President Donald Trump made a series of false statements during his prime time address from the White House on Wednesday night, many of which have been previously denied. Here’s a fact check.
Inflation and the economy
Inflation under Trump: Near the end of the speech, Trump falsely claimed, “Inflation will be stopped.” Inflation has not stopped; the year-on-year inflation rate in September, 3.0%, was the same as the rate when Trump returned to office in January – in fact, if you go to several decimal places, the September rate was slightly higher – and September was the fifth consecutive month that the year-over-year rate had increased.
Inflation under Biden: Trump repeated his false statement that “when I came into office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some say in the history of our country.”
The year-over-year inflation rate in the last full month of the Biden administration, December 2024, was 2.9%; it was 3.0% in January 2025, the month of Trump’s second inauguration. That’s the same as the most recent rate available at the time Trump spoke on Wednesday, 3.0% in September 2025. (The November rate is scheduled to be released Thursday morning.) We don’t know who Trump was referring to when he said “some say,” but neither the December 2024 number nor the January 2025 number was all-time worst or close to inflation. the ten years.
It is true that the inflation rate of the United States year after year reached about 40 years (not a high of 48 years) during the Biden administration in June 2022, 9.1%, but even this was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, established in 1920 – and it happened more than two years before Trump returned. Inflation had fallen before Trump’s inauguration.
The cumulative increase in prices from the beginning of the Biden administration to the end was not even the worst in the history of the United States. Federal figures show that cumulative inflation under Biden was less than half that during the term of President Jimmy Carter.
Grocery prices: After noting that the price of eggs has declined since March, Trump added, “And everything is going down fast.” This is not true even if he was talking specifically about grocery prices, which have increased this year. Consumer Price Index data shows that a much larger number of grocery items have increased in price since he returned to office than they have decreased. The most recent CPI figures available at the time he spoke on Wednesday, for September, showed that average grocery prices rose about 2.7% from September 2024; about 1.4% from January 2025, the month Trump returned to office; and about 0.3% from August to September.
It’s possible that the November data, scheduled to be released on Thursday, will show a month-over-month drop in grocery prices, but grocery prices will almost certainly still be higher for Trump’s term.
Prescription drug prices: Trump repeated his false claim that an executive order he issued on prescription drug prices would reduce those prices by “up to 400, 500, and even 600%.” These figures are mathematically impossible; if the president magically got the companies to drop the prices of all their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% reduction. You can read a longer fact check here.
Gas prices: Trump said, “Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in most of the country, and some say it’s on the way to $1.99 a gallon.” These claims need context.
As of Wednesday, there were only four states whose average price for a gallon of regular gas was below $2.50, according to data published by AAA: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa and Colorado. (Nine other states had averages between $2.50 and $2.60 per gallon.) The AAA national average was $2.905 per gallon.
No state averaged below Oklahoma’s $2.339 per gallon. And while some individual stations around the country were offering gas for $1.99 a gallon or less, the number was small; Patrick De Haan, head of oil analysis for the GasBuddy firm, estimated that there were between 75 and 100 stations of the tens of thousands of GasBuddy tracks across the country. (This does not include others offering special discounts.)
Investing in the United States this year: Trump repeated his bogus claim that there was “$18 trillion” in investment in the United States during his second presidency, saying Wednesday, “I got a record $18 trillion of investment in the United States.” This figure is fiction. At the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House’s own website said the figure was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a huge exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found that the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment promises, promises that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the United States, or vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of promises. You can read more here.
Immigration and foreign policy
Trump and wars: Trump repeated his false claim that he ended eight wars this year, saying on Wednesday, “I restored American health, I fixed eight wars in 10 months.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.
Previously Trump explained that his list of supposed wars that have been resolved includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that was not actually a war; is a long-running diplomatic dispute over a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. Trump’s list includes another supposed war that did not actually happen during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has at times claimed to have preempted the eruption of a new war between those two entities, providing few details about what he meant, but that is different from resolving an actual war.) And his list includes a supposed success in ending a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that war has continued despite a peace deal brokered by the Trump administration this year.
Trump’s list also includes an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting broke out again this month and continued during this week despite a peace agreement that was sent to the Trump administration earlier in the year.
One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in ending the other conflicts on his list, or fairly question whether some have really ended; for example, killings continued in Gaza in November following the October ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is obviously too big.
Migration and Biden: Trump repeated his false claim that “25 million” migrants entered the country under Biden. The figure of “25 million” is false; even Trump’s earlier “21 million” figure was a wild exaggeration. By December 2024, the last full month under the Biden administration, the federal government had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were quickly deported. Even adding in the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans at about 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was even close to what Trump said.
A US Army soldier closes a gate at the US-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on January 24, after President Donald Trump ordered additional military personnel to the border with Mexico as part of a number of steps to address immigration. – Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images/File
Trump also repeated his unsubstantiated claim that, during the Biden administration, foreign countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions to somehow send the people in them to the United States as migrants, claiming that “many” members of the supposed “army of 25 million people” were “from prisons and jails, mental institutions and insane asylums.” Trump has never provided corroboration for such claims about foreign countries in general or the specific places he has mentioned in the past: Venezuela and “the Congo.” Experts on Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the neighboring Republic of the Congo said during the Biden administration that they saw no basis for the Trump stories, the governments of both Congolese countries told CNN the stories are false, and an expert on the global prison population told CNN she saw “absolutely no evidence” of any country emptying its prisons in the United States somehow.
Other subjects
The Trump bill and Social Security: Trump repeated his false claim that the major domestic policy bill he signed earlier this year includes no Social Security tax. The legislation created a temporary additional tax cut of $6,000 a year for individuals 65 and older (with a smaller cut for individuals earning $75,000 a year or more), but the White House itself implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their new deductions — and expire on their benefits. nor does it apply to Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.
Biden, crime and law enforcement: Trump falsely claimed that, under Biden, there was “crime at record levels, with law enforcement and words like that absolutely banned.” Neither of these two claims is true.
There was no ban on the phrase “law enforcement” under Biden; the Biden administration itself has used the phrase repeatedly. And crime wasn’t even close to an all-time high under Biden. Crime in the United States was much higher in the early 1990s and at various points in the 1970s and 1980s than it was in the 2020s under Biden or Trump.
Killings have increased nationally amid the turmoil of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, both under Trump in 2020 and under Biden in 2021. But FBI data showed that both violent and property crime declined nationally under Biden in 2023 and 2024. Trump has challenged the FBI data, and while it has no basis of record and limitations, there simply is no record and limitations for crime. high during the Biden era.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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