President Donald Trump delivered one other sequence of false claims at a press conference Wednesday at the NATO summit in Ankara.
His feedback included a number of the long-debunked lies he informed the press whereas assembly with Turkey’s president on Tuesday. Here is a reality examine of a few of his Wednesday remarks.
Trump repeated his frequent false declare that “we have $19.2 trillion” invested within the US in simply “one year” of his present presidency.
That determine is fiction, as we noted when he made the identical declare Tuesday and on quite a few earlier events.
At the time Trump stated it on Wednesday, the White House’s own website claimed there had been “$10.6 trillion” in “major investment announcements” this time period, not $19.2 trillion, and even the White House determine was a serious exaggeration of precise funding. A detailed NCS review in October discovered the White House was counting trillions of {dollars} in imprecise funding pledges – pledges that had been about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” relatively than funding within the US – and imprecise statements that didn’t even rise to the extent of pledges.
The White House determine consists of pledges from US-based firms in addition to overseas entities. Federal data printed final month reveals that new overseas direct funding within the US was about $232 billion in 2025.
Trump claimed: “We have the largest number of plants being built for the most money ever in the history of our country – car plants, AI plants, and all other plants, pharmaceutical plants.” In reality, federal data reveals that spending on US manufacturing building has steadily declined throughout Trump’s second time period after a spike that occurred throughout most of former president Joe Biden’s time period (which had abated by the ultimate months of Biden’s time period). You can clearly see the 2025 and 2026 decline in this official chart.
The seasonally adjusted annual price of producing building spending in May 2026, about $174.8 billion, was down about 28% from May 2024, the final May underneath Biden, and likewise down about 28% from December 2024, Biden’s final full month in workplace. It was down about 26% from February 2025, Trump’s first full month in workplace, and down about 22% from May 2025.
Trump and elections
Trump lied once more concerning the 2020 election he misplaced, saying: “I’ve been right about everything, and I have been for a long time. It’s how I got to be president three times. It’s how I won three elections.” He went on to repeat that he “won” the 2020 election however that it was a “rigged election.”
Trump has been president twice and received two elections. He legitimately misplaced the 2020 election, truthful and sq., to Biden.
We’ll depart apart his hyperbolic declare that he has “been right about everything.”
Venezuela, prisons and migrants
Trump, talking of former Venezuelan chief Nicolás Maduro, repeated his regular declare that Maduro “had people pour into the country from prisons; they opened up their prisons, they allowed them to come in.” But Trump has by no means offered proof that Maduro-era Venezuela opened up prisons for migration functions.
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 proof from NCS and different shops, Trump and his group have by no means corroborated his frequent assertions that Maduro emptied prisons to get undesirable residents to depart for the US; Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, stated 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 US or any other country.”
Helen Fair, an skilled on international prisons at Birkbeck, University of London, informed NCS in 2024 that she had “seen absolutely no evidence” that any nation had emptied prisons to ship prisoners to the US.
Trump, speaking about immigration, repeated his false declare that there have been “25 million people, I think more than that, under Biden” crossing the border. The “25 million” determine is false; even Trump’s earlier “21 million” determine was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the final full month of the Biden administration, the federal authorities had recorded underneath 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants throughout that administration, together with thousands and 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 method the full was even near what Trump has stated.
While talking concerning the conflict with Iran, Trump stated: “And you see the oil prices are lower than they were when I started.” He didn’t clarify whether or not he was speaking about when he began his second time period or when he began the Iran conflict in late February, but when it was the latter, his declare wasn’t right. Both Brent crude (the worldwide benchmark) and West Texas Intermediate crude (the US benchmark) had been pricier Wednesday afternoon than they had been simply earlier than the conflict, although Brent was barely under a few of its late-February ranges as lately as Monday.
Oil costs fell sharply amid the ceasefire between the US and Iran that started this spring and continued into summer time. But they’ve jumped again within the final day – although to not anyplace near the peaks of March, April and May – amid another exchange of attacks between the 2 nations, the resumption of US sanctions on Iranian oil gross sales and a Trump declaration that he thought the ceasefire was “over.”