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President Donald Trump made only a handful of false claims in his inaugural address on Monday, mostly sticking to vague rhetoric, subjective claims and uncheckable promises of action.
But on Monday, in his second unscripted address to supporters gathered in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, President Trump made false claims about the election, immigration and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. I went back to my usual pattern of rapid-fire lies. 2021 etc. He then made more false claims in a freewheeling third speech at Washington’s Capital One Arena.
Below is a fact check of some of his Monday claims.
Tariffs: In his inaugural address, President Trump said, “Instead of taxing people to make other countries rich, we impose tariffs and tax foreign countries to make their people rich.” However, this explanation about tariffs is incorrect. Tariffs imposed by the U.S. government are paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries, and it is easy to find concrete examples of companies that have passed the cost of tariffs on to U.S. consumers. Study after study, including one by the federal government’s bipartisan U.S. International Trade Commission, has found that Americans paid almost all of the cost of tariffs on Chinese goods during President Trump’s first term.
Trump also talked about creating a new “External Revenue Service” to collect revenue from tariffs on imported goods, a plan he has previously talked about. Again, U.S. importers, not foreign exporters, pay duties on imported goods, and in many cases, some or all of the costs are passed on to U.S. consumers.
Inflation: In his inaugural address, President Trump falsely claimed that the United States experienced “record inflation” during the Biden administration. President Trump can fairly say that the U.S. inflation rate reached a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022, but this fell short of the all-time high of 23.7% set in 1920. (And inflation has since plummeted). The latest inflation rate available at the time of Trump’s remarks here was 2.9% in December. )
Prisons and psychiatric hospitals: In all three of his speeches, President Trump spoke about immigrants who came to the United States from foreign prisons and psychiatric hospitals under President Joe Biden, which is a frequent occurrence during the 2024 campaign. It was repeated. In his first speech, he said “many” immigrants in the Biden era came from such facilities. In his second speech, he said, “We don’t want the world’s prisons to essentially be held in the hands of the United States.” The third sentence says, “All over the world they are emptying our country of prisons. They are emptying our country of mental hospitals.”
All of this is unsubstantiated. President Trump and his presidential campaign have never corroborated the claim that “many” of Biden-era immigrants came from prisons or psychiatric hospitals, although of course some migrants did spend time in such facilities. There is a possibility. And the Trump campaign has been unable to substantiate his story that many foreign countries are somehow opening up such facilities to bring domestic people into the United States.
The president has sometimes tried to back up his claims by claiming that the world’s prison population is declining. But that’s wrong. According to the World Prison Population List compiled by British experts, the recorded global prison population increased from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people from October 2021 to April 2024.
“I do daily news searches to find out what’s happening in prisons around the world, and I see absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending everyone to the United States.” says Helen Fair, co-author of Prison Population List. said a researcher at the Institute of Crime and Justice Policy at Birkbeck, University of London, in June.
Venezuela and Immigration: President Trump said in an arena speech that gang members are being “taken off the streets of Venezuela and placed in our country,” and that crime in Venezuela has plummeted because “they’re taking criminals and opening our borders.” “Because they provided it to us through policy.” of the previous government. ”
President Trump has never substantiated his claims that Venezuela was somehow intentionally bringing unwanted criminals to the United States under the Biden administration, and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact, He told FactCheck.org that he wasn’t aware of any evidence of that.
Pelosi and January 6, 2021: In his post-inauguration speech, Trump rejects former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposal to send 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021. and repeated the false claim that Pelosi “admitted it on January 6, 2021.” This is a tape made by her daughter. ”
There is no evidence that Ms. Pelosi turned down such an offer. And since the president, not the speaker, is in charge of the District of Columbia National Guard, Pelosi would not have had the authority to refuse the offer even if it had been declined. Pelosi insists that was not the case. Additionally, Pelosi is not seen on tape admitting that Trump’s story is correct.
A video recorded by the filmmaker’s daughter Alexandra Pelosi on Jan. 6 and later obtained by House Republicans includes a 42-second snippet posted on social media in June, in which Pelosi appears in the Capitol building. She was filmed expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of security, saying: First, “I take responsibility for simply not getting them ready.” But this general statement clearly acknowledges that she specifically rejected President Trump’s proposal for 10,000 troops. It’s not something.
In fact, other parts of the video appear to undermine President Trump’s frequent claims that it was Pelosi who declined to deploy the National Guard before January 6th. She said, “Why wasn’t the National Guard there from the beginning?”
After President Trump began referring to the video in June, Pelosi’s press secretary, Aaron Bennett, said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed multiple times that Speaker Pelosi did not plan to assassinate herself on January 6th. That or any other day of the week does not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of security at the Capitol.”
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: President Trump returned to the lie that the 2020 election was “completely rigged” in his post-inauguration address to supporters. He again claimed “cheating” in a speech at the arena. Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden in a legally free and fair election.
Democrats and the 2024 Election: In his post-inauguration speech, President Trump falsely claimed that unspecified opponents had “tried” to rig the 2024 election but were unable to do so. This is also nonsense. Mr. Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in a free and fair election.
California and the 2024 election: In his post-inauguration speech, President Trump said “I think we could have won California” if the state had stronger voter identification laws. This claim is completely baseless. There was no sign of mass fraud in California, where Trump lost to Harris by more than 3 million votes.
Trump’s margin of victory in Alabama: In his inauguration speech, Trump falsely claimed, “We won Alabama by 48 points.” Trump did win by large margins in conservative states, but not as much as he had claimed. He beat Harris there by about 30.5 percentage points.
Border Wall Construction: In his post-inauguration speech, President Trump repeated false claims that he had built “571 miles of wall” on the southern border during his first administration. That’s a huge exaggeration. According to official government data, 458 miles were built under the Trump administration, including walls built where no barriers existed before and walls built to replace previous barriers. Both are included.
China and the Panama Canal: In his inaugural address, President Trump vowed that the United States would take back the Panama Canal, falsely claiming that “first and foremost, China runs the Panama Canal.”
There are legitimate questions about China’s influence over infrastructure in and around the Panama Canal. Most notably, subsidiaries of a Hong Kong-based company operate ports at both ends of the waterway and first won a bidding war for the contract in the 1990s. However, since the United States handed over the canal to Panama in 1999, Panama has operated the canal itself. Specifically, the canal is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, whose manager, deputy manager, and 11-member board of directors are Panamanians selected by the Panamanian government.
The majority of employees are Panamanian. Panama will decide which company wins the contract to operate the canal’s ports. Other canal ports are operated by non-Chinese companies, including one operated by a joint venture between the United States and Panama.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said in a statement on Monday that “the canal is and will continue to belong to Panama and its administration will remain under Panamanian control with regard to perpetual neutrality.” Mulino also rejected President Trump’s claim that China runs the canal, saying, “There is no nation in the world that would interfere with our administration,” although he did not mention China directly. It seems so.
Trump and the ‘youth vote’: As on the eve of his inauguration, Trump falsely claimed in an arena speech on Monday that “we won the youth vote by 36 points” in the 2024 election. He did not say how he defines the “youth vote” — his transition team did not respond to CNN’s request for clarification on Sunday — but he does not say how he defines the “youth vote” by any reasonable definition. There is no basis for this claim.
Although younger voters, especially young men, have shifted toward Trump compared to the 2020 election, exit poll data released by CNN shows Harris winning 54% to 43% among voters aged 18 to 24 and 43% among 25-year-olds. He beat Trump among likely voters, 53% to 45%. -29, 51% to 45% among voters ages 30 to 39. Even if Harris’ actual lead was smaller (exit poll data is often flawed), there is no indication that Trump had an edge over Harris among young voters.
China’s oil purchases from Iran: In his arena speech, President Trump repeated a false story about how he allegedly pressured China to stop buying oil from Iran during his first presidential years. China’s oil imports from Iran briefly plummeted under the Trump administration in 2019, when the administration made a concerted effort to block such purchases, but did not stop. It then increased significantly again while Trump was still president. “This claim is not true because China’s oil imports from Iran have not stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at market intelligence firm Kpler, told CNN in 2023.
Official Chinese statistics show no Iranian oil purchases were made in January 2021, the last six months of President Trump’s term, and for most of Biden’s first year in office. There were no purchases. However, that does not mean that imports from China have actually stopped. Industry experts say it is widely known that China uses a variety of tactics to hide its continued imports from Iran.
Kupler revealed that in December 2020, the last full month of President Trump’s term, China imported about 511,000 barrels of Iranian crude oil per day. The lowest point under the Trump administration was March 2020, when global oil demand collapsed due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Still, China was importing about 87,000 barrels a day, Kupler found. (Data on Iranian oil exports is based on cargo tracking by various companies and entities, so other entities may have different data.)
Iran and Terrorist Organizations: In his arena speech, Trump repeated inaccurate boasts that while he was president, Iran “didn’t have money for Hamas” and “didn’t have money for Hezbollah.” Four experts told CNN in 2024 that Iranian funding for these groups declined in the second half of the president’s term, largely because the president’s sanctions against Iran had a major impact on Iran’s economy. Although it had a negative impact, funding did not stop completely. , President Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran continues to finance terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Brian Mena, Alicia Wallace, Phil Mattingly, Michael Rios and Elizabeth Gonzalez contributed to this report.