Gee, shocking—the Orange Ass lied his ass off during the longest speech ever.
Trump joint speech was the longest ever
Clocking in at roughly an hour and 40 minutes, Trump’s speech broke the record for longest presidential address to Congress (including his own) by over 10 minutes.
Longest speeches for comparison:
Bill Clinton — 2000 — 1:28:49
Clinton — 1995 — 1:24:58
Trump — 2019 — 1:22:18
Trump — 2018 — 1:20:30
Clinton — 1999 — 1:18:40
Trump — 2020 — 1:18:03
CNN: President Donald Trump made numerous false claims in his Tuesday speech to a joint session of Congress. The falsehoods spanned a variety of topics, including the Department of Government Efficiency, inflation and immigration.
Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s statements:
- Statement: Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars” in waste.
- Fact: The numbers are all over the place but mostly misleading. DOGE has taken credit for cancelling already cancelled or completed contracts so, McMath.
- DOGE and transgender mice: The Fascist Felon claimed that the DODGbags identified government spending of “$8 million for making mice transgender.”
- Fact: Between the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, the National Institutes of Health awarded a total of $477,121 to three projects that involved administering feminizing hormone therapy to monkeys to understand how it may affect their immune system and make them more susceptible to HIV. Feminizing hormone therapy is a gender-affirming treatment used to block the effects of the male hormone testosterone and promote feminine characteristics among transgender women.
- Transgender women are nearly 50 times more likely to be infected with HIV than other adults, according to one study from 2013 across 15 countries, including the US. It’s not clear where the $8 million figure came from or why Trump referenced studies in mice instead of monkeys.
- Tariffs: the US “will take in trillions and trillions of dollars” – a claim he has made repeatedly about his plan to slap tariffs on imports from various countries, which he already started to do.
- Fact: Tariffs are paid by US importers, not foreign exporters, and are usually passed on to the We the People in higher prices.
- Illegal border crossings: “…the lowest number of illegal border crossings “ever recorded.”
- Fact: FALSE! Official federal statistics show there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest border in some of the months of the early 1960s.
- Twenty-one million undocumented immigrants: Trump falsely claimed Tuesday that 21 million undocumented immigrants came into the US during President Joe Biden’s tenure.
- Fact: Through December 2024, the last full month of Biden’s presidency, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
Fact check: Trump says car plants are ‘opening up all over the place’
Statement
“We’re going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody’s ever seen. Plants are opening up all over the place. Deals are being made, never seen. That’s a combination of the election win and tariffs. It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it, that, along with our other policies, will allow our auto industry to absolutely boom. It’s going to boom. Spoke to the majors today, all three the top people, and they’re so excited. In fact, already, numerous car companies have announced that they will be building massive automobile plants in America, with Honda just announcing a new plant in Indiana, one of the largest anywhere in the world.”TRUMP
Verdict
This is mostly false.
Analysis
No car maker has announced a new plant since Trump took office and began instituting new tariffs. Reuters reported that Honda planned to produce 210,000 Civics in Indiana instead of Mexico, but the company has made not made a public announcement.
Fact check: Trump claims U.S. spending much more on Ukraine than Europe
Statement
“Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian oil and gas than they have spent on defending Ukraine by far. Think of that. They’ve spent more buying Russian oil and gas than they have defending. And we’ve spent perhaps $350 billion, and they’ve spent $100 billion. And we have an ocean separating us, and they don’t. And Biden has authorized more money in this fight than Europe has spent.”Trump
Verdict
This is mostly false.
Analysis
From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to last December, the United States had allocated $114.2 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute, which is tracking aid to Ukraine. That’s not more than Europe spent: Those nations allocated more than $132.3 billion, with plans to allocate more.
TRUMP: “We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country, they’re not sure. As president, I am fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.”
Inflation soared to 9.1% in 2022 — the highest rate in 40 years, not 48 — in the wake of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Robust government spending likely added to the price hikes in the U.S., putting more money in people’s pockets. Demand surged, outpacing tangled supply chains. But high inflation was a worldwide problem, even in countries where governments didn’t spend so heavily.
While inflation has since eased, settling at 3% in January, prices are still climbing faster than most people would like.
Poll numbers
TRUMP: “Now, for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction. In fact, it’s an astonishing record 27-point swing since Election Day alone.”
More people have said the country has been headed in the wrong direction than the right one for a long time. In an average of the polls compiled by RealClearPolitics it’s been that way every month since June 2009 after former President Obama was sworn in.
And despite improvements in those views since Trump won the election, mostly due to Republican enthusiasm, more people continue to say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Social Security fraud
TRUMP: “We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program that our seniors and that our seniors, people that we love rely on, believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members, people aged 100 to 109 years old.”
Trump and his adviser Elon Musk have both claimed, without evidence, that there is rampant fraud in the Social Security system. In his remarks, Trump asserted that government databases list millions of people aged well over 100 years old, including 1.3 million people between 150 to 159 years old and over 130,000 people aged over 160.
But a 2023 report from the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General said that there were nearly 19 million Social Security number-holders aged 100-plus who didn’t have information about their deaths in the system and that “almost none of the 18.9 million number-holders currently receive SSA payments.”
The SSA’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, has also knocked down these claims.
- TRUMP CLAIM: Trump won a mandate in the election
- FACT-CHECK: This is in the eye of the beholder.
- Trump’s victory was clear, but by historical standards, it was no landslide.
