President Donald Trump used his Thursday news conference with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ship a laundry checklist of long-debunked false claims about quite a lot of topics, together with inflation, immigration, tariffs and the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Here is a truth verify of a few of Trump’s remarks at Chequers, the prime minister’s nation home.
The 2020 election: Trump informed his regular lie concerning the 2020 election he misplaced, saying, “We won in 2020, big.” He was defeated truthful and sq. by Joe Biden.
Current inflation: Trump falsely claimed, “We’ve already solved inflation, we solved prices.” This is vaguer than his frequent false claim that there’s “no inflation,” however there’s no foundation even for the vaguer model. Inflation has been worsening since May after hitting a four-year low in April. It was 2.9% in August, up from 2.7% in July; the August determine was the best determine because it was 3% in January, the final partial month of the Biden administration.
Biden-era inflation: Trump repeated his false declare that “we inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country,” including, “We had inflation the likes of which we’ve really never seen. They say 48 years and I’ll accept that, but I really don’t. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Even the peak year-over-year inflation beneath Biden, 9.1% in June 2022, was the best in between 40 and 41 years, not 48 years and definitely not in US historical past; it was nowhere near the all-time excessive record of 23.7%, set in 1920. And inflation then plummeted to the three% degree it hit in Biden’s final partial month in workplace.
Who pays tariffs: Trump, who habitually makes the false assertion that international nations pay the tariffs he has imposed on US imports of these nations’ merchandise, mentioned this time, “China is paying a very large tariff right now to the United States.” It is US importers, not China, who make the tariff funds to the US authorities, and people importers typically cross on a few of the prices to customers.
US help to Ukraine: Trump delivered a vaguer model of his oft-repeated declare that the US has given $350 billion in wartime help to Ukraine, this time saying, “The United States is into that war for $350 billion.” He didn’t outline “into that war,” but when it was his regular assertion about US help, it’s false. A German suppose tank that has intently tracked wartime help to Ukraine says the US allotted about $135 billion to Ukraine (and had dedicated about $5 billion extra) by June, at present alternate charges. The US authorities inspector basic overseeing the federal Ukraine response says the US had disbursed about $94 billion for the response as of the tip of June 2025 (and had appropriated about $93 billion extra), together with cash that was spent within the US and in broader Europe relatively than Ukraine itself.
Migration beneath Biden: Speaking of migration to the US beneath Biden, Trump complained concerning the variety of individuals coming into the nation with out being vetted, then mentioned, “25 million, in my opinion, that would be about 25 million.” Even Trump’s earlier “21 million” determine was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the final full month beneath the Biden administration, the federal authorities had recorded beneath 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants throughout that administration, together with hundreds of thousands who had been quickly expelled from the nation; even including within the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no approach the entire was even near what Trump has mentioned.
Migration and prisons: Trump repeated his declare that, beneath Biden, there have been “prisons from the Congo being released into the US, prisons opened up in Venezuela and many other countries, pouring into the United States.” Trump has by no means offered corroboration for such claims about international nations generally or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the neighboring Republic of Congo, or Venezuela specifically. Experts on all three nations said in the course of the Biden administration that that they had seen no foundation for Trump’s tales, the governments of each of the Congo nations told NCS the stories are false, and an knowledgeable on the worldwide jail inhabitants told NCS she noticed “absolutely no evidence” of any nation emptying its prisons to someway launch prisoners into the US.
Pelosi and January 6: Trump falsely claimed he had been proved proper in his frequent claims that Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his supply of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6, 2021, the day of the pro-Trump riot at the US Capitol; Trump mentioned, “They found out that Nancy Pelosi actually was offered the 10,000 soldiers and she turned them down.” It’s not clear who “they” are, however Trump’s declare stays uncorroborated – and the House speaker, who has no power over the District of Columbia National Guard that’s beneath the management of the president himself, wouldn’t have had the authority to reject the supply even when it had been offered to her, which she has steadfastly said it never was.
The House January 6 committee: Trump vaguely repeated his false declare that the House choose committee that investigated the assault on the Capitol “found out many things that were very bad, so they deleted and destroyed all information.” They didn’t. The committee preserved a large volume of documentary evidence with the National Archives, along with releasing a lengthy public report, greater than 100 interview transcripts, and numerous different written and audiovisual supplies. There has been a dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the preservation of sure data, however there’s no foundation for saying “all information” was eradicated.
A gaffe a couple of battle: Trump boasted once more about his position in settling conflicts between numerous nations, and he mentioned at one level, “To think that we settled Azerbaijan and Albania, as an example; it was going on for years.” This was only a gaffe, however since Trump has made the same one before, it’s price explaining to readers that he meant Azerbaijan and its neighbor Armenia, not Azerbaijan and Albania.