President Donald Trump made some false claims to the press while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the White House on Monday, together with a long-debunked declare that the US has given Ukraine greater than $300 billion in wartime aid.
“I guess the number is well over $300 billion,” Trump stated at one level in his televised remarks. At one other, he said, “Under Biden, it was just crazy what was going on. I believe the number is over $300 (billion). I think it could be $350 billion worth of equipment and money and everything else.”
Those figures aren’t near appropriate, as numerous fact checks have identified.
According to figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German suppose tank that tracks the aid knowledge, the US allotted about $134 billion to Ukraine in navy, monetary and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022 by way of June 2025 (these figures are at Monday trade charges), nearly all the $139 billion the US dedicated to Ukraine over that interval.
It’s attainable to reach at totally different numbers utilizing totally different strategies of counting aid, however no cheap technique has corroborated Trump’s “$300 billion” or “$350 billion” figures. The US authorities inspector basic overseeing the Ukraine response says on its web site that the US appropriated about $185 billion for the Ukraine response by way of March 2025 — together with about $90 billion truly disbursed — however that included funding spent in the US for weapons and protection providers or despatched to countries other than Ukraine.
When NCS requested the White House final week for touch upon the president’s claim that week that the US had given Ukraine $350 billion, a Trump official, responding on situation of anonymity, cited the inspector basic’s figure within the neighborhood of $185 billion. The official additionally famous that the inspector basic’s web site has pointed out the US additionally offered about $20 billion in loans as a part of a G7 initiative.
That’s all honest, nevertheless it doesn’t get near Trump’s personal $350 billion figure. So how did the White House official attempt to get nearer?
With some nonsensical math that added in a complete bunch of issues which can be not help to Ukraine.
Specifically, the official counted greater than $90 billion in inflation felt by US households after the Russian invasion of Ukraine; a $16 billion decline in US exports to Russia amid US sanctions; and greater than $7 billion in elevated fertilizer prices after the Russian invasion drove up costs.
It’s apparent that none of this truly helps Trump’s declare that the US has offered Ukraine with $350 billion in aid. It’s notably absurd to rely the inflation skilled by Americans as US help to Ukraine.
A reporter additionally requested Trump about mail-in ballots within the wake of a Monday morning social media post by which Trump stated he needs to attempt to “get rid of” them. Though Trump responded that the query was off-topic given Zelensky’s presence, he additionally repeated some false claims about these ballots.
Other nations and mail-in ballots: Trump stated within the social media put up, “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.” He repeated the declare extra cautiously out loud, saying, “Do you know that we’re the only country in the world — I believe, I may be wrong — but just about the only country in the world that uses it.”
He is fallacious. Dozens of different nations use mail-in voting, as NCS and others have identified when Trump has made such claims earlier than. These nations embrace Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Switzerland.
The legitimacy of mail-in ballots: Trump called mail-in ballots “corrupt” and stated “you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.”
There is not any foundation for these claims. Mail-in voting is a professional technique utilized by professional voters to solid professional ballots. Elections specialists say the incidence of fraud tends to be marginally increased with mail-in ballots than with in-person ballots — but additionally that fraud charges in federal elections are tiny even with mail-in ballots.
Republican-dominated Utah is among the states the place voters are robotically despatched mail-in ballots (although it’s now phasing out that coverage); its elections, like these of different states, have been freed from widespread fraud. Mail-in ballots have been used within the US all the way back to the Civil War. And it’s price noting that Trump himself encouraged supporters to vote by mail in 2024.
“Our elections are more secure, transparent, and verified than ever before in American history, thanks to the thousands of professional election officials of both parties, at the state and local level, that oversee them,” David Becker, founder and govt director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, stated in a Monday message to NCS.
Jimmy Carter and mail-in ballots: Trump invoked a fee that was co-chaired by late Democratic president Jimmy Carter within the 2000s as assist for his claims about mail-in ballots, saying, “Even Jimmy Carter, with his commission, they set it up. He said, ‘The one thing about mail-in voting: you will never have an honest election if you have mail-in.’”
Neither Carter nor his fee stated that, as NCS and others have previously noted.
It’s true that the fee Carter co-chaired was typically skeptical of mail-in ballots: it stated that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and are “vulnerable to abuse in several ways.”
But it didn’t say an sincere election was inconceivable with using these ballots. In truth, it highlighted an instance of profitable mail-only elections, saying that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections completely by mail-in voting for the reason that late Nineties, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.” The report additionally provided some suggestions for making using mail-in ballots safer and known as for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail (in addition to early voting).
Fifteen years after the discharge of the report, Carter said in a 2020 assertion: “I approve the use of absentee ballots and have been using them for more than five years.” His group, the Carter Center, said in a 2020 assertion: “Fortunately, since 2005, many states have gained substantial experience in vote-by-mail and have shown how key concerns can be effectively addressed through appropriate planning, resources, training, and messaging.”