2026-01-20T22:58:33.387Z / CNN
唐纳德·特朗普总统在白宫庆祝重返办公室一周年，期间充斥着他在过去一年中最常重复的大量虚假言论。
在对记者进行的冗长讲话以及随后的问答环节中，特朗普试图吹嘘自2025年1月就职以来美国取得的进展。但他的言论中夹杂着虚构的经济数据、关于国内外事务的常见虚假说法、他对2020年选举失利的一贯谎言，以及其他各种不准确的信息。
以下是对他部分言论的事实核查：
经济与税收
汽油价格： 特朗普声称”现在平均每加仑2.31美元”，这是虚假的。他没有解释”他们”指的是谁，但根据美国汽车协会(AAA)发布的数据，周二全国汽油平均价格约为每加仑2.82美元。
特朗普还说：”现在美国有些地方的汽油价格是1.99美元一加仑，1.99美元！”这一说法需要上下文说明。根据AAA的数据，周二美国没有任何一个州的平均汽油价格低于2美元；俄克拉荷马州的平均价格最低，约为每加仑2.31美元。确实有个别加油站以低于2美元的价格出售汽油，但仅占该公司追踪的约15万个加油站中的一小部分。GasBuddy石油分析主管帕特里克·德哈恩在特朗普发表上述言论前告诉CNN，该公司发现周二全国低于2美元的加油站不到100个（特殊折扣除外）。
处方药价格： 特朗普再次重复其虚假说法，声称他在”最惠国”政策下达成的协议将”削减药品价格高达300%、400%、500%甚至600%”。虽然特朗普确实为部分药品达成了降价协议，但这些协议仅涵盖美国销售的一小部分药品。数学本身就揭穿了”300%、400%、500%甚至600%”的说法——如果总统”神奇地”让制药公司将所有药品价格降至0美元，那也只是100%的降幅，而超过100个百分点的降幅意味着美国人买药将获得补贴，而这显然没有发生。
食品杂货价格： 特朗普在吹嘘对抗通胀的进展时称”许多食品价格大幅下降”。确实，在其第二个总统任期内，一些特定食品（尤其是鸡蛋）价格有所下降，但消费者价格指数(CPI)显示，整体食品价格上涨了约1.9%，而且涨价的食品种类远多于降价的。
此外，整体食品价格仍在继续上涨。上周发布的12月消费者价格指数通胀报告显示，食品价格从11月到12月的环比涨幅达到三年多来最快，为0.7%；12月食品价格较去年同期上涨2.4%。（这些数据可能受到秋季政府停摆影响数据收集工作的影响。）
整体通胀： 特朗普声称”我们没有通胀”，但随后迅速补充”我们的通胀非常低”（他还重复了”没有通胀”的说法，然后又补充称是”基本上没有通胀”）。对于什么构成”非常低”和”基本上没有”，并没有明确的标准，但通胀显然仍在持续。上周发布的最新消费者价格指数报告显示，12月消费者平均价格较去年同期上涨2.7%，较11月上涨0.3%。
拜登时期的通胀： 特朗普称”我们继承了很高的物价”，但随后又添加了一个虚假说法：”我们继承了——记住这一点——通胀处于历史高位。我们从未有过那样的通胀。他们说’48年’，但不管是48年还是有史以来，在我看来，我们经历了有史以来最高的通胀。”
特朗普并没有继承史上最高的通胀。美国的年通胀率在拜登政府期间（2022年6月）达到约40年高位，当时为9.1%。这远未达到1920年创下的23.7%的历史最高记录——而且这一时期距离特朗普重返办公室还有两年多。到2025年1月特朗普重返办公室时，通胀已降至3.0%，仅略高于特朗普描述为”没有通胀”、”非常低的通胀”和”基本上没有通胀”的当前2.7%。
美国投资： 特朗普再次重复其常见的虚假说法，称”因为我的当选，有18万亿美元正在投资美国，现在可能更多了。”18万亿美元的数字纯属虚构。截至周二特朗普发表讲话时，白宫官网称其任期内”重大投资宣布”的数字为9.6万亿美元，但即使这一数字也被严重夸大；CNN在10月的详细审查发现，白宫将数万亿美元的模糊投资承诺、双边贸易或经济交流而非对美国的投资，以及不明确的声明都计入了这一数字。
社会保障税： 特朗普再次重复其不准确的说法，称他已实现”对社会保障不征税”，这是他2024年竞选时的承诺之一。2025年特朗普签署的重大国内政策法案确实为65岁及以上个人增加了每年6000美元的临时税收减免（收入超过75000美元的个人减免金额较小），但白宫本身已承认，数百万65岁及以上的社会保障领取者仍将继续缴纳福利税——而且这一新增减免将在2028年到期，不适用于65岁以下的社会保障领取者。
外国、移民与监狱
虚假移民监狱说法： 特朗普重复了他公共言论中的一个常见说法，但从未提供证据证明这一说法：”许多国家打开监狱，把囚犯送到美国。”他特别提到前领导人尼古拉斯·马杜罗领导的委内瑞拉，称”委内瑞拉把监狱大门打开送囚犯到美国”。
但特朗普从未提供证据证明委内瑞拉甚至是为了移民目的而打开监狱，更不用说”许多国家”都这样做并主动”把囚犯送到美国”。在马杜罗执政期间，由于经济问题、暴力和政治动荡，委内瑞拉出现大规模移民潮。但尽管CNN和其他媒体多次要求置评，特朗普及其助手仍未证明委内瑞拉清空了监狱（或如特朗普还声称的精神病院）以将所谓”不受欢迎的公民”送往美国。
追踪暴力事件的独立组织委内瑞拉暴力观察组织创始人兼主任罗伯托·布里塞尼奥-莱昂在2024年6月给CNN的电子邮件中表示：”我们没有证据表明委内瑞拉政府正在清空监狱或精神病院以将他们送往国外，即美国或其他国家。”伦敦大学伯克贝克学院全球监狱专家海伦·费尔在2024年告诉CNN，她”绝对没有看到任何证据”表明任何国家为了将囚犯送往美国而清空监狱，更不用说特朗普所声称的”许多国家”都这样做了。
特朗普与战争
诺贝尔和平奖与战争结束： 特朗普再次坚持他应该获得诺贝尔和平奖，同时重复了他关于自己在外交事务中角色的常见虚假说法：”我结束了八场无法结束的战争。”虽然特朗普确实在某些冲突中发挥了作用（至少是暂时的），但”八场”这一数字显然夸大其词。
特朗普多次解释说，他列出的已解决战争包括埃及和埃塞俄比亚之间的冲突，但这实际上并非一场战争，而是关于尼罗河支流上埃塞俄比亚大坝项目的长期外交争端。（周二他说：”埃及和埃塞俄比亚要为大坝开战，我让他们停了下来”，但即使这是真的，也不意味着这是一场”无法结束的战争”。）
特朗普的清单还包括另一场在其任内并未真正发生的战争，即塞尔维亚和科索沃之间的冲突。（他有时声称自己阻止了这两个实体之间新战争的爆发，但很少详细说明自己的意思，而这与解决一场实际战争不同。）他还列出了他所谓的”结束与刚果和卢旺达的战争”，但尽管特朗普政府今年促成了一项和平协议，刚果民主共和国与卢旺达之间的战争仍在继续——而该协议并未得到交战主要反叛联盟的签署。
特朗普的清单还包括泰国和柬埔寨之间的武装冲突，尽管今年早些时候特朗普政府促成了和平协议，但12月冲突再次爆发。
人们可以质疑特朗普在解决清单上其他冲突中的作用重要性，或者合理质疑其中一些冲突是否真的结束了；例如，以色列与哈马斯在10月停火协议后，加沙地带的杀戮仍在继续。无论如何，特朗普的”八场”数字显然太大了。
前任总统与战争： 在重复他结束八场战争的虚假说法后，特朗普还错误地声称：”可能没有总统结束过一场战争。我不知道，想想看，我结束了八场。”虽然我们不确定特朗普个人的知识范围，但美国总统曾通过打赢战争（包括第一次世界大战、第二次世界大战和海湾战争）在结束各种战争中发挥了重要作用。此外，总统还促成了许多美国未参与的战争的和平协议。
西奥多·罗斯福总统因促成结束日俄战争的和平协议而于1906年获得诺贝尔和平奖；吉米·卡特总统在1979年促成了埃及和以色列之间长期战争状态的和平协议；比尔·克林顿总统在1995年促成了结束波斯尼亚战争的和平协议；美国政府还调解了一系列其他武装冲突。
墨西哥湾与其他话题
墨西哥湾名称变更： 特朗普称他将墨西哥湾更名为”美洲湾”，然后重复虚假说法：”因为我们拥有92%的海岸线。这一直困扰我，你知道，我们有大部分海岸线，墨西哥只占小部分——约8%，我们有92%。”
佛罗里达州立大学海洋学荣誉退休教授伊恩·麦克唐纳指出，美国和墨西哥在墨西哥湾的海岸线大致平分，”从地图上看一目了然”。墨西哥湾总海岸线中，美国占比的确切数字取决于计算方式（美国环保署称美国部分为1630英里），但特朗普的”92%”显然错误；佛罗里达大学历史教授、普利策奖获奖书籍《墨西哥湾：美国海洋的形成》作者杰克·戴维斯表示：”美国海岸线仅占墨西哥湾总长度的不到一半。”戴维斯补充说：”即使他指的是岛屿、半岛等曲折复杂的地形，他的计算也是错误的。”
北约国防开支： 特朗普吹嘘北约成员国承诺到2035年将国防和安全相关支出占GDP的5%（包括至少3.5%用于”核心”国防需求，即之前2%目标所涵盖的部分），称”让北约成员国同意将国防开支从2%提高到5%，他们现在支付5%，而不是之前的2%”。
但大多数北约成员国尚未达到新的更高目标——他们给自己十年时间来实现这一目标。北约估计，2025年只有波兰、立陶宛和拉脱维亚三国的核心国防开支达到或超过3.5%，尽管2026年可能会有更多国家达标。
乔治·华盛顿大学国际事务学院北约与欧盟研究项目负责人埃尔万·拉加德教授在电子邮件中表示：”盟国目前’支付5%国防开支’的说法绝对不真实，即使到2035年，他们也只承诺3.5%的核心国防开支。截至2025年年中，没有任何盟国达到5%的国防开支，实际上甚至不到4.5%。”拉加德补充说：”2025年美国的国防开支占GDP的3.2%，低于2014年的水平（这是唯一一个出现这种情况的国家）。因此，美国现在可以被视为’落后者’，方向错误；尽管当然，美国在2025年国防开支占GDP比例低于2014年，这也可能被视为一种’成功’——即其他盟国增加了开支的结果。”
特朗普声称”他们没有支付2%”需要上下文说明：虽然大多数北约成员国直到2023年才达到2%的目标，但2024年已有多数国家达标；北约数据显示，31个目标国中有18个达到或超过2%。
其他虚假言论
2020年选举： 特朗普重复他关于2020年选举被窃取的谎言，称”乔·拜登根本没有赢得选举——这是一场被操纵的选举，现在大家都知道了。顺便说一句，有数据显示这一点更加明显。我们抓到了他，我们抓到他了。”拜登在一次自由公正的选举中确实击败了特朗普；特朗普关于拜登”被抓到”以及”未指明数据”显示特朗普获胜的说法都是无稽之谈。
2024年选举： 特朗普再次抱怨拜登在2024年7月辩论中的糟糕表现后退出竞选。但他再次夸大了自己当时的领先优势，称”我当时领先乔·拜登约25个百分点，他们说’我们换个人吧’。这种情况从未发生过。”事实上，在2024年6月总统辩论中拜登表现糟糕后进行的大多数全国民调显示，特朗普确实领先，但通常优势在个位数，有时甚至在误差范围内。
对NPR和PBS的资金削减： 特朗普称他”签署法案切断了所有纳税人资金流向那些’觉醒’和有偏见的NPR和PBS”，并补充说”我猜他们现在差不多都完了，我听说他们关门了。”特朗普”听说”的情况并不明确，但无论如何，国家公共广播电台(NPR)和公共广播公司(PBS)在2025年联邦资金被削减后仍然继续运营。这些资金虽然仅占这两个机构总预算的一小部分（对PBS而言比例更大），但特朗普的说法是错误的。
公共广播公司（CPB）董事会本月早些时候因资金消失而决定解散该实体，但该决定并未关闭NPR和PBS本身。新泽西州NJ PBS宣布计划在2025年6月因联邦和州资金流失而关闭，但这并非总统周二所说的”整个PBS”关闭。
加州水政策： 特朗普再次无根据地将2025年1月洛杉矶野火与加州领导人决定将该州部分水资源用于”保护北部一个微小鱼类物种”联系起来。正如加州水政策专家长期解释的那样，这两件事没有任何关系。
芬太尼死亡人数： 特朗普再次错误地拒绝官方的过量死亡统计数据。在指出他签署了一项将芬太尼宣布为”大规模杀伤性武器”的命令后，他声称”我相信去年有30万人死亡，今年也是如此。”
特朗普”去年、今年”的表述难以确定具体时间范围，但无论如何，他的”30万人”数字毫无根据。截至2024年12月的12个月内，美国疾病控制与预防中心(CDC)估计全国药物过量死亡人数为81711人（涉及所有药物，不只是芬太尼）——这是一个可怕的数字，但远低于特朗普所说的数字。截至2025年8月的12个月内，最新估计为72836人。
当特朗普在2024年提出类似”30万人”的说法时，布兰迪斯大学阿片类药物政策研究合作组织医疗主任安德鲁·科洛德尼博士告诉CNN，这是”编造的数字”，他”不知道特朗普从哪里得到’30万’这个数字。”
Fact check: Trump marks one year back in office with numerous false claims
2026-01-20T22:58:33.387Z / CNN
President Donald Trump celebrated the first anniversary of his return to office with many of the false claims he told most frequently during that year.
During a meandering address to reporters at the White House and a subsequent question-and-answer session, Trump sought to tout the progress the US has made since his inauguration in January 2025. But he peppered his remarks with fictional economic figures, familiar false claims about foreign and domestic affairs, his usual lie about the 2020 election he lost fair and square, and a variety of other inaccuracies.
Here is a fact check of some of his remarks.
The economy and taxes
Gas prices: Trump made a false claim about gas prices, saying, “I guess the average now, they’re saying, is $2.31.” Trump didn’t explain who “they” might be, but the national average gas price on Tuesday was about $2.82 per gallon, according to data published by AAA.
Trump also said, “They have places in the country now, $1.99 a gallon. $1.99!” This needs context. On Tuesday, there was no state with an average gas price below $2 per gallon, according to the AAA data; the lowest average in any state was about $2.31 per gallon, in Oklahoma. There were some individual gas stations selling gas for under $2 per gallon, but a tiny percentage of the total. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, told CNN just prior to Trump’s remarks that the firm found fewer than 100 stations across the country below $2 on Tuesday (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks.
Prescription drug prices:Trump repeated his false claim that agreements he secured under his “Most Favored Nation” policy on prescription drugs are deals “to slash drug prices by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600%.” While Trump has secured some deals for price reductions, covering a small fraction of drugs sold in the US, these “300, 400, 500 and even 600%” figures are debunked by math itself; if the president magically got drug companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut, while a decline of more than 100 percentage points would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications, which is not happening. You can read a longer fact check here.
Grocery prices:Trump, touting progress against inflation, claimed that “many of the groceries have come way down.” It is true that some particular grocery products, notably including eggs, have gotten cheaper during his second presidency – but overall grocery prices are up about 1.9%, Consumer Price Index figures show, and far more grocery products have gotten more expensive than have gotten cheaper.
Also, overall grocery prices continue to go up. The Consumer Price Index inflation report for December, released last week, showed grocery prices spiked from November to December at the fastest month-to-month rate, 0.7%, in more than three years; they were 2.4% higher in December than they were a year prior. (It’s possible that these figures were affected by how the fall government shutdown affected the government’s data collection efforts.)
Overall inflation: Trump claimed, “We have no inflation,” though he then quickly added, “We have very little inflation.” (He also repeated the “no inflation” claim and then quickly added that it is “essentially no inflation.”) There’s no firm rule on what constitutes “very little” and “essentially,” but inflation very much continues. The latest Consumer Price Index report, released last week, showed that average consumer prices were 2.7% higher in December than they were a year prior and 0.3% higher than they were in November.
Biden-era inflation:Trump said, “We inherited very high prices.” But then he added a false claim: “We inherited, remember this – inflation was at a historic high. We had never had inflation like that. They say ‘48 years,’ but whether it’s 48 years, or ever, we had the highest inflation, in my opinion, that we’ve ever had.”
Trump didn’t inherit the highest inflation of all time. The year-over-year US inflation rate hit about a 40-year high during the Biden administration in June 2022, when it was 9.1%. That was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920 – and it occurred more than two years before Trump returned. By the time Trump returned to office in January 2025, inflation had plummeted to 3.0% – just a bit above the current 2.7% rate Trump described as “no inflation,” “very little inflation” and “essentially no inflation.”
Investment in the US:Trump repeated his regular false claim that “$18 trillion” is being invested in the US because he was elected, adding, “Now it’s probably more than that.” The $18 trillion figure is fiction. At the time Trump spoke on Tuesday, the White House’s own website said the figure for “major investment announcements” during this Trump term was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.
Taxes on Social Security: Trump repeated his inaccurate claim that he had achieved “no tax on Social Security,” one of his campaign promises in 2024. The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.
Foreign countries, migration and prisons:Trump repeated a claim that is a staple of his public remarks but that he has never proven – asserting that “many countries opened up their prisons and dropped them into the United States.” He identified Venezuela, under former leader Nicolás Maduro, as one such country, saying Venezuela “opened their prisons into the United States” to send people in them to the US as migrants.
But Trump has never provided proof that even Venezuela opened prisons for migration purposes, let alone that “many countries” did so and then actively “dropped them into the United States.”
There was large-scale emigration from Venezuela amid economic problems, violence and political turmoil during the Maduro era. But despite multiple requests for comment from CNN and other outlets, Trump and his aides have not proven that Venezuela emptied its prisons (or mental health facilities, as Trump has also claimed) to somehow send undesirable citizens into the US.
Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an independent organization that tracks violence, said in an email to CNN in June 2024: “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons or mental health institutions to send them outside the country, in other words, to the U.S. or any other country.”
Helen Fair, an expert on global prisons at Birkbeck, University of London, told CNN in 2024 that she had “seen absolutely no evidence” that any country had emptied prisons to send prisoners to the US, let alone that numerous countries had done so as Trump has claimed.
Trump and wars:While again insisting he should win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump repeated a familiar false claim about his role in foreign affairs: “I ended eight unendable wars.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.
Trump has repeatedly explained that his list of supposed wars settled includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that wasn’t actually a war; it is a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. (On Tuesday, he said, “Egypt and Ethiopia were going to fight over a dam and I got them to stop,” but even if that were true, it would still mean it wasn’t an “unendable war.”)
Trump’s list includes another supposed war that didn’t actually occur during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has sometimes claimed to have prevented the eruption of a new war between those two entities, providing few details about what he meant, but that is different than settling an actual war.) And his list includes how he supposedly “ended the war with the Congo and Rwanda,” but the war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has continued despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration this year – which was never signed by the leading rebel coalition doing the fighting.
Trump’s list also includes an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting erupted again in December despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in the year.
One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in having ended the other conflicts on his list, or fairly question whether some have truly ended; for example, killing continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is obviously too big.
Previous presidents and wars: After repeating his false claim that he ended eight wars, Trump also falsely claimed, “No president has probably ever settled one war. I don’t know, think of it. I did eight.” While we can’t be sure what Trump personally knows, US presidents have played a major role in ending various wars by winning those wars, including World War I, World War II and the Gulf War. In addition, presidents have brokered numerous peace agreements in wars not being fought by the US.
President Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in a peace agreement ending a war between the Russian and Japanese empires; President Jimmy Carter played a major role in brokering a 1979 peace agreement to end a long-running state of war between Egypt and Israel; President Bill Clinton played a major role in the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War; US administrations have mediated a long list of other armed conflicts.
The Gulf of Mexico: Trump spoke of how he renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, then repeated a false claim: “Because we have 92% of the shoreline. It always bothered me, I’d say, you know, we have most of the shoreline, Mexico has a small percentage – talks about 8%. We have 92%.”
That “92% number from Trump is bunk,” Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University professor emeritus of oceanography who has extensively studied the Gulf, told CNN when Trump made the same claim in 2025. MacDonald noted that the roughly even divide in Gulf coastline between Mexico and the US is clear “just by looking at the map.”
The precise breakdown in Gulf coastline between the US, Mexico and Cuba depends on how you count (the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency says the US portion is 1,630 miles), but Trump’s “92%” figure is wrong by any reasonable measure; Jack Davis, a University of Florida history professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” said, “The US coastline adds up to just under half of the Gulf’s total.” Davis added: “Even if he is referring to the twists and turns of islands and peninsulas and other knotty features, his count is off.”
NATO members’ defense spending: Trump touted NATO members’ 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 – including at least 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense requirements that were covered by the previous target of 2% of GDP. Trump claimed: “Got NATO members to agree to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP from 2%, and they pay the 5% and they didn’t pay the 2%.”
But most NATO members are not yet meeting the new higher target, which, again, they have given themselves a decade to meet. NATO estimates show that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were at or above 3.5% in core defense spending in 2025, though they may be joined by others in 2026.
“It’s absolutely not true that the Allies are currently ‘paying 5%’ on hard defense, and even by 2035 they’ve only committed to 3.5%, in terms of their defense budget conventionally-understood. As of mid-2025, no Ally is spending 5%, in fact not even 4.5%,” professor Erwan Lagadec, who leads the NATO and European Union studies program at George Washington University’s international affairs school, said in an email after Trump made similar claims earlier in January.
Lagadec added: “In 2025 the U.S. was ‘only’ at 3.2%, down from 2014 in terms of ratios to GDP (the only country in that situation). Hence the case can be made that the U.S. is now the ‘laggard’ going ‘in the wrong direction’; although of course the fact that the U.S. was spending a lower ratio in 2025 than 2014 on defense could be seen as a sign of success, i.e. the outcome of the other Allies doing more.”
Trump’s claim that “they didn’t pay the 2%” needs context. Although most NATO members were not hitting the 2% target as late as 2023, a majority hit the target in 2024; NATO figures show that 18 member countries were at or above 2% out of 31 countries subject to the target.
The 2020 election: Trump repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, saying former President Joe Biden was “a man that didn’t win the election, by the way – it was a rigged election, everybody knows that now. And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly. We caught him. We caught him.” Biden legitimately defeated Trump in a free and fair election; Trump’s vague claims that Biden has been “caught” and that unspecified “numbers” have emerged to show Trump won are nonsense.
The 2024 election: Trump again complained of how Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential campaign after his disastrous performance in a July 2024 debate. But Trump again exaggerated his lead over Biden at the time, saying, “I was up by like 25 points on Joe, and they said, ‘Hey, let’s get somebody else.’ It’s never happened.” Trump did lead in most national polls taken after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June 2024 presidential debate, but polls generally showed his lead in the single digits – and sometimes within the margin of error.
NPR and PBS: Trump said he had “signed legislation to cut all taxpayer funding to woke and biased NPR and PBS,” then added, “And they’re sorta gone now, I guess; I heard they’re closed up.” It’s not clear what Trump has “heard,” but both National Public Radio (NPR) and The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) continue to operate even in the absence of the federal funding Trump cut in 2025. That funding made up a fraction of the two entities’ overall budgets, though much more for PBS than NPR.
It is true that the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit that had directed federal funding to public media entities, voted earlier this month to dissolve the entity because of the absence of the funding. But the corporation’s decision didn’t shut down NPR and PBS themselves. And New Jersey’s NJ PBS has announced it plans to close in June in the wake of the loss of federal and state funding, but that isn’t the entirety of PBS as the president suggested Tuesday.
California water policy:Trump again baselessly linked the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025 to California leaders’ decision to use some of the water in the state to “protect a tiny little fish” species in the northern part of the state. The two things have nothing to do with each other, as experts in California water policy have long explained.
Fentanyl deaths: Trump repeated his inaccurate rejection of official statistics on overdose deaths. After noting that he signed an order to declare fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction,” he claimed that “we lost, I believe, 300,000 people last year, this year.”
Trump’s “last year, this year” wording made it difficult to understand precisely what time period he was referring to this time, but there is no basis for his “300,000” figure regardless. In the 12-month period ending December 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there were 81,711 total overdose deaths in the US (involving all drugs, not just fentanyl) – a terrible figure, but nowhere close to what Trump said. In the 12-month period ending August 2025, the most recent data available, the estimate was 72,836 total overdose deaths.
When Trump made similar “300,000” claims in 2024, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, told CNN that this is “a made-up number,” saying, “I have no idea where Trump is getting ‘300,000’ from.”
