Donald Trump in U.S. News and World Report

On Budget & Economy: FactCheck: Fed keeps interest rates low, but apolitically

THE FACTS: This is a recurrent claim by Trump with no evidence to back it up. It's the Federal Reserve's job to help improve the economy and to the extent that happens, political leaders may benefit. But presidents can't make the Fed, an independent agency, do anything.

Under former chair Ben Bernanke and current chair Janet Yellen, the Fed has attracted controversy by pegging the short-term interest rate it controls to nearly zero for seven years. It is still ultra-low at between 0.25% and 0.5%, a rate that some economists worry could spark a stock-market bubble or inflation. Bernanke was initially appointed by Republican Pres. George W. Bush, and reappointed by Obama.

One reason Yellen is keeping rates low is that, in some ways, she agrees with Trump that hiring needs to keep growing to provide jobs.

On Immigration: FactCheck: border wall 52 new miles, plus rebuilt 406 miles

TRUMP: I did finish the wall. I built the wall.

Q: You didn't finish the wall. It was only about 52 miles of new wall.

TRUMP: I built hundreds of miles of wall and I finished it, and then I said, "we have to build some more because there are areas like water going through a dam." You close up one and they come in through another. And we started another 100 miles of wall.

USNWR Fact Check: Before Biden stopped new construction on the wall, the Trump administration had built 458 miles of what it dubbed "border wall system" [out of 1,954 miles of the US-Mexico border]. The vast majority of the 458 miles were constructed in places where some kind of barrier already existed, but most of the preexisting structures were far less imposing than the new wall and included fencing and rudimentary technical barriers.