Fact Check: Trump Fires Off Misleading Promos on Day Before Election

Former President Donald Trump unleashed a series of misleading campaign promotions littered with falsehoods and disinformation as part of the final effort to pump up his bid for the presidency.
Early Monday, the day before Election Day, Trump began posting stylized videos via his Truth Social network that were filled with untruthful statements on immigration, energy and his legal woes.
The posts mark the start of Trump’s penultimate day of campaigning, with a rally scheduled in Raleigh, North Carolina, followed by events in Reading and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His day will conclude with a late-night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Newsweek assessed the media push by the Trump campaign team.
A promotional video pinned to the top of Trump’s Truth Social page includes footage of his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, speaking at last week’s Madison Square Garden rally, saying Trump has managed to evade multiple conspiratorial efforts to put him out of the presidential race.
“When they couldn’t beat him, they tried to bankrupt him,” Vance said.
“When that didn’t work, they tried to put him in federal prison.
“When that didn’t work, they even tried to kill him.”
This is misleading on several counts. First, it suggests, without evidence, that efforts to kill Trump, his financial liabilities and his legal woes were orchestrated by the same group of people. That this was included in a campaign video implies Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were part of this non-existent group.
The notion that assassination attempts against Trump were part of a conspiracy by his opponents to remove him from politics is fabricated.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, who came close to killing Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July was a registered Republican, although records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on January 20, 2021—the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested in September after Secret Service agents spotted him within 500 yards of Trump with a rifle at Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach in Florida, was registered to vote as a Democrat in 1988 but changed to “unaffiliated” in 2002, as reported by FactCheck.org.
The reference to bankruptcy is related to his civil fraud ruling by New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who found that Trump deceived banks, insurers and others for years by inflating his wealth on documents used to secure deals and loans.
The judgment handed down in the case has ballooned to $482 million and, as reported by Forbes, is part of a series of liabilities worth an estimated $1.8 billion. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the Justice Department was behind the case. Separately, Trump’s companies have filed for business bankruptcy six times.
Vance’s claim that attempts to imprison Trump have “failed” is also misleading. The ad included footage from the FBI classified documents raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in 2022, implying that the ensuing investigation, tossed by Judge Aileen Cannon, had completely collapsed.
Cannon dismissed the case on grounds there was no constitutional backing for appointing Jack Smith, a “private citizen,” as a Department of Justice prosecutor in charge of all Trump’s federal indictments.
Smith is appealing that decision before the 11th Circuit appeals court. Speaking to New York Magazine, Bennett Gershman, a professor of constitutional law at Pace Law School and a former New York prosecutor, said: “The precedents are so strong in favor of the special counsel that the case will be resuscitated.”
Trump also awaits sentencing in November for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels that could include a prison sentence.
Another video, addressing immigration, included footage of an armed group of men filmed in an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. TV news footage used in the video described the group as “armed Venezuelan gang members.”
The promotional video added a claim that implied that the Biden administration created a humanitarian program that would bring gang members in under parole.
Newsweek has not found evidence to support the claim.
The administration launched a humanitarian parole program in October 2022 to deter Venezuelans from traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, offering them a legal pathway into the U.S. if they had American-based sponsors.
In January 2023, the program was expanded to include migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.
Applicants had to have a sponsor within the U.S., pass security checks, warrant a “favorable exercise of discretion,” and meet other eligibility criteria set out by the Department for Homeland Security (DHS).
Apart from a lack of vetting and security checks in place for the humanitarian program, Newsweek has not found any evidence that the people filmed in the video were brought into the U.S. under the program.
Aurora Mayor Michael Coffman told Newsweek in September that gangs were not in control of the apartment complex in the video.
Coffman, who served as a representative in Congress for 10 years, initially believed that the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua was in control and taking rent from residents. Instead, the property managers had vanished and tenants simply were not paying anybody, Coffman explained.
Newsweek has contacted a media representative for Trump via email for comment.
The Biden-Harris administration is set to allow the protections for Venezuelan migrants to lapse at the end of the month, the DHS confirmed to Newsweek in October.
Not all of the roughly 117,000 Venezuelans admitted under the program would be affected, but those who first arrived when the program began two years ago would see their protections lapse.
The immigration promo also falsely says that undocumented migrants with convictions for murder are on the loose in the U.S., a claim Newsweek has debunked.
The figures referred to are from decades’ worth of records and include convicts who are currently in prison. The same misleading interpretation of data has been used to falsely claim that “425,000 convicted criminal aliens were released into our country over the last three and a half years.”
Another promo, listing Trump’s pledges, mentions canceling mandates on electric vehicles that do not exist.
While the Biden-Harris administration set a goal for having 50 percent of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, it has not said it would ban or prohibit the sale of non-electric cars.
The video may also refer to new Environmental Protection Agency emission rules announced earlier this year aimed at cutting carbon pollution caused by the auto industry. The rules do not require Americans to buy an electric vehicle.
Despite Harris endorsing eliminating taxes on tips, Trump posted a misleading video about alleged plans the Biden-Harris administration made to “crack down” on them.
As debunked by Snopes, the video relied on false claims that the Inflation Reduction Act—on which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote—contained new provisions for taxing tips. It also exaggerated the number of IRS agents set to be hired under the Act’s funding and botched details of a proposed voluntary service industry program that was never implemented.
Another ad featured Robert F. Kennedy Jr., telling his supporters to cast their ballots for Trump.
Since suspending his campaign, Kennedy has attempted to withdraw his name from the presidential election ballot, in an apparent effort to avoid splitting the vote for Trump.
On October 29, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Kennedy’s request to take his name, along with that of running mate Nicole Shanahan, off the ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin. As a result, voters in these crucial swing states will still see the independent option on their ballots.
In the ad, Kennedy warned that “free speech is under withering and relentless attack in America” and referenced the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to shut down X, formerly Twitter, nationwide.
Discussing state censorship, Kennedy said “Brazil just banned Twitter because Elon Musk refused to censor users’ speech.”
This does not tell the whole story.
Brazil’s highest court ordered the country’s telecoms regulator to shut down X, citing repeated violations of court orders and the spread of hate speech and misinformation. The court said it would lift the ban when the platform complied with all legal requirements, paid outstanding fines, and appointed a legal director in the country.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorized the reinstatement, more than a month after X was shut down nationwide, according to a court document released to the public. The justice ordered the shutdown after months of conflict with Musk, who called the jurist authoritarian and a censor, despite de Moraes’ rulings, including the suspension of X, being repeatedly upheld by the court.
X ultimately complied with all of de Moraes’ demands.