Fact-checking Donald Trump’s Univision Town Hall

Donald Trump’s town hall in Miami for Univision gave the former president a chance to appeal to Latino and Hispanic voters this week, an important group for swing states like Nevada and Arizona.
At the event, the Republican presidential nominee took questions from an audience of undecided Latino voters in Miami, discussing issues such as the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, immigration and abortion.
Trump repeated a string of misleading and false statements throughout the event, including claims that have followed him during the campaign. Newsweek has examined a selection of them.
Trump claimed the Biden-Harris administration had overseen record levels of inflation. This is not true. While inflation hit a high of 9 percent in the middle of 2022, with the 2022 annual rate the highest in four decades, inflation rates hit higher peaks in 1980, 1981, 1979, 1975, and 1974, as data from the World Bank shows.
This is the second time Trump has repeated this false claim this week.
During Trump’s presidency, the lowest recorded average interest rates on 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages were 2.65 and 2.1 percent, respectively.
They are not at 10 percent now. Data from Freddie Mac, presented by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, states that the 30-year fixed mortgage average in the United States as of October 10, 2024, was 6.32 percent. The 15-year rate was 5.41 percent.
A familiar but unfounded assertion is that Trump oversaw the strongest economy in U.S. history. While Trump oversaw stock market rallies and low unemployment, his records on these metrics are ones that Biden has bested.
PolitiFact found that by several metrics, Trump did not oversee historic growth in the U.S. economy, falling behind Democratic and Republican predecessors on GDP during his term.
Responding to a question about who would replace deported migrants working “tough jobs,” Trump said “hundreds of thousands” of “murderers,” “drug dealers,” and “terrorists” were coming into the country.
It’s not clear what data he used to claim Hispanic voters’ particular concern about immigration or a subgroup of criminals within immigrant populations.
Research from March 2024 by Pew showed that fewer U.S. Hispanics rated the border situation as a crisis or major problem compared to non-Hispanics. They were also less likely to say that the border situation is leading to more crime than non-Hispanics.
Pew research in June 2024 also showed that Hispanic voters who supported Trump agreed that “America’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation.”
In May 2023, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released data showing that Hispanic Americans were the most likely group to favor increased legal immigration. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed agreed that a more diverse country was a better country and were most likely to favor increased legal immigration.
Other results suggest Hispanic groups’ views on immigration are more in line with the general public’s, not in front. As reported by The Washington Post, a June 2024 YouGov survey found that about half of all Hispanic respondents rated immigration as a very important issue, in line with the survey’s overall response.
Hispanic voters also ranked immigration as the most important issue in the election, which is in line with the overall results of the survey.
Newsweek reached out to a Trump media representative for comment.
Newsweek recently debunked this. While it is correct that 13,099 noncitizens on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement docket have been convicted of homicide, the data spans 40 years. The figures also include individuals in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.
Trump was given the opportunity to dismiss the debunked, false claims that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten the pets of residents. Instead, he suggested that he had read reports of people “eating other things, too.” He attempted to shift blame for spreading the rumor, saying, “All I do is report,” adding that the story had “been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.”
Trump even said he would go to Springfield and investigate the claim further, saying “I’m going to be there and we’re gonna take a look and I’ll give you a full report when I do.”
As was stated during the televised debate between Harris and Trump, there are no credible reports of animals being injured or abused by immigrants.
This is the second time Trump has made this false claim about Springfield, Ohio, this week.
A statement by the city of Springfield, Ohio, says Clark County (the county seat Springfield sits in) has an immigration population of approximately 12,000-15,000 people.
“Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” the statement reads.
This is not true.
In March 2022, 49-year-old Texan Guy Reffitt was convicted (among other charges) for being unlawfully present on Capitol grounds while possessing a firearm and transporting firearms during civil disorder.
In April 2022, 72-year-old Lonnie Coffman of Falkville, Alabama, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for bringing loaded guns, ammunition and Molotov cocktail ingredients to Washington on January 6, 2021.
In October 2022, Mark Andrew Mazza, 57, of Shelbyville, Indiana, was sentenced to 60 months in prison for carrying two loaded guns on Capitol grounds and assaulting officers during the riot.
In July 2023, Christopher Alberts, 35, of Pylesville, Maryland, was sentenced to 84 months in prison on nine charges, including possessing a firearm on the Capitol grounds.
In January 2024, Jerod Thomas Bargar, 37, of Centralia, Missouri, was sentenced to five years probation and six months of home confinement for carrying a firearm during the breach of the Capitol.
As reported by the Associated Press, in March 2024, John Banuelos, 39, was charged with firearm charges, accused of firing a gun in the air during the riots.
In an article for Newsweek, Nick Suplina and Justin Wagner of Everytown for Gun Safety said they had identified “12 individuals allegedly tied to the events of Jan. 6 who were arrested in Washington, D.C., and charged with firearms offenses.”
A U.S. Capitol Police intelligence division report also found posts on now-defunct blog thedonald.win in the lead-up to January 6, which, the report said, contained “several comments [that] promote confronting members of Congress and carrying firearms during the protest.”
Further comments on the site included “Bring guns. It’s now or never” and “Don’t cuck out. This is do or die. Bring your guns.”
This is arguable. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows that in fiscal years 2017 to 2019, total border apprehensions increased from 415,517 to 977,509, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.
The figure dropped to 400,651 in 2020, with a steep decrease in April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began. In the last 12 months of Trump’s government, CBP recorded 516,908 encounters. This is higher than the fiscal year figure for 2015.