President Donald Trump made a series of false claims during his first White House address Wednesday night, most of which have been debunked before. Here’s a fact check.
Inflation and the economy
Inflation under Trump: Near the end of the speech, Trump falsely claimed, “Inflation is stopped.” Inflation did not stop; September’s year-over-year inflation rate of 3.0% was the same as the rate when Trump returned to office in January — in fact, if you go to more decimal places, September’s rate was slightly higher — and September was the fifth consecutive month that the annual rate rose.
Inflation under Biden: Trump repeated his false claim that “when I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country.”
The year-over-year inflation rate in the last full month of the Biden administration, December 2024, was 2.9%; it was 3.0% in January 2025, the month of Trump’s second inauguration. That’s the same as the most recent rate available at the time Trump spoke Wednesday, 3.0 percent in September 2025. (The November rate is scheduled to be released Thursday morning.) We don’t know who Trump was referring to when he said “some would say,” but neither the December 2024 number nor the January 2025 number was anywhere near the worst or close to inflation in the decade.
It’s true that the U.S. year-over-year inflation rate hit a 40-year high (not a 48-year high) during the Biden administration in June 2022 at 9.1%, but even that was nowhere near the all-time high of 23.7% set in 1920 — and set more than two years before Trump’s return. Inflation fell before Trump’s inauguration.
The cumulative increase in prices from the beginning of the Biden administration to the end was not even the worst in US history. Federal figures show that cumulative inflation under Biden has been less than half that during President Jimmy Carter’s tenure.
Food prices: After noting that the price of eggs has fallen since March, Trump added, “And everything else is going down fast.” Not true even if he was talking specifically about food prices, which are rising this year. Consumer price index data shows that a much larger number of food items have grew up in price since he returned to office than they have decreased. The latest CPI figures available when he spoke on Wednesday, for September, showed that average food prices rose by about 2.7% from September 2024; about 1.4% from January 2025, the month Trump returned to office; and about 0.3% from August to September.
November data, scheduled for release on Thursday, may show a month-over-month drop in food prices, but food prices are almost certain to remain elevated under Trump.
Prescription drug prices: Trump repeated his false claim that an executive order he issued on prescription drug prices would reduce those prices by “up to 400, 500, even 600%”. These numbers are mathematically impossible; if the president magically made companies drop the prices of all their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% reduction. You can read a longer fact-check here.
Gas prices: Trump said, “Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in most of the country, and some say it’s gone to $1.99 a gallon, by the way.” These statements need context.
As of Wednesday, there were only four states whose average price for a gallon of regular gas was below $2.50, according to data released by AAA: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa and Colorado. (Nine other states averaged between $2.50 and $2.60 per gallon.) The AAA national average was $2.905 per gallon.
No state averaged below Oklahoma’s $2.339 per gallon. And while some individual stations around the country were offering gas for $1.99 a gallon or less, the number was small; Patrick De Haan, head of oil analysis at GasBuddy, estimated that there are between 75 and 100 stations out of the tens of thousands of GasBuddy tracks across the country. (This does not include others offering special discounts.)
Investing in the US this year: Trump repeated his bogus claim that there was “$18 trillion” in investment in the US during his second presidency, saying on Wednesday: “We secured a record $18 trillion in investment in the United States.” This figure is fiction. At the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House’s own website said the figure was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; A detailed CNN analysis in October found that the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment commitments, commitments that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, or vague statements that didn’t even amount to commitments. You can read more here.
Immigration and Foreign Policy
Trump and wars: Trump repeated his bogus claim to have ended eight wars this year, saying on Wednesday: “We restored American power, we solved eight wars in 10 months.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.
Trump has previously explained that his list of alleged fixed wars includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that was not actually a war; is a long-running diplomatic dispute over a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. Trump’s list includes another alleged war that did not take place during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has sometimes claimed to have prevented a new war between the two entities, offering few details of what he meant, but that’s different from settling an actual war.) And his list includes a supposed success in ending a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that war continued despite a peace deal brokered by the Trump administration, which the warlord never signed by the Trump administration this year.
Trump’s list also includes an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting broke out again this month and continued this week despite a peace deal negotiated by the Trump administration earlier in the year.
One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in ending the other conflicts on his list, or question whether any have actually ended; for example, killings continued in Gaza in November after the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is clearly too high.
Migration and Biden: Trump repeated his false claim that “25 million” migrants entered the country under Biden. The “25 million” figure is false; even Trump’s earlier “21 million” figure was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the last full month under the Biden administration, the federal government recorded fewer than 11 million national “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were quickly deported. Even adding in the so-called escapees who backed off from detection, estimated by House Republicans to be around 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was even close to what Trump said.
A U.S. Army soldier closes a gate at the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on January 24, after President Donald Trump ordered additional military personnel to the border with Mexico as part of a wave of measures to crack down on immigration. -Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images/File
Trump also repeated his baseless claim that during the Biden administration, foreign countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions to somehow send their people to the US as migrants, claiming that “many” members of the alleged “25 million-man army” were “from jails and prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums.” Trump has never provided corroboration for such claims about foreign countries in general or the specific places he has named in the past: Venezuela and “Congo.” Experts on Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the neighboring Republic of the Congo said during the Biden administration that they saw no basis for Trump’s stories, the governments of both Congolese countries told CNN the stories were false, and an expert on the global prison population told CNN he saw “absolutely no evidence” that either country had vacated its prisons in the US.
Other subjects
Trump’s Bill and Social Security: Trump repeated his false claim that the big domestic policy bill he signed earlier this year included “no Social Security tax.” The legislation created a temporary additional tax deduction of $6,000 a year for people age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for people making $75,000 a year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes, which expire on the new benefits. it doesn’t even apply to Social Security recipients who are under 65.
Biden, crime and law enforcement: Trump falsely claimed that under Biden there was “crime at record levels, with law enforcement and words like that simply banned.” Neither of these two statements is true.
There was no ban on the phrase “law enforcement” under Biden; the Biden administration itself has used the phrase repeatedly. And crime was not even close to an all-time high under Biden. Crime in the US was much higher in the early 1990s and at various points in the 1970s and 1980s than it has been in the 2020s under either Biden or Trump.
Crime rose nationally amid the turmoil of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic under both Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2021. But FBI data showed that both violent crime and property crime fell nationally under Biden in 2023 and 2024. Trump disputed the FBI data, and while he has no cap, there simply is no cap on crime, just there is simply no limit and no limit to crime. raised during the Biden era.
This story has been updated with additional details.
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com