As the midterms approach, our fact checkers are being given the runaround by Trump

As Donald Trump starts his final push in the last days before the midterm elections, he is due to attend multiple ‘Make America Great Again’ rallies a day.

That will make the job of any news editor harder. One recent analysis estimated that President Trump had made more than 1,000 false or misleading statements in the seven weeks leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, which will decide control of the US Congress. Based in The Independent’s US offices in New York, ours has been a constant battle to fact check everything coming out of the President’s mouth.

The Democrats are looking to retake at least one of the two chambers of Congress in these elections, most likely the House of Representatives, which would put them in a position to try and hobble Trump’s future agenda. That makes the next week a very important time for American reporters.

The Republicans currently control The House – by the slimmest of margins – as well as, of course, the Senate and the presidency. Trump knows that his words have power, not just as the 45th president but as the focus of a loyal supporter base that he has sought to mobilise for election day.

The rhetoric from the president has become more aggressive in the last few weeks as he hammers home his position on issues like immigration. The thousands of refugees and migrants walking to the US border in a so-called caravan, many fleeing violence from Honduras, have become a particular target.

Trump has threatened to change asylum law and remove the right for babies born in America to be given citizenship regardless of their parentage. All this would come via executive order from the White House which would likely not be legally enforceable.

This is what makes fact checking the president so important, to give readers the full sense of what Trump can and cannot do. In the drive to get Republican voters to show up to the polls, he will try and use every advantage he can. He knows that some statements will hit home – whether they are correct or not – and he needs to be held to account for that.

Yours,

Chris Stevenson

International Editor