I (sort of) said I wasn't going to fact check Donald Trump's speech on Thursday night, and I'm not. I promise!
Oh, who am I kidding? The thing is, Trump's speech wasn't just his usual string of garden variety lies and exaggerations. He said some genuinely weird stuff that I assumed were lies, like everything else he says, but I wasn't sure. I finally got curious enough to check them out, but once I started they turned out to be endless. As a result the following list is long, but even at that it's not complete. After a while I just gave up on some of his weirdness because I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. I wonder if any of his fans realize that his standard stump speech is simply an invented fantasy from beginning to end?
Anyway, here it is:
They also gave up Bagram [in Afghanistan], one of the biggest bases anywhere in the world.... And you know who has it now? China has it now.
There were rumors back in 2021 about the Taliban giving China access to Bagram, but it never happened.
Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off the coast in Cuba. Do you know that? The press refuses to write about it.
Last month a Russian sub visited Havana for a few days. It was nuclear powered, but carried no nuclear weapons. It was widely reported.
Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system. Three hundred forty-two missiles were shot into Israel, and only one got through a little bit.... We’re going to build an iron dome over our country, and we’re going to be sure that nothing can come and harm our people.
Iron Dome, which protects Israel from short-range missiles, was largely funded by the US and some of it was co-produced by the US. In short, we already have it and it's deployed in the Red Sea (among other places), which is why all 342 of those Iranian missiles and drones were shot down. As for a bigger version, a la Ronald Reagan's SDI, that's for ICBMs, not short-range missiles. We've continued working on that since the '80s, but the technology remains problematic.
We’re going to get to the bottom of it. You remember [Biden] said we’re going to find a cure to cancer; nothing happened. We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things. We’re so close to doing something great. But we need a leader that will let it be done.
We are nowhere near cures for cancer or Alzheimer's. This has nothing to do with political leadership and there is nothing to get to the bottom of.
We have to produce massive amounts of energy.... A.I. needs tremendous — literally, twice the electricity that’s available now in our country, can you imagine?
No. There are various forecasts, but none of them are anywhere near this. Goldman Sachs, for example, projects that AI will consume about 1% of US power by 2030.
We also left behind $85 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment [in Afghanistan], along with many American citizens were left behind. Many, many American citizens.
We didn't "leave behind" anything. The Afghan military was armed by the US over the course of 20 years, and after our withdrawal the Taliban took ownership of those weapons. Their value amounted to about $7 billion. As for the evacuation, we rescued 6,000 US citizens, about 90% of the total in country. The remainder mostly declined to leave, but we have nonetheless brought home several hundred in the two years since. No one knows how many remain—or whether they even want to leave—but it almost certainly amounts to less than 100-200 people.
We defeated 100 percent of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was said to take “five years, sir, it’ll take five years, sir.” We did it in a matter of a couple months.
By the time Trump took office ISIS was about two-thirds defeated. It took two more years to finish the job.
The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country.... They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.
There is no evidence this is happening.
Our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.
No. Crime in the US has dropped during every year of the Biden administration.
The other countries weren’t accepting [MS-13 gang members] back. And I called up and I said tell them that we’re not giving them economic aid any more.... And the next day I was called by everybody, I couldn’t take all the calls.
“Sir, sir, what’s the problem?”
I said, “You won’t take your killers back that you sent in caravans into America. You won’t take them back.”
“Well sir, if you’d like us to, we would give very serious consideration to doing that.”
In 24 hours, they were being taken back. For years and years when I first came in, they said President Obama tried to get them to go back and they wouldn’t accept them.
I can't even fact check this. Deporting gang members has been a bipartisan priority for decades. It's true that in 2019 Trump cut off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and later restored it, but that was related to his "safe third country" policy, not deportation of gang members.
Probably the best trade deal was the deal I made with China where they buy $50 billion of our product. They were buying nothing. They buy $50 billion worth.
The agreement was for $200 billion and China never made good on it.
Right now as we speak, large factories, just started, are being built across the border in Mexico. So, with all the other things happening at our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country, no tax, no anything.
To the extent this is happening, it will be done under the terms of the USMCA treaty, which Trump calls "the best trade deal ever made."
They want to raise your taxes four times. Think of it.... This is the only administration that said we’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now. And people are supposed to vote for them?
This bears no relation to reality. Nobody has any plans to quadruple taxes on anyone, or anything even close to that.
Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.
When Joe Biden took office the employment level of native born workers was 123 million. Today it's 131 million. That's an increase in the employment rate from 56.5% to 59.4%.
We’ve suffered the worst inflation we’ve ever had.
It's the fifth worst in the postwar era and it lasted only two years. The CPI has been barely above 3% for the past year.
Inflation has wiped out the life savings of our citizens, and forced the middle class into a state of depression and despair.
No it hasn't.
I told China and other countries, “If you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country, and we will put tariffs on every product you do send in of 100 percent or more.” And they said to me, Well, I think that’s about it. They weren’t going to buy any oil.... And [Biden] took off all the sanctions, and they did everything possible for Iran and now Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, which would have never happened.
Chinese oil purchases from Iran increased under both Trump and Biden. Iran is close to having a nuclear bomb because Trump unilaterally pulled out of Obama's nuclear treaty, which had limited Iran's ability to enrich uranium.
We’ve got Right to Try.... They’ve been trying to get that approved for 52 years, wasn’t that easy.... So I got everybody into an office.... We got them to sign an agreement. They agreed to it, where they’re not going to sue anybody.... We’re saving thousands and thousands of lives. It’s incredible.
Trump is talking about a bill that allows terminally ill patients to try new drugs that are still in testing. It's true that Congress passed a right-to-try bill under Trump, but (a) most states already had right-to-try laws, (b) the FDA already approved 99% of all requests from terminally ill patients anyway, and (c) best estimates suggest that only a tiny number of people have ever used the law.
This chart isn't wrong per se. Interest debt has indeed gone up. But interest is a fairly small part of total debt, and every possible indicator suggests that household debt in the US is not a problem. Here is debt as a percent of disposable income:
It went down during the pandemic and then up afterward. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (9.8% vs. 10%). Here is household debt as a percent of GDP:
It's the opposite: it went up during the pandemic and then back down. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (76.2% vs. 77.7%). And if we want to back out mortgage payments, here are credit card balances:
Down during the pandemic and then up afterward. Total credit card balances today are precisely the same as in the final quarter of 2019.
