns, except for Gerald Ford.

Claim: Trump: “Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of these countries. You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off business — off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.”
Factcheck: Politifact found this to be true. Several countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have harsh rules for women and kill members of the LGBT community, have contributed to the Clinton Foundation.

Claim: Clinton: “Once again, Donald is implying that he didn’t support the invasion of Iraq. I said it was a mistake. I’ve said that years ago. He has consistently denied what is a very clear fact.”

Factcheck: Politifact found this to be true, citing Trump responding to the question of whether or not America should go to war with the response of “I guess so” in 2002. He didn’t voice full-throated opposition until almost a year and a half after the invasion.

Claim: Trump: “We take care of illegal immigrants, people that come into the country illegally, better than we take care of our vets.”
Factcheck: Politifact deemed this claim to be false. Veterans are entitled to several more benefits that are not offered to civilians, much less undocumented immigrants, who aren’t eligible for Medicaid, Obamacare and Social Security and are even barred from enrolling in colleges in some

PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. PolitiFact is run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an independent newspaper in Florida states.

“We are an independent, nonpartisan news organization,” reads their website. “We are not beholden to any government, political party or corporate interest.”