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Fact check: 8 things Trump got wrong at his news conference

In one case, the president claimed he rejected a meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. But no meeting had even been requested.
Image: US President Trump Press Conference in New York
President Donald Trump arrives for a news conference at the New York Lotte hotel on Sept. 26, 2018. JUSTIN LANE / EPA

President Donald Trump spoke with reporters for about 80 minutes during a news conference on Wednesday, offering extended comments on a variety of topics. He talked about his embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, foreign affairs, the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in the past, trade and more.

Here are eight things Trump said that were misleading, or that he got flat wrong.

1. Asked if he rejected a one-on-one meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump said, "Yeah, I did."

Nope. A press representative for the Canadian prime minister told NBC News in an email that no such meeting was requested.

2. Trump claimed President Barack Obama "wasn't big on picking judges. When I got here I said, 'How was this possible?' They just didn’t do it — they got tired, they got complacent."

Here's what actually happened: Republicans blocked dozens of Obama's judicial nominees, including a Supreme Court pick. That left Trump with 103 court vacancies — nearly twice the number Obama inherited in 2009.

3. Speaking of the American embassy in Jerusalem, Trump said, "We got (the embassy) open in four months, for less than $500,000, and the budget was over a billion dollars. So we saved, let’s say a billion dollars."

His numbers are off. Trump is describing modifications to an interim embassy, according to reports; the project is still ongoing and will cost more than half a million. The State Department has reportedly already awarded $21 million in contracts for the upcoming renovations.

4. The president said he was falsely accused of sexual misconduct by "four or five women" who made "stuff up about me."

Actually, 13 women have accused him of sexual misconduct in the past and provided corroborators or witnesses, according to a tally by The Washington Post, while The Guardian reports there are 20 accusers.

5. Asked why the White House did not order the FBI to investigate sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, Trump said: "There was nothing to investigate from at least one standpoint. They didn't know the location, they didn't know the time, they didn't know the year."

There are more details than Trump suggests. It's unclear which of the several accusers he is referring to, as the first woman to come forward, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, gave the year she says the alleged attack occurred, while another, Deborah Ramirez, provided the name of a college dormitory.

Ford says Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault her during at a house party in a Maryland suburb in the summer of 1982. Ramirez said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at the Yale University dormitory Lawrance Hall during the 1983-84 school year. Julie Swetnick accused Kavanaugh of getting women intoxicated so they could be attacked by groups of men between 1981 and 1983 at house parties in the Washington suburbs.

6. Trump disputed one of his own sexual misconduct accusations by saying it was unlikely to have occurred because he had a best-selling book out that same year.

Let's get a calendar. He is referring to the allegation from Jessica Leeds, who The New York Times reported said Trump touched her inappropriately in the early 1980s on a flight. Trump's campaign later put forward a witness who said he was on the flight and sitting across from Leeds. He disputed her account, and dated the flight to either 1980 or 1981. Trump's first book, "The Art of the Deal," was published several years later, in 1987.

7. "I got 52 percent with women. Everyone said this couldn't happen,” Trump said.

The president is exaggerating the percentage of women who voted for him in 2016. He won 42 percent of women in the 2016 election, not 52 percent, according to NBC News exit polling. He won 53 percent of white women.

8. Those in the audience who laughed during Trump's big United Nation General Assembly speech this week "weren’t laughing at me, they were laughing with me. We had fun. That was not laughing at me."

See for yourself. Here's the video.