5 Massive Lies at the Democratic National Convention
Tyler O'Neil /
As Democrats nominated Vice President Kamala Harris in Chicago this week, speakers repeated multiple blatant falsehoods. The legacy media seems unlikely to expose these lies, so The Daily Signal will break them down here.
Each lie framed former President Donald Trump—the Republican nominee—and his party as more radical than they really are, or shifted responsibility to them for the Biden-Harris administration’s record on key issues such as inflation.
1. A Nationwide Abortion Ban
Multiple speakers, including the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, claimed that Trump or the GOP would pass a nationwide ban on abortion.
“And we know if these guys get back in the White House, they’ll start jacking up the cost on the middle class,” Walz said on Wednesday night. “They’ll repeal the Affordable Care Act. They’ll gut Social Security and Medicare, and they will ban abortion across this country with or without Congress.”
On Monday, President Joe Biden declared, “And you know, Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide.”
Trump has pledged not to cut Social Security and Medicare, and he has repeatedly stated his opposition to a nationwide abortion ban. He says he supports states making their own laws on abortion, as the Supreme Court allowed when it overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision with 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
As president, Trump supported a national ban on abortion after 20 weeks gestation, and earlier this year, he suggested he might support banning abortion at the 15- or 16-week mark.
Since April, however, he has stated that he would leave abortion legislation “up to the states” and insisted that he wouldn’t sign a national ban even if Congress passed one. Trump has always supported exceptions for rape, incest, and a threat to the life of the mother.
2. Trump Would Ban In Vitro Fertilization
Multiple Democratic leaders suggested that Trump would ban in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment in which a man’s sperm and a woman’s eggs are fertilized in a dish and then doctors implant one or multiple embryos inside a woman’s uterus. The IVF process often involves the creation of several human embryos that may never be used, raising ethical questions. Some same-sex couples have used the process to produce children with their combined genes and the help of an opposite-sex donor, and, with male couples, the help of a surrogate mother to carry the baby to term.
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who shared her struggles with infertility and celebrated the birth of her children through IVF, warned that Trump would ban the practice.
“Trump’s anti-woman crusade has put other Americans’ right to have their own families at risk, because if they win, Republicans will not stop at banning abortion,” she said on Tuesday night. “They will come for IVF next.”
Walz suggested Wednesday that Republicans would threaten IVF. He also bragged about protecting “reproductive freedom” in Minnesota, a euphemism for abortion.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make,” he said. “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business. And that includes IVF and fertility treatments.”
He spoke about how he and his wife needed “fertility treatments” to have their children, saying, “I’m letting you in on how we started a family because this is a big part [of] what this election is about.”
While Walz has occasionally suggested that his family used IVF, his wife Gwen clarified that they used intrauterine insemination instead. (While intrauterine insemination involves the insertion of sperm into a woman’s uterus, IVF involves further steps, including the conception of a baby outside the womb.)
“Americans want the hope of IVF, not the fear that it might be taken away,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on Tuesday night.
Yet Trump does not oppose IVF, and the threat to IVF—even in Alabama—has been widely exaggerated.
The issue emerged after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the destruction of unused embryos conceived through IVF constituted the wrongful death of a minor and that embryos had inherent human rights because they represent unique individuals with human DNA. This decision led some fertility clinics in the state to shut their doors because they routinely destroy unwanted embryos.
Yet the Alabama legislature quickly passed—and Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, quickly signed—a bill shielding IVF clinics from liability for the destruction of embryos. The clinics resumed services shortly afterward.
After the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, Trump strongly defended IVF.
“We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder,” he said. “That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.”
“I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious little beautiful baby,” Trump added. “I support it.” He went on to call on the Alabama Legislature to act to support IVF, and it did so with the legislation above.
3. Project 2025
Many speakers condemned Project 2025, an initiative led by The Heritage Foundation in partnership with over 100 other conservative organizations. The project, a policy blueprint for a future conservative presidential administration, offered to work with any political campaign open to supporting those policies. Heritage and its allies launched the project in April 2023, before Trump had won the Republican nomination. And while many Project 2025 staff had worked in Trump’s administration, the project did not consult with Trump or any other Republican candidate in drafting the document.
Even so, Democrats repeatedly introduced Project 2025 at the convention as “Trump’s plan.”
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow presented Project 2025 as “the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.” She went on to claim that Project 2025 aims “to turn Donald Trump into a dictator.”
Yet neither Trump nor the Republican Party have adopted Project 2025, and the project merely aims to bring the bureaucracy back under the control of the people’s elected president, not make him a “dictator.” Project 2025 would enable the president to fire certain administrative staff who oppose his or her agenda, bringing the federal bureaucracy back in line with the Founders’ vision for the executive branch.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said, “Donald Trump wants to put our 1787 Constitution through his Project 2025 paper shredder and make every day January 6.”
Project 2025 does not undermine the Constitution, but rather aims to bring the executive branch back in line with the Constitution after the growth of independent agencies, federal government unions, and new regulations insulated it from the people’s elected president, making possible a “deep state” (where people who are answerable to the president under Article II of the Constitution nonetheless blatantly oppose his policies from within his administration).
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said, “Let’s talk about Project 2025, Donald Trump’s road map to ban abortion in all 50 states.”
He went on to cite a few passages from the Project 2025 book “Mandate for Leadership,” mischaracterizing what the passages state.
“On page 562, it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail,” Polis said. Page 562 does not mention banning abortion in all 50 states, but it does mention laws preventing the distribution of abortion pills in the mail.
“Page 451 says the only legitimate family is a married mother and father where only the father works,” the governor added. Yet Page 451 says nothing of the sort. While it does mention the importance of a father in the home, it never suggests or implies that mothers cannot or should not work outside the home.
4. Book Banning
Speakers repeatedly brought up another familiar talking point, accusing Republicans of banning books. Leftists crafted this talking point to oppose leaders in the parental rights movement who objected to sexualized and pornographic books in school libraries. Groups like Moms for Liberty oppose sexually explicit books in school libraries, but they are not demanding that publishers retract the books or that the government ban them.
Yet Democrats repeatedly condemned Trump and Republicans for “banning books.”
“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books—none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” former first lady Michelle Obama said Tuesday. “Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love—look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better.”
Obama’s reference to “demonizing our children” appears to be an oblique attack on the parents who oppose LGBTQ lessons in school for young children on the grounds that they don’t want their kids exposed to discussions about gender identity and sexual orientation.
Obama dismissed the very serious concerns that parents have about sexual and gender indoctrination of children at young ages as “demonizing our children” when, in reality, the movement aims to protect kids from age-inappropriate topics that may conflict with their values and beliefs.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., managed to tie Project 2025 to “book bans” in a speech condemning her state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
“For the people of my state, Project 2025 isn’t just a threat. It’s a reality that we battle every day,” she said on Wednesday. “Today in Florida, state policy requires that kids are taught racist lies about so-called benefits of slavery; books are banned; teachers are censored; and our LGBTQ+ community endures endless state-sponsored hate, even a cruel ‘Don’t Say Gay’ school law.”
Wasserman Schultz appeared to mischaracterize Florida’s history curriculum, which details the harsh conditions slaves endured and explains that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” both while enslaved and when freed, William Allen, a descendant of slavery who helped write the curriculum, told Fox News.
The “Don’t Say Gay” law, the proper name of which is the Parental Rights in Education Bill, does not mention the word “gay” but does bar classroom instruction—not casual discussion—of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” with children in third grade or younger.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urged Americans to “embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject the ones who are out there banning books.”
5. Greedflation
Harris has repeatedly suggested that the real culprit behind rising prices is corporate greed or “price gouging,” and this theme has repeatedly emerged at the DNC.
Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers union, echoed this talking point.
“Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots,” Fain declared. “It causes inflation. It hurts workers, it hurts consumers, and it hurts America.”
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., railed against companies for price gouging and greed, following prepared remarks obtained by Axios.
“The corporations say your prices are up only because they’re costs are up,” Casey said on Thursday. “They’re selling you a lie.”
He argued that “prices are up because these corporations are scheming to drive them up.” He calls this “greedflation.”
Casey, who is up for reelection this year, has pushed this message in a new ad.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged Democrats to tackle “price gouging,” echoing Harris in suggesting that greed, not government spending, is driving inflation.
Of course, Harris did not pioneer this talking point. Biden has previously blamed corporate greed for inflation, but as Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni pointed out, there is a far more obvious culprit: government spending.
As Antoni noted, “One of the functions of money is that of a measuring tool. If a yardstick were to shrink from 36 inches down to just 30, it would take 120 of these shortened yardsticks to cover the distance of a football field, instead of 100. As the dollar has lost value, it takes more dollars to measure the value of the things we buy.”
While Americans feel the pain of inflation, so do businesses. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Businesses have gotten the short end of the stick,” Antoni explained. “The producer price index is used to measure inflation on the products and services businesses buy—sometimes called wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took office. Conversely, the consumer price index, the widely cited metric for inflation faced by American families, is up 17.1% over that same time.”
“Businesses have actually been sheltering consumers from some cost increases in an effort to maintain market share and not lose customers,” he wrote. “That also explains why, according to the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, total corporate profits have fallen for the last six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”
“If alleged price gouging were really the cause of inflation, did businessmen magically become greedy when Biden took office?” Antoni asked. “Were corporations never greedy in the 40 years leading up to Biden’s inflationary expansion of government? Businesses haven’t even passed all their higher costs on to consumers; if they’re trying to be greedy, they’re doing it all wrong.”