President Donald Trump celebrated the primary anniversary of his return to office with many of the false claims he advised most steadily throughout that year.
During a meandering handle to reporters on 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 financial figures, acquainted false claims about international and home affairs, his ordinary lie concerning the 2020 election he misplaced truthful and sq., and a range of different inaccuracies.
Here is a reality test of some of his remarks.
The economic system and taxes
Gas costs: Trump made a false declare about fuel costs, saying, “I guess the average now, they’re saying, is $2.31.” Trump didn’t clarify who “they” is likely to be, however the nationwide common fuel value on Tuesday was about $2.82 per gallon, in line with data revealed by AAA.
Trump additionally mentioned, “They have places in the country now, $1.99 a gallon. $1.99!” This wants context. On Tuesday, there was no state with a mean fuel value beneath $2 per gallon, in line with the AAA information; the bottom common in any state was about $2.31 per gallon, in Oklahoma. There have been some particular person fuel stations promoting fuel for below $2 per gallon, however a tiny proportion of the overall. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum evaluation for the agency GasBuddy, advised NCS simply previous to Trump’s remarks that the agency discovered fewer than 100 stations throughout the nation beneath $2 on Tuesday (except for particular reductions) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the agency tracks.
Prescription drug costs: Trump repeated his false declare that agreements he secured below his “Most Favored Nation” coverage on prescribed drugs are offers “to slash drug prices by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600%.” While Trump has secured some deals for value reductions, protecting a small fraction of medication offered in the US, these “300, 400, 500 and even 600%” figures are debunked by math itself; if the president magically obtained drug firms to scale back the costs of all of their medication to $0, that will be a 100% reduce, whereas a decline of greater than 100 proportion factors would imply that Americans would receives a commission to amass their medicines, which isn’t occurring. You can learn an extended reality test here.
Grocery costs: Trump, touting progress towards inflation, claimed that “many of the groceries have come way down.” It is true that some specific grocery merchandise, notably together with eggs, have gotten cheaper throughout his second presidency – however general grocery costs are up about 1.9%, Consumer Price Index figures show, and way more grocery merchandise have gotten more expensive than have gotten cheaper.
Also, general grocery costs proceed to go up. The Consumer Price Index inflation report for December, launched final week, confirmed grocery costs spiked from November to December on the quickest month-to-month charge, 0.7%, in more than three years; they have been 2.4% larger in December than they have been a year prior. (It’s doable that these figures have been affected by how the autumn authorities shutdown affected the federal government’s information assortment efforts.)
Overall inflation: Trump claimed, “We have no inflation,” although he then shortly added, “We have very little inflation.” (He additionally repeated the “no inflation” declare after which shortly added that it’s “essentially no inflation.”) There’s no agency rule on what constitutes “very little” and “essentially,” however inflation very a lot continues. The newest Consumer Price Index report, launched final week, showed that common shopper costs have been 2.7% larger in December than they have been a year prior and 0.3% larger than they have been in November.
Biden-era inflation: Trump mentioned, “We inherited very high prices.” But then he added a false declare: “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 best inflation of all time. The year-over-year US inflation rate hit a few 40-year excessive through the Biden administration in June 2022, when it was 9.1%. That was not near the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920 – and it occurred greater than two years earlier than Trump returned. By the time Trump returned to office in January 2025, inflation had plummeted to 3.0% – only a bit above the present 2.7% charge Trump described as “no inflation,” “very little inflation” and “essentially no inflation.”
Investment in the US: Trump repeated his common false declare that “$18 trillion” is being invested in the US as a result of he was elected, including, “Now it’s probably more than that.” The $18 trillion determine is fiction. At the time Trump spoke on Tuesday, the White House’s own website mentioned the determine for “major investment announcements” throughout this Trump time period was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that may be a main exaggeration; a detailed NCS review in October discovered the White House was counting trillions of {dollars} in imprecise funding pledges, pledges that have been about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” moderately than funding in the US, and imprecise statements that didn’t even rise to the extent of pledges.
Taxes on Social Security: Trump repeated his inaccurate declare that he had achieved “no tax on Social Security,” one of his marketing campaign guarantees in 2024. The huge home coverage invoice Trump signed in 2025 did create a further, non permanent $6,000-per-year tax deduction for people age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for people incomes $75,000 per year or extra), however the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will proceed to pay taxes on their advantages – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.
Foreign international locations, migration and prisons: Trump repeated a declare that may be a staple of his public remarks however that he has by no means confirmed – asserting that “many countries opened up their prisons and dropped them into the United States.” He recognized Venezuela, below former chief Nicolás Maduro, as one such nation, saying Venezuela “opened their prisons into the United States” to ship individuals in them to the US as migrants.
But Trump has by no means offered proof that even Venezuela opened prisons for migration functions, not to mention that “many countries” did so after which actively “dropped them into the United States.”
There was large-scale emigration from Venezuela amid financial issues, violence and political turmoil through the Maduro period. But regardless of a number of requests for remark from NCS and different retailers, Trump and his aides haven’t confirmed that Venezuela emptied its prisons (or psychological well being services, as Trump has additionally claimed) to in some way ship undesirable residents into the US.
Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an impartial group that tracks violence, mentioned in an e mail to NCS 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 professional on world prisons at Birkbeck, University of London, advised NCS in 2024 that she had “seen absolutely no evidence” that any nation had emptied prisons to ship prisoners to the US, not to mention that quite a few international locations had performed in order Trump has claimed.
Trump and wars: While once more insisting he ought to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump repeated a well-recognized false declare about his position in international affairs: “I ended eight unendable wars.” While Trump has performed a task in resolving some conflicts (not less than briefly), the “eight” determine is a clear exaggeration.
Trump has repeatedly explained that his record of supposed wars settled features a warfare between Egypt and Ethiopia, however that wasn’t really a warfare; it’s a long-running diplomatic dispute a few major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. (On Tuesday, he mentioned, “Egypt and Ethiopia were going to fight over a dam and I got them to stop,” however even when that have been true, it might nonetheless imply it wasn’t an “unendable war.”)
Trump’s record consists of another supposed war that didn’t actually occur throughout his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has typically claimed to have prevented the eruption of a brand new warfare between these two entities, offering few particulars about what he meant, however that’s totally different than settling an precise warfare.) And his record consists of how he supposedly “ended the war with the Congo and Rwanda,” however the warfare involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has continued regardless of a peace settlement brokered by the Trump administration this year – which was by no means signed by the main insurgent coalition doing the preventing.
Trump’s record additionally consists of an armed battle between Thailand and Cambodia, the place preventing erupted again in December regardless of a peace settlement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in the year.
One can debate the significance of Trump’s position in having ended the opposite conflicts on his record, or pretty query whether or not some have actually ended; for instance, killing continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Regardless, Trump’s “eight” determine is clearly too huge.
Previous presidents and wars: After repeating his false declare that he ended eight wars, Trump additionally falsely claimed, “No president has probably ever settled one war. I don’t know, think of it. I did eight.” While we are able to’t be certain what Trump personally is aware of, US presidents have performed a serious position in ending numerous wars by profitable these wars, together with World War I, World War II and the Gulf War. In addition, presidents have brokered quite a few peace agreements in wars not being fought by the US.
President Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his position in a peace settlement ending a warfare between the Russian and Japanese empires; President Jimmy Carter performed a serious position in brokering a 1979 peace agreement to finish a long-running state of warfare between Egypt and Israel; President Bill Clinton performed a serious position in the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War; US administrations have mediated an extended record of different 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 declare: “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, advised NCS when Trump made the identical declare in 2025. MacDonald famous that the roughly even divide in Gulf shoreline between Mexico and the US is evident “just by looking at the map.”
The exact breakdown in Gulf shoreline between the US, Mexico and Cuba is dependent upon the way you depend (the US authorities’s Environmental Protection Agency says the US portion is 1,630 miles), however Trump’s “92%” determine is improper by any cheap measure; Jack Davis, a University of Florida historical past professor and creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” mentioned, “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’ protection spending: Trump touted NATO members’ 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross home product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 – together with not less than 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense requirements that have been covered by the earlier goal 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 usually are not but assembly the brand new larger goal, which, once more, they’ve given themselves a decade to fulfill. NATO estimates present that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, have been at or above 3.5% in core protection spending in 2025, although they could 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 research program at George Washington University’s worldwide affairs faculty, mentioned in an e mail after Trump made comparable 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 declare that “they didn’t pay the 2%” wants context. Although most NATO members weren’t hitting the two% goal as late as 2023, a majority hit the goal in 2024; NATO figures present that 18 member international locations have been at or above 2% out of 31 international locations topic to the goal.
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 truthful election; Trump’s imprecise claims that Biden has been “caught” and that unspecified “numbers” have emerged to point out Trump received are nonsense.
The 2024 election: Trump once more complained of how Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential marketing campaign after his disastrous efficiency in a July 2024 debate. But Trump once more exaggerated his lead over Biden on 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 nationwide polls taken after Biden’s disastrous efficiency in a June 2024 presidential debate, however polls typically confirmed his lead in the single digits – and typically within the margin of error.
NPR and PBS: Trump mentioned 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,” however each National Public Radio (NPR) and The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) proceed to function even in the absence of the federal funding Trump cut in 2025. That funding made up a fraction of the 2 entities’ general budgets, although far more for PBS than NPR.
It is true that the board of administrators 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 as a result of of the absence of the funding. But the company’s choice didn’t shut down NPR and PBS themselves. And New Jersey’s NJ PBS has announced it plans to shut in June in the wake of the loss of federal and state funding, however that isn’t everything of PBS because the president instructed Tuesday.
California water coverage: Trump once more baselessly linked the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025 to California leaders’ choice to make use of some of the water in the state to “protect a tiny little fish” species in the northern half of the state. The two issues don’t have anything to do with one another, as consultants in California water coverage have lengthy 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 obscure exactly what time interval he was referring to this time, however there isn’t any foundation for his “300,000” determine regardless. In the 12-month interval ending December 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there have been 81,711 complete overdose deaths in the US (involving all medication, not simply fentanyl) – a horrible determine, however nowhere near what Trump mentioned. In the 12-month interval ending August 2025, the latest information accessible, the estimate was 72,836 complete overdose deaths.
When Trump made comparable “300,000” claims in 2024, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, advised NCS that that is “a made-up number,” saying, “I have no idea where Trump is getting ‘300,000’ from.”