WASHINGTON (AP) – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both struggled in the final presidential debate to explain comments from their past. A look at some of the claims from the debate:
CLINTON, on Trump’s charge that she called for open borders in a 2013 speech to a Brazilian bank: “I was talking about energy.”
THE FACTS: She was actually talking about more than energy, but apparently less than an open border that immigrants can spill across at will, according to the partial transcript released by WikiLeaks.
Clinton said in the speech that “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that is as green as sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” The remarks suggest a broad interest in open trade but were not necessarily evidence that she would support the unfettered movement of people, as Trump charged.
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CLINTON: “I want to make college debt free.”
THE FACTS: Clinton might aspire to that lofty goal, but she has only proposed making college tuition free for in-state students who go to a public college or university. Even with expanded grant aid, room and board can lead students to borrow.
Clinton would have the government pay for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities for students from families earning less than $125,000 a year. Students would still need to foot the bill for housing and food, which makes up more than half of the average $18,943 sticker price at a four-year public university, according to the College Board.
But Trump is correct that government would shoulder higher costs with Clinton’s plan.
Her plan would cost the federal government an estimated $500 billion over 10 years, with additional costs possibly for state governments.
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CLINTON on her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: “It didn’t meet my test.”
THE FACTS: It met her test when she was secretary of state and she promoted it worldwide.
Hacked emails from Clinton’s campaign, released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, showed that Jake Sullivan, her top foreign policy adviser, called her a “big champion” of the deal and worried about how to handle the issue in the face of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ opposition. She later flip-flopped into opposition during the Democratic primaries against Sanders.
Clinton says she no longer backs the proposed trade deal as written because it does not provide enough protections for U.S. workers on wages, jobs and the country’s national security. Yet the final deal also includes some of the strongest labor protections of any U.S. trade agreement.
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Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Josh Boak and Christopher S. Rugaber contributed to this report.