2026-01-20T22:58:33.387Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统庆祝其重返白宫一周年，期间再次散布了他在过去一年中最常提及的大量虚假言论。
在白宫对记者进行的冗长讲话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”，但他的言论中充斥着虚构的经济数据、关于国内外事务的常见虚假说法、对2020年大选的一贯谎言（他称自己“光明正大地输掉了”大选）以及其他各类不准确信息。
以下是对其部分言论的事实核查。
广告反馈
经济与税收
汽油价格：特朗普编造了汽油价格的虚假信息，称“我猜现在的平均价格是2.31美元”。他没有说明“他们”指的是谁，但美国汽车协会（AAA）公布的数据显示，周二全国汽油平均价格约为每加仑2.82美元。
特朗普还宣称：“现在国内有些地方的汽油价格只要1.99美元一加仑。1.99美元！”这一说法需要具体背景说明。根据AAA的数据，周二没有任何一个州的平均汽油价格低于2美元/加仑，俄克拉荷马州的平均价格最低，约为2.31美元/加仑。确实存在个别加油站以低于2美元/加仑的价格销售汽油，但仅占其追踪的约15万个加油站的极小比例。GasBuddy石油分析负责人帕特里克·德汉（Patrick De Haan）在特朗普发表上述言论前告诉CNN，周二全美价格低于2美元的加油站不足100个（不包括特殊折扣情况）。
处方药价格：特朗普重复了其虚假宣称，称他在“最惠国”（MFN）政策下达成的药品协议“将药品价格削减高达300%、400%、500%甚至600%”。虽然特朗普确实为部分药品争取到了降价协议（仅覆盖美国销售药品的一小部分），但“300%、400%、500%乃至600%”的降幅在数学上是站不住脚的——如果总统“奇迹般地”让药企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反而会得到“补贴”，但这显然并未发生。您可以在此阅读更详细的事实核查。
食品杂货价格：特朗普在吹嘘通胀得到控制时声称“许多食品杂货价格大幅下降”。诚然，在其第二个总统任期内，部分特定商品（尤其是鸡蛋）价格有所回落，但消费者价格指数（CPI）数据显示，整体食品杂货价格仍上涨约1.9%，且涨价的食品杂货种类远多于降价的。
此外，整体食品杂货价格持续上涨。上周发布的12月消费者价格指数通胀报告显示，11月至12月食品杂货价格环比涨幅达到三年多来的最高水平（0.7%），12月食品杂货价格较去年同期上涨2.4%。（这些数据可能受秋季政府停摆影响）。
整体通胀：特朗普声称“我们没有通胀”，但随后又迅速补充“我们只有极少的通胀”（他还重复了“没有通胀”的说法，紧接着又称是“基本上没有通胀”）。对于“极少”和“基本上”的定义没有统一标准，但通胀显然持续存在。上周发布的最新消费者价格指数报告显示，12月平均消费者价格较去年同期上涨2.7%，环比11月上涨0.3%。
拜登政府时期的通胀：特朗普称“我们接手了很高的物价”，但随后又编造虚假言论：“我们接手时，记住——通胀处于历史性高位。我们从未经历过那样的通胀。他们说‘48年’，但不管是48年还是有史以来，我认为我们经历了最高的通胀。”
特朗普所谓“接手最高通胀”的说法是错误的。拜登政府时期，美国年通胀率在2022年6月达到约40年高位（9.1%），但这远非历史最高值。历史最高通胀率出现在1920年，高达23.7%，且该数据发生在特朗普重返白宫前两年多。到2025年1月特朗普重返白宫时，通胀率已降至3.0%——仅略高于当前2.7%的水平，而特朗普将后者描述为“无通胀”“极少通胀”和“基本上无通胀”。
美国投资：特朗普重复了其惯用的虚假说法，称“因为我的当选，有18万亿美元正在被投资到美国”，并补充“现在可能更多了”。18万亿美元这一数字纯属虚构。截至周二特朗普讲话时，白宫官网显示其任内“重大投资宣布”总额为9.6万亿美元，即便如此，这一数字也存在严重夸大。CNN10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”而非直接对美投资的承诺，以及未明确的表述都计入了统计，这些都不能算作真正的投资承诺。
社会保障税：特朗普再次错误声称他“实现了社会保障税全免”，这是他2024年竞选时的承诺之一。2025年特朗普签署的国内政策法案确实为65岁及以上个人提供了每年6000美元的额外临时税收减免（收入超过75,000美元/年的个人减免金额较少），但白宫自身也承认，数百万65岁及以上的社会保障领取者仍需缴纳福利税，且该减免政策将于2028年到期，不适用65岁以下的社会保障领取者。
外国、移民与监狱：特朗普重复了其公开讲话中的常见谎言，但从未提供证据——他声称“许多国家打开监狱，将囚犯‘转移’到美国”，并特别指出“委内瑞拉，在前领导人马杜罗时期，打开监狱将囚犯送入美国”。
但特朗普从未证明委内瑞拉（或任何国家）确实“为移民目的开放监狱”，更不用说“许多国家”这样做并主动“将囚犯转移到美国”了。马杜罗执政期间，委内瑞拉因经济问题、暴力和政治动荡出现大规模移民潮，但特朗普及其助手多次拒绝向CNN等媒体证实这一点，即委内瑞拉是否“清空监狱（或心理健康机构）以向美国或其他国家遣送‘不受欢迎的公民’”。
追踪暴力事件的独立组织“委内瑞拉暴力观察”创始人兼主任罗伯托·布里塞尼奥-莱昂在2024年6月致CNN的电子邮件中表示：“没有证据表明委内瑞拉政府在清空监狱或心理健康机构以向国外（即美国或其他国家）遣送人员。”伦敦大学伯贝克学院全球监狱问题专家海伦·费尔（Helen Fair）也在2024年告诉CNN，她“完全没有看到任何国家清空监狱向美国遣送囚犯的证据，更不用说特朗普声称的‘众多国家’这样做了”。
特朗普与战争：在再次坚持自己应获得诺贝尔和平奖的同时，特朗普重复了关于其外交角色的常见谎言：“我结束了八场无法结束的战争。”尽管特朗普在解决某些冲突方面发挥了作用（至少是暂时的），但“八场”这一数字明显夸大。
特朗普解释称，他列出的“已解决战争”包括埃及和埃塞俄比亚之间的争端，但这实际上并非战争，而是关于尼罗河支流上埃塞俄比亚大坝项目的长期外交纠纷。（周二他声称：“埃及和埃塞俄比亚本会因大坝开战，是我让他们停止了冲突”，但即便如此，这也不能算作“无法结束的战争”。）
他的清单中还包括另一场在其任内从未真正发生的战争——塞尔维亚和科索沃之间的冲突（他有时声称阻止了这两个实体之间新战争的爆发，但未详细说明具体措施，这与“结束战争”完全不同）。此外，他还将“结束刚果和卢旺达战争”列为自己的功绩，但特朗普政府今年促成的刚果民主共和国与卢旺达的和平协议并未被主要交战叛军联盟签署，冲突仍在持续。
其清单还包括泰国和柬埔寨之间的武装冲突，尽管特朗普政府今年早些时候促成了和平协议，但2025年12月冲突再次爆发。
人们可以争论特朗普在解决其他冲突中发挥的作用的重要性，或质疑其中某些冲突是否真的结束（例如，以色列与哈马斯在10月停火协议后，加沙地区仍有杀戮事件）。无论如何，特朗普所说的“八场”显然夸大了事实。
历任总统与战争：在重复“结束八场战争”的虚假言论后，特朗普继续编造谎言：“可能从未有总统结束过一场战争。我不知道，想想吧，我结束了八场。”虽然无法确定特朗普个人“知道”什么，但美国总统确实在结束战争方面发挥了关键作用，包括赢得两次世界大战和海湾战争等。此外，总统还在非美国参与的战争中促成了无数和平协议。
西奥多·罗斯福总统因1906年促成日俄战争和平协议而获诺贝尔和平奖；吉米·卡特总统在1979年促成埃及和以色列和平协议方面发挥了重要作用；比尔·克林顿总统在1995年促成波斯尼亚战争结束的和平协议中发挥了关键作用；美国政府还调解了多起其他武装冲突。
墨西哥湾：特朗普声称他将墨西哥湾更名为“美洲湾”，并编造虚假数据：“因为我们拥有92%的海岸线。这一直让我很困扰，你知道，我们拥有大部分海岸线，墨西哥只占很小比例——大概8%。我们占92%。”
佛罗里达州立大学海洋学名誉教授伊恩·麦克唐纳（Ian MacDonald）在2025年特朗普发表类似言论时告诉CNN：“特朗普所说的‘92%’是错误的。只要看地图就能发现美国和墨西哥在墨西哥湾的海岸线大致平分。”
美国、墨西哥和古巴在墨西哥湾的海岸线精确划分因统计方法不同而有差异（美国环境保护署称美国占1630英里），但特朗普所谓“92%”的说法无论从何种合理标准衡量都是错误的。佛罗里达大学历史教授、普利策奖获奖作品《墨西哥湾：美国海域的形成》作者杰克·戴维斯（Jack Davis）表示：“美国海岸线占墨西哥湾总长度的不足一半。”他补充道：“即使他指的是岛屿、半岛等曲折地形，其统计方法也不准确。”
北约成员国国防开支：特朗普吹嘘北约成员国承诺到2035年将国防相关和安全相关支出占国内生产总值（GDP）的比例提高到5%（包括至少3.5%的GDP用于此前2%目标涵盖的“核心”国防需求）。特朗普称：“迫使北约成员国将国防开支从2%提高到GDP的5%，他们支付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（他们给自己设定了10年时间）。北约估计显示，2025年只有波兰、立陶宛和拉脱维亚三个成员国的核心国防开支达到或超过3.5%（到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万·拉加德（Erwan Lagadec）教授在1月中旬特朗普发表类似言论后通过电子邮件表示：“盟国目前‘支付5%’用于实际国防开支的说法完全不成立。即便到2035年，他们的目标也仅为3.5%（传统意义上的国防预算）。截至2025年中期，没有一个盟国达到4.5%，事实上连5%都未达到。”
拉加德补充道：“2025年美国国防开支仅占GDP的3.2%，低于2014年（唯一出现这种情况的国家）。因此，可以说美国现在是‘落后者’，走向‘错误方向’；尽管美国2025年国防开支占比低于2014年，有人可能认为这是‘成功’的体现——即其他盟国增加了开支。”
特朗普关于“他们没有支付2%”的说法需要具体背景说明。尽管多数北约成员国在2023年之前未达到2%的目标，但2024年已有多数成员国达标；北约数据显示，在31个受目标约束的成员国中，18个达到或超过2%。
2020年大选：特朗普再次谎称2020年大选被“窃取”，称“拜登这个人并没有赢得选举，顺便说一句——那是一场操纵的选举，现在所有人都知道了。而且有数据越来越清楚地证明这一点，我们抓到了证据，我们抓到了。”拜登在自由公正的选举中击败了特朗普；特朗普所谓“抓到拜登证据”以及“某些数据证明自己获胜”的说法完全是无稽之谈。
2024年大选：特朗普再次抱怨拜登在2024年7月大选辩论中表现“灾难性”后退出竞选，称“我当时领先拜登约25个百分点，他们说‘我们换个人吧’，但这从未发生过。”实际上，在2024年6月拜登大选辩论表现“灾难性”后，多数全国民调显示特朗普领先，但民调普遍显示其优势在个位数范围内（有时甚至在误差范围内）。
美国国家公共广播电台（NPR）和公共广播公司（PBS）：特朗普称“我签署了法案，彻底削减了给‘觉醒和有偏见的NPR和PBS’的所有纳税人资金”，并补充“我猜他们现在已经不复存在了，听说他们倒闭了。”特朗普所谓“听说”并不属实，尽管2025年他削减了联邦资金，但NPR和PBS仍在运营，只是联邦资金占比从整体预算中大幅下降（对PBS影响更大，对NPR相对较小）。
美国公共广播公司（CPB）董事会因失去资金而投票决定解散该实体，但这一决定并未关闭NPR和PBS本身。新泽西州的NJ PBS因联邦和州资金流失宣布计划在2026年6月关闭，但这并不意味着整个PBS系统都像特朗普周二所言那样“倒闭”。
加州水政策：特朗普再次毫无根据地将2025年1月洛杉矶野火与加州领导人“保护北部某小鱼类物种”的用水决策联系起来。这两件事毫无关联，加州水政策专家早已解释过这一点。
芬太尼相关死亡：特朗普再次否认官方的药物过量死亡统计数据，在提及签署将芬太尼列为“大规模杀伤性武器”的命令后，声称“我相信去年和今年我们失去了30万人”。
特朗普“去年和今年”的表述难以明确具体时间范围，但无论如何，“30万”这一数据毫无依据。美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）数据显示，2024年12月结束的12个月内，美国药物过量死亡总数为81,711例（涉及所有药物，而非仅芬太尼）——这一数字虽已很可怕，但远低于特朗普的说法。截至2025年8月的12个月内，预估药物过量死亡总数为72,836例。
2024年特朗普提出类似“30万”的虚假数据时，布兰迪斯大学阿片类药物政策研究中心医学主任安德鲁·科洛德尼博士告诉CNN：“这是编造的数据，我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.
Ad Feedback
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.”