AP FACT CHECK: Trump's wrongs on court, virus; Biden errs

It sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe Pelosi or Shifty Schiff.” — interview Monday with “Fox & Friends.” THE FACTS: He's making a baseless assertion that congressional Democrats invented Ginsburg's request, which Trump is ignoring by announcing a new nominee Saturday. In the days before her death on Sept.

In a momentous week, President Donald Trump painted a fantastical portrait of a coronavirus that affects “virtually nobody” among the young as he faced a grim U.S. milestone of 200,000 deaths and he asserted a constitutional basis that doesn't exist for rushing a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg over her dying wishes. As Americans absorbed news of a grand jury decision not to prosecute Kentucky police officers for killing Breonna Taylor, Trump's campaign pointed to purported economic progress for Blacks under his administration that didn't tell the full story.

And with their first debate days away, Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden botched details about the pivotal Supreme Court vacancy and exaggerated his early statements on COVID-19, saying he declared it a pandemic in January when he didn't. A sampling of the misstatements on these topics and more: 200,000 DEATHS TRUMP, speaking hours before the U.S. hit a milestone of 200,000 virus deaths: “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, and other problems. If they have other problems, that's what it really affects. ... In some states thousands of people — nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody — they have a strong immune system — who knows? ... It affects virtually nobody.” — rally Monday in Ohio.

THE FACTS: No, it's affected quite a few. In all, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 200,000 Tuesday, by far the highest in the world, hitting the once-unimaginable threshold six weeks before an election that is certain to be a referendum on his handling of the crisis. The number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama.

Kids certainly aren't immune and Trump ignores racial disparities among those who get infected. He is also brazenly contradicting what he privately told journalist Bob Woodward. “Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob,” he told Woodward in March. “It's plenty of young people.” Although it's true that children are less likely than adults to develop COVID-19, the CDC has nevertheless counted more than 419,000 infections in Americans younger than 18, or about 8.5 per cent of all cases. Racial disparities in the U.S. outbreak also extend to children, with Hispanic and Black children with COVID-19 more likely to be hospitalized than white kids.

TRUMP: “We're rounding the corner — with or without a vaccine.” — interview Monday on “Fox & Friends." TRUMP, asked if the virus will “go away” if there isn't a vaccine immediately available: “Sure, with time it goes away. And you'll develop — you'll develop herd-like, a herd mentality. It's going to be — it's going to be herd-developed, and that's going to happen.” — ABC News town hall on September 15. THE FACTS: Trump appeared to promote a “herd immunity” approach to the virus if a vaccine isn't immediately available that would require millions more people to get infected and significantly higher deaths.

Public health officials say that to reach herd immunity, which is when the virus can no longer spread easily, at least 70% of the population, or 200 million people, would need to develop antibodies. The U.S. currently has 7 million COVID-19 cases. “Developing herd immunity doesn't just take time, it works by infecting over a hundred million and killing hundreds of thousands," University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers tweeted. "He's describing a massacre.” GINSBURG TRUMP, on Ginsburg's request that her replacement be chosen by the next president: “I don't know that she said that, or if that was written out by Adam Schiff, and Schumer and Pelosi. That came out of the wind. It sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe Pelosi or Shifty Schiff.” — interview Monday with “Fox & Friends.” THE FACTS: He's making a baseless assertion that congressional Democrats invented Ginsburg's request, which Trump is ignoring by announcing a new nominee Saturday.

In the days before her death on Sept. 18, Ginsburg told her granddaughter Clara Spera that “my most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” according to NPR's Nina Totenberg, a longtime veteran Supreme Court reporter. COURT NOMINATION TRUMP, on why he's moving forward with a nomination so close to the Nov. 3 election: “I have a constitutional obligation to put in nine judges — justices.” — remarks Tuesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: To be clear, there is no constitutional requirement to have nine justices on the Supreme Court. The Constitution, in fact, specifies no size for the Supreme Court, and Congress has the power to change its size.

Over its history, the high court has varied in size from five to 10 justices, depending on the number of judicial circuits in the U.S., according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy director of the Federal Judicial Center. BIDEN, arguing that a Supreme Court nomination should be decided by the next president so voters can “have their voice heard in who serves on the court”: “There's no court session between now and the end of this election.” — remarks Sept. 20 in Philadelphia.

THE FACTS: He's wrong on the scheduling. A new Supreme Court session begins Oct. 5, nearly one month before the election on Nov. 3. The justices are set to hear oral arguments in several cases during that time..