Fact-checking 26 suspect claims in Trump’s address to Congress

[Tin tức]

President makes false claims about border crossings, regulations, the economy, inflation and many other issues.

Analysis by Glenn Kessler

President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was vintage Trump: long, rambling and chock-full of stretched facts and dubious figures. Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them. Here, in the order in which he made them, are 26 statements by the president that were untrue, misleading or lacked context.

As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios in speech roundups.

“We won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country 2,700 to 525.”

These are misleading metrics. Unlike in 2016, Trump won the popular vote, but only narrowly. On a percentage basis, his margin over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was 1.5 percent, the smallest since 2000 and the fourth smallest since 1960.

As for counties, most of the counties that Trump won are sparsely populated. So, while he won 2,633 counties compared to Harris’s 427, she nearly matched him in the popular vote. Moreover, most of the nation’s economic output is in counties that Harris won. The Brookings Institution calculated that while Trump won 86 percent of the nation’s total counties, those counties represent 38 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. The relatively small batch of counties that Harris won produce 62 percent of the GDP.

“Illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded .”

This is false. Customs and Border Protection recorded about 8,300 border encounters in February, the most recent month for which data is available. That suggests a yearly average of about 100,000. But in the early 1900s, before World War II and even in the 1960s, annual border encounters were below 30,000 — sometimes as low as 10,000 or 11,000.

“Hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month, and virtually all of them including murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country.”

This is false. While under President Joe Biden, record numbers of migrants crossed the border, there is no evidence “virtually all” were violent criminals or released from mental institutions. Immigration experts know of no effort by other countries to empty their prisons and psychiatric facilities. As someone who came to prominence in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered that hundreds of the refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.

There is little evidence that immigrants — or even undocumented immigrants — cause more crime. Still, there is enough ambiguity in the data — or so little hard data — that it’s difficult to point to conclusive findings that would change opinions.

“I withdrew from the unfair Paris Climate accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars.”

This is false. Each country set its own commitments under the Paris accord, so Trump’s comment makes little sense. He could have unilaterally changed the commitments offered by President Barack Obama, which is technically allowed under the accord. Indeed, the agreement is nonbinding, so there was nothing in the agreement that stops the United States from building, say, coal plants, or gives permission to China or India to build coal plants. Trump’s estimates of the costs came from industry-funded studies that did not consider possible benefits from reducing climate change.

“We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our autoworkers and companies from economic destruction.”

This is false. The Biden-Harris administration promoted incentives for electric vehicles — not the same as a mandate. The Environmental Protection Agency last year finalized new emissions standards, which the agency said could be met by 2032 if as much as 56 percent of light-duty car sales were battery-electric (up from 7.6 percent currently), an additional 13 percent were hybrid, and gas-powered cars became more efficient. By contrast, the European Union has mandated that all new cars sold will have zero emissions from 2035 — a sign that U.S. manufacturers cannot operate in a vacuum and ignore worldwide trends.

The United Auto Workers, which endorsed Harris for president, praised the EPA for adjusting the proposal to ensure a “just transition” to electric vehicles. “This rule does not require Ford, General Motors, Stellantis or any other domestic automaker to do anything beyond the commitments they’ve made to shareholders to capitalize on the growing EV market,” the union said in a statement. “We reject the fearmongering that says tackling the climate crisis must come at the cost of union jobs.”

“I have directed that for every one new regulation, 10 old regulations must be eliminated. … In that first term, we set records on ending unnecessary rules and regulations like no other president had done before.”

This appears to be false. Trump’s claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits.

A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said the Trump administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book and that it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data was examined.

“We've ended weaponized government where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me.”

Trump refers to “weaponization,” code for Biden’s supposedly using the resources of the U.S. government to target his political opponent. There is no evidence that Biden directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue the four criminal cases against Trump.

“We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”

This is absurd. Trump inherited an economy with relatively low unemployment, falling inflation and strong growth. The month before the November election, the Economist newspaper published a cover story declaring that the U.S. economy was “the envy of the world.”

“We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years. But perhaps even in the history of our country, they're not sure.”

This is false. The inflation peak in 2022 was the highest in 40 years. But amusingly, Trump seems to be arguing with his speechwriter here. In his rally speeches, Trump often falsely claims Biden had the worst inflation in U.S. history, so the second sentence seems to be an ad-lib.

Inflation peaked at 9 percent in June 2022, while annual inflation was 7 percent in 2021, 6.5 percent in 2022 and 3.4 percent in 2023. This was not the highest in U.S. history. In Trump’s adulthood, inflation was 9 percent in 1978, 13.3 percent in 1979, 12.5 percent in 1980 and 8.9 percent in 1981 — and also 8.7 percent in 1973 and 12.3 percent in 1974. Inflation was 18.1 percent in 1946, the year Trump was born. Other periods in U.S. history had even higher inflation rates.

Higher prices for goods and services would have happened no matter who was elected president in 2020. Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased, and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain issues, as companies had reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control.”

Egg prices spiked in early 2023 and then at the end of 2024 because of the bird flu. Trump may discover a president has little control over that.

“The appalling waste we have already identified … We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.”

This is unproven. The DOGE website claims $105 billion of savings, but it provides little transparency on how the figure was created. Various news reports have documented significant errors and double-counting in the DOGE list, making the administration’s claims highly suspect. Moreover, a lot of the canceled contracts had nothing to do with “fraud” — deception or misrepresentation — but are programs that do not fit with Trump’s political agenda. Many specific claims of fraud have proven to be wrong or misleading, such as the false claim that the U.S. Agency for International Development spent $50 million to distribute condoms in Gaza. Trump in his speech read a long list of programs that he claimed were “scams,” and many of those claims were equally suspect. Following are a few of the highlights.

“…$45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma …”

This is false. The spending funded the Lincoln Scholarships, which help students in civil-war-torn Myanmar obtain master’s degrees at a U.S. university, as well education for Myanmar students across Asia. The program called for students “from diverse backgrounds” — in a country with 135 ethnic groups. Presumably the DOGE filters mistakenly identified it as a DEI program.

“…$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique …”

This was not a scam. Male circumcision is recognized as a tool to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, and the U.S. spending database shows a contract with Associacao Elos, a nonprofit, to fund voluntary medical circumcision.

“..$20 million for the Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East. It's a program. $20 million for a program …”

This is false. The Sesame Street program known as Ahlan Simsim that’s broadcast across the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, is funded by a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation and additional funding by the LEGO Foundation. Trump is citing a grant for a different entity known as Ahlan Simsim Iraq that supports the creation of local content and materials, which include localized media content to reach children at scale, according to a Sesame Workshop representative.

“Funded over 6 years, the program also provides teaching and learning materials like storybooks, activity books, classroom materials, and training and facilitators’ guides for teachers for use in early childhood development centers to improve children’s learning by training teachers, parents, caregivers, and youth leaders,” the representative said.

The White House defended Trump’s claim by citing the grant language —"leveraging the popularity of the Arabic Sesame Workshop show, Ahlan Simsim Iraq produces culturally tailored and age-appropriate original educational media content for young children” — without acknowledging that this funding was not used to produce the Sesame Street TV show. As we noted, that program relies on philanthropic funding.

“..$59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City …”

New York City was awarded a grant for housing migrants under the Shelter and Services program created by Congress. Trump often falsely claims these were luxury hotel rooms, though he did not do so in this speech. New York City paid a daily rate of $156 in fiscal year 2024, a mid-tier rate, according to the city controller’s office. Luxury hotels have a rate about three times higher, according to a PricewaterhouseCoope rs estimate.

“We're also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129, 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139, 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. …”

This is false. Trump’s riff continued until he got to the end —“one person between the age of 240 and 249 and one person listed at 360 years of age.” His numbers roughly mirrored figures posted on social media by billionaire Elon Musk, who is slashing government programs with a shock team of assistants that has been dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency.

As The Washington Post has reported, this is largely a coding issue. The Social Security Administration maintains its databases using COBOL, a nearly 70-year-old computer programming language that doesn’t have a standardized way to store and work with dates. Often a default date is chosen, most commonly May 20, 1875, if no birth date is known.

As is often the case with Trump’s claims, there is an existing government report that would have cleared up matters.

A 2023 report from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general found that virtually every beneficiary who lacked a birth date had died. Of the 18.9 million people with Social Security numbers born in 1920 or earlier with no record of their deaths, the report said “approximately 18.4 million (98 percent) number holders are not currently receiving SSA payments and have not had earnings reported to SSA in the past 50 years.”

“We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work.”

This is false. Trump appears to equate teleworking with not showing up for work. But he often uses inflated numbers for how many federal workers work from home. The White House budget office reported in August that 54 percent of federal employees “worked fully on-site, as their jobs require them to be physically present during all working hours,” while just 10 percent worked only from their homes. Meanwhile the Congressional Budget Office reported in April that 22 percent of federal employees usually teleworked — compared to 25 percent of private sector employees.

“It was one of the main reasons why our tax cuts were so successful in our first term, giving us the most successful economy in the history of our country.”

This is false. Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years. But he ran into trouble when he said it was the best economy in U.S. history. By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton.

The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the 1950s and ’60s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.

“Over the last three months about Mexico and Canada, but we have very large deficits with both of them. But even more important, they've allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people destroying families. Nobody's ever seen anything like it.”

This is false. The president in his statements points the finger equally at Mexico and Canada, but Canada is a minor player. Just 43 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated at the northern border in the 2024 fiscal year — 0.2 percent of the volume at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics. In the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year, 10 pounds have been seized at the Canadian border, compared with 4,400 pounds on the Mexican border. Canadian authorities announced in November that they had dismantled the nation’s largest drug laboratory, discovered in rural British Columbia.

Moreover, most of the smuggling of fentanyl is done by U.S. citizens. Government statistics assembled by David J. Bier of the Cato Institute show that between 2019 and 2024, U.S. citizens were 80 percent of people caught with fentanyl during border crossings at ports of entry. Moreover, between 2015 and 2024, 92 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, Bier concluded.

“We pay subsidies to Canada and to Mexico of hundreds of billions of dollars.”

This is misleading. The trade in goods deficit with Canada has consistently hovered between $50 billion and $70 billion per year, according to the Census Bureau, while the Mexico goods deficit was $172 billion in 2024. The deficits often are reduced by trade in services, where the United States has an advantage. But trade deficits are not “subsidies,” so Trump’s obsession with trade deficits is misplaced.

A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Americans want to buy these products from overseas, either because of quality or price.

The trade-deficit numbers are also shaped by underlying factors, such as an imbalance between a country’s savings and investment rates. A bigger federal budget deficit — caused by, say, a large tax cut or more government spending — can boost the trade deficit because the country saves less and borrows more from abroad. A booming economy can also be at fault — the more money people have, the more they can spend on goods from overseas. And a strong currency means those foreign goods are cheaper for a particular country and its goods are more expensive for foreign consumers.

“We have had $1.7 trillion of new investment in America in just the past few weeks.”

This is a dubious figure, and Trump often takes false credit. Most of this claim comes from statements by Apple ($500 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($600 billion). But Apple tends to make these announcements after a new president is elected. In 2018, Apple said it would contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy over five years; it made a similar commitment in 2021 during the Biden administration. The most recent announcement mostly overlaps with the 2021 announcement.

As for Saudi Arabia, this is a vague commitment, made in a phone call between Trump and the Saudi leader. In 2017, Trump claimed Saudi Arabia had struck $350 billion in deals, but upon inspection the list involved double-counting, wishful thinking and fuzzy figures. Many of the investments ended up in Saudi Arabia, not the United States.

Trump also touted a $100 billion investment in AI data centers, but OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman had been discussing the plans at least 10 months before Trump was inaugurated. A $100 billion investment announced this week by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. stems from an effort launched by Biden, including funds from the Chips and Science Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that passed in 2022.

“Not long ago. And you can’t even believe these numbers. 1 in 10,000 children had autism. 1 in 10,000. and now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong.”

This is misleading. The rate has gotten worse since 2000, when the rate was 1 in 150, but there is no medical consensus as to whether autism is on the rise. It's unclear how much of that is due to greater awareness, early detection, and the expansion of disorders included on the autism spectrum.

The criteria for diagnosing autism have changed with revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). In 1983, the criteria for “autistic disorder” were more restrictive. More disorders were added since then, broadening the range of disorders that now meet the definition of the Autism Spectrum Disorder, according to the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit that supports autism research and raising awareness of the disorder.

“But it was built at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure. 38,000 workers died building the Panama Canal. They died of malaria. They died of snakebites and mosquitoes.”

Trump’s estimate of 38,000 dead is exaggerated. The accepted estimate is fewer than 6,000, mainly from injury and disease. Many were not Americans. Black workers, including many West Indians, by some estimates were nearly four times more likely to die than White workers. An earlier French effort to build a canal (when Panama was still a province of Colombia) led to the death of 22,000, many from malaria and yellow fever.

“Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian Oil and Gas than they have spent on defending Ukraine — by far!”

This is false. Trump is referring to a study that found the European Union in 2024 spent more on Russian fossil fuels than financial aid for Ukraine — but that estimate did not include military or humanitarian contributions. Overall, European spending on Ukraine greatly exceeded spending on Russian gas and oil.

“We’ve spent perhaps $350 billion [on Ukraine], like taking candy from a baby. That’s what happened. And they’ve [the E.U.] spent $100 billion.”

Trump’s numbers are wrong. The United States has appropriated $183 billion, according to the inspector general for Ukraine aid. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks support for Ukraine, says the United States and the European Union have provided roughly the same amount of military aid, while the Europeans have provided far more nonmilitary aid than the United States — $73 billion vs. $52 billion.

“Biden has authorized more money in this fight than Europe has spent by billion and billions of dollars.”

This is apples and oranges. The E.U. has both authorized more money and spent more money on Ukraine than the United States, but not all of the money authorized has been spent yet. The United States has appropriated $183 billion and disbursed or obligated $140.5 billion. Meanwhile, the E.U. has committed $198 billion and spent $145 billion.

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