President Donald Trump made numerous false claims in a rambling Tuesday speech to lots of of generals and admirals who have been summoned to a military base in Virginia to pay attention to addresses by the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Some of Trump’s false claims have been about the military itself.
Here is a reality test of some of the president’s remarks, a lot of which have been debunked earlier than. This article will likely be up to date with extra objects.
Trump famous that he brags that “we have the strongest military anywhere in the world,” then falsely added, “You never heard Biden say that. You never heard him say anything, but you never heard him say – did we ever hear him say, ‘We have the strongest military.’ He doesn’t say that.” In reality, Biden repeatedly stated the US has the world’s strongest military.
To cite only one instance, Biden said in a 2023 speech about democracy: “Our US military – and this is not hyperbole; I’ve said it for the last two years – is the strongest military in the history of the world. Not just the strongest in the world – in the history of the world.”
Biden typically made the similar level utilizing barely completely different language. In the final week of his presidency, in January 2025, he told a Defense Department viewers, “You are simply the greatest fighting force in the history of the world – in the history of the world. That’s a fact. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”
Biden and the Space Force
Trump falsely claimed that Biden stated he thought he might do away with Space Force, the military department created throughout Trump’s first time period, earlier than backing down.
“When Biden came into office, he wanted to terminate it – he said, ‘And this thing called Space Force, so we can get rid of that.’ And he got hammered by the people in this room for even suggesting it,” Trump stated. But Biden by no means stated something like that.
In the first month of Biden’s presidency, in 2021, there was a controversy over a snarky response by his White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, to a question about whether or not Biden had made any selections about holding Space Force. But even Psaki didn’t come shut to saying “we can get rid of that,” and she said the subsequent day that Space Force has “the full support of the Biden administration” and “we are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force.”
Biden and the conflict in Ukraine
Trump repeated his typical false declare that Biden “gave $350 billion” in assist to Ukraine. That determine isn’t shut to correct. A German suppose tank that has intently tracked wartime assist to Ukraine says the US allotted about $135 billion to Ukraine (and had dedicated about $5 billion extra) by means of June, at present alternate charges.
The US authorities inspector normal overseeing the federal Ukraine response says the US had disbursed about $94 billion as of the finish of June 2025 (and had appropriated about $93 billion extra), together with cash that was spent in the US and in broader Europe slightly than Ukraine itself.
Trump and wars
Trump repeated his false declare that he has “settled seven” wars. He cited a conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda as one instance, saying, “I got that one done,” and talked about “Kosovo and Serbia” as one other.
But these examples really present that Trump has not settled seven wars.
For one, Trump hasn’t ended the battle involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The peace settlement brokered by the Trump administration and signed by the DRC and Rwanda in June did not involve the insurgent coalition, allegedly backed by Rwanda, that has seized territory in the japanese DRC, and NCS reported from the floor final week: “The scores of militia groups that have fought for three decades in one of the most protracted and complex conflicts in the world are still engaging in deadly fighting, and US President Donald Trump’s claimed peace deal for the nation feels like a distant dream.”
And whereas Trump has beforehand claimed to have prevented the eruption of a brand new conflict between Serbia and Kosovo — offering few particulars about what he was speaking about — these international locations weren’t in an actual war both throughout Trump’s present time period or throughout his first time period, after they signed an financial normalization settlement brokered by Trump’s administration in 2020, so he couldn’t presumably have settled one.
Similarly, one other dispute on his list of seven wars he supposedly settled, between Egypt and Ethiopia, was not really a conflict, both, throughout Trump’s time in the White House. They have a long-running and unresolved dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River, however that is not a war.
Migration, ‘the Congo’ and Venezuela
Trump repeated his frequent false declare that, below Biden, “the Congo” and Venezuela opened their prisons to in some way get prisoners to journey to the US as migrants.
“They opened up prisons in the Congo. They came into our country, totally unmatched, unvetted, unchecked, and from all over,” Trump stated, including moments later, “Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country.” He stated a bit later, of unspecified international locations, “They would take their worst people, and they’re people from prisons, in jail, and they put them in a caravan, and they’d walk up.”
Trump has by no means supplied any proof for these claims, which his personal presidential marketing campaign and White House have been unable to corroborate.
Experts on each the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo informed NCS throughout the Biden administration there’s no evidence for Trump’s claims that “the Congo” intentionally emptied prisons to in some way ship inmates to the US as migrants, and the authorities of every of those international locations told NCS that the claims are baseless. Experts on Venezuela and on worldwide prisons agree.
“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,” Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an unbiased group that tracks violence in the nation, stated in an electronic mail to NCS final yr after Trump made comparable claims.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the jail inhabitants record and analysis fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, stated in an electronic mail to NCS final yr.
Biden and the variety of migrants
Trump repeated his false declare that “25 million” migrants entered the nation below Biden. The “25 million” determine is fictional; even Trump’s earlier “21 million” determine was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the final full month below the Biden administration, the federal authorities had recorded below 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants throughout that administration, together with tens of millions who have been quickly expelled from the nation. Even including in the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no method the complete was even shut to what Trump has stated.
Trump repeated his typical lie that the 2020 election was “rigged,” claiming that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine “if the election weren’t rigged.” Leaving apart the hypothetical about Russia, Trump misplaced the 2020 election honest and sq. to Biden.