President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, faced curious voters on separate phases in different cities Thursday night in an alternative to the debate it was meant to be.

 Trump and Biden at City Council events

President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, faced curious voters on separate phases in different cities Thursday night in an alternative to the debate it was meant to be.

Here's how some of the rhetoric compares to facts in prime-time and campaign day events:

Economy

Trump, answering questions in Miami on NBC: "We had the greatest economy in the history of our country."

The facts: Figures show it was not the greatest in US history.

Did the US have the largest number of jobs recorded before the pandemic? Sure, the population has grown. The unemployment rate was 3.5% before the recession, at its lowest level in half a century, but the percentage of people working or looking for jobs was still below the peak of 2000.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer looked at Trump's economic growth record this month. The Trump era averaged 2.48% per year before the pandemic, which is only slightly better than the 2.41% gains achieved during Barack Obama's second term. In contrast, the economic expansion that began in 1982 during Ronald Reagan's presidency averaged 4.2% per year.

So Trump is wrong

Fraud in elections

Trump: "When I see thousands of ballot papers lying in a trash can and my name happens to be on them? I'm not happy with that." - from Miami.

The facts: No one has seen that. Unlike Trump's repeated and unfounded attacks on voting security, vote fraud and elections are rare. No cases were reported regarding the thousands of papers thrown into the trash in this election.

Trump cited a military ballot case flagged for throwing in the trash in Pennsylvania as evidence of a possible plot to steal the election. But he did not rule out details: County election officials say the seven ballot papers, along with two unopened papers, were accidentally thrown into an election office in a Republican-controlled county by one decade's factor and that authorities were summoned quickly.

The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 rated the risk of poll fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on previous election studies.

In the five states that regularly send out ballots to all voters, there have been no cases of significant fraud or difficulty counting the ballots.

a crime

Biden, responding to questions in Philadelphia on ABC: "The crime bill itself had no mandatory provisions, except for two things. It had three strikes while you were out, which is what you voted against on the Crime Bill.

The facts: This is misleading. It reduces the impact of the bill and the effect it had in passing it into law.

Biden wrote and voted in favor of the Comprehensive Crimes Bill of 1994, which included funds for more prisons, expanded the use of the federal death penalty, and called for a mandatory life sentence for violent crimes three times - the so-called Three Strikes clause.

He called the three-stroke rule "wacko" at one point, even as he was helping write the bill. Whatever his reservations about certain provisions, he ultimately voted in favor of the legislation, which included the three-strikes rule and came to be seen in the era of the Black Lives Matter as a cruel and discriminatory tool of the justice system.

Forces

Biden in Philadelphia, about US forces in Afghanistan: "They have more people now, by the way, than they did when I left when we left Afghanistan.

The facts: Not so

The United States now has about 5,000 troops in Afghanistan. The troop level had not fallen below 8,400 before President Barack Obama left office. The United States had about 8,500 troops in Afghanistan during Trump's first several months in office.

The number of troops in Afghanistan reached 100,000 in 2010 before Obama took office. Obama withdrew thousands of troops during his two terms, but he was unable to fulfill his promises to reduce the number of troops to 5,500 in the final years of his presidency.

Corona Virus

TRUMP: "Just the other day they came out with a statement that 85% of people who wear masks are taking them so ... that's what I heard and that's what I saw." - City Hall event in Miami.

Trump, at his rallies: “What I'm doing outside is a big thing. And if you look at these, they wear masks. I'll tell you, I looked last night in Iowa - there were many, many people wearing masks. But then, you see Center. Disease Control comes out with a statement that 85% of people who wear masks pick them up. " Fox Business Interview.

Trump, looking at the crowd: “Look at all the masks. You know, they keep saying,“ Nobody wears a mask, they wear the mask. ”Even though they came out with things today. Have you seen the CDC? That 85% of People Who's wearing the mask catches it, okay? '' - Remarks at a daytime crowd in Greenville, North Carolina.

The facts: It spoils the results of the study repeatedly. The study, cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not find that 85% of mask wearers develop COVID-19. If that was the case, it would have been the majority of Americans