red $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment in 2025 The president who loves big numbers, even if they’re fake, had a fictional figure he cited in speech after speech: a claim that he had secured “$17 trillion” in investment in the US in less than a year back in the White House. It didn’t help Trump’s case that the White House’s own website said at the time that it was actually $8.8 trillion – and even that figure was wildly inflated – but he proceeded to increase his claim to “$18 trillion” even though the website still had it under $10 trillion. 2. Denying inflation despite widespread price increases This assertion focuses on Trump’s rejection of observable economic realities, as he repeatedly claimed falling prices while consumers across the country experienced rising costs in groceries, goods, and services. Lie: ‘Every price is down’ Trump lied even about subjects that everyday people could themselves see he was lying about. He claimed in the fall that there was “no inflation,” though there was inflation; that “every price is down,” though prices were up on thousands of products; that grocery prices were “way down,” though they were up; and that beef was the only grocery item that had gotten more expensive, though there were dozens of others. Polls showed most Americans weren’t buying his assertions. 3. Using mathematically impossible figures on drug prices This point addresses Trump’s repeated claims of prescription drug price reductions that exceed mathematical possibility, contradicting basic arithmetic and established pricing data. Lie: Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by ‘2,000%, 3,000%’ Trump deployed not only implausible figures but impossible figures. He declared on numerous occasions that his “most favored nation” policy was going to bring down the price of prescription drugs by “500%” or more, sometimes “1,400 to 1,500%” or even “2,000%, 3,000%.” These claims are debunked by math itself – a decline of more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications – but the president kept making them even though he could have simply touted real (less-than-100%) price reductions on some drugs. 4. Misrepresenting who pays US tariffs This section explains Trump’s continued mischaracterization of tariffs, asserting foreign governments pay them, despite established economic evidence showing costs are borne by US importers and consumers. Lie: Foreign countries pay the US government’s tariffs As consumer prices continued to rise, in part because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imported products, Trump clung to his familiar lie that these tariffs are paid by foreign countries, not by people or companies in the US. (The tariff payments to the government are made by US importers, not foreign exporters, and importers often pass on some or all of the added costs to the final consumer.) The president essentially fact-checked himself in November, when he told an interviewer that he would lower Americans’ coffee prices by lowering his tariffs on imported coffee. 5. Claiming an American city was “burning down” This point reviews Trump’s repeated portrayal of Portland as a city in total collapse, despite isolated incidents being misrepresented as widespread destruction. Lie: Portland was ‘burning down’ The president repeatedly said an American city was “burning down” or “burning to the ground” even though it was absolutely not burning down or burning to the ground. Sporadic clashes between protesters and law enforcement outside one Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland did not mean a 145-square-mile city was ablaze – as Portland residents, officials and media outlets kept noting as he kept lying. 6. Falsely claiming zero murders in Washington, DC This claim examines Trump’s inaccurate statements about violent crime in the nation’s capital, contradicting publicly available homicide statistics. Lie: Washington, DC had no murders for six months The president continued his long-established pattern of choosing dramatic untruths over facts that would have been useful to him if he had just stated them accurately. Instead of correctly noting that crime in Washington, DC, declined after his federal takeover of law enforcement there in August, he falsely claimed three times in a November speech that the capital hadn’t had a single murder “in six months.” Washington actually had more than 50 homicides over the six months prior to the speech, police statistics and Washington Post tracking show. 7. Fabricating a dramatic intervention in Los Angeles This claim highlights Trump’s false narrative of personally solving a nonexistent water crisis in Los Angeles through actions unrelated to the city. Lie: ‘I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water’ Trump lied about a supposed problem and then lied about his supposed solution to it. During his pre-inauguration transition period in January, the president baselessly linked wildfires in Los Angeles to a completely unrelated effort to use some of California’s water to protect a fish species hundreds of miles to the north. Then, as president in March, he conjured up a heroic tale: “I broke into Los Angeles. Can you believe it? I had a break-in. I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water and the water is now flowing down.” What Trump actually did was pull a stunt unrelated to Los Angeles, pointlessly sending about two billion gallons of water from one part of California’s Central Valley to another part of that valley. 8. Inventing praise from Maryland’s governor This section documents Trump’s false claim that Maryland’s Democratic governor privately praised him, despite video evidence proving otherwise. Lie: The Democratic governor of Maryland called Trump ‘the greatest president of my lifetime’ It was a trivial lie, but it was notable for its brazenness. After Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore pushed back against Trump’s assertions about public safety in Baltimore, Trump claimed that when he previously met Moore in private at the Army-Navy football game, Moore told him, “Sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime” and “sir, you’re doing a fantastic job.” The president either forgot or didn’t care that a camera was present for the interaction, recording behind-the-scenes footage for a documentary show. The video, aired by Fox News, proved that Moore did not utter any of the praise Trump claimed he did – but, the day after the video came out, Trump claimed that the camera “caught” Moore rather than Trump’s own fabrication. Foreign Affairs 9. Rewriting the origins of the Ukraine war This claim addresses Trump’s reversal of historical facts by blaming Ukraine for a war initiated by Russia. Lie: Ukraine ‘started’ Russia’s war on Ukraine Trump showed a penchant for fake history, rewriting the facts around everything from the Great Depression to his own past. Perhaps his most egregious examples were about Russia’s war on Ukraine. “You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal,” Trump told Ukraine in February, reversing the reality of a war started by Russia. He later inaccurately minimized Ukrainians’ heroism in repelling Russia’s 2022 assault. 10. Backtracking on promises to end the Ukraine war This point reviews Trump’s attempt to reframe campaign promises as jokes after failing to deliver on them. Lie: Trump was speaking ‘in jest’ when he promised to immediately end the Ukraine war As anyone who watched his 2024 campaign rallies could tell you, Trump ran on a serious promise to end the war in Ukraine either “within 24 hours” of his return to the White House or as president-elect “before I even arrive at the Oval Office.” When a journalist asked Trump in May about the unfulfilled pledge as the war continued to rage more than three months into this term, he chose to rewrite history about this too – saying, among other things, that “obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest.” The record shows it simply was not. 11. Fabricating foreign aid spending on Hamas This section documents Trump’s false claim about US aid funding being used for condoms for Hamas, a claim unsupported by any evidence. Lie: The US government had planned to spend $50 million on ‘condoms for Hamas’ To justify his push to slash US foreign aid spending, Trump deployed a completely fictional example of supposed waste: a claim that, until he intervened, the government had been planning to send $50 million “to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” Undeterred by fact checks that pointed out there was no apparent basis for the claim, he soon inflated the invented figure to “$100 million.” 12. Inventing death tolls linked to drug boats This claim highlights Trump’s use of imaginary statistics to justify controversial military actions in the Caribbean. Lie: Every drug boat in the Caribbean ‘kills 25,000 Americans’ Another entirely imaginary number in defense of another controversial policy. As Trump’s military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean faced domestic and international criticism, he tried to convince people that “every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans.” That figure makes no sense, experts noted; even if the boats were actually carrying deadly fentanyl as Trump claimed (on a route not known for fentanyl trafficking) and if they were carrying drugs intended for the US (many experts are skeptical), the total number of US overdose deaths from all drugs in 2024 was about 82,000, according to provisional federal data. 13. Denying recorded statements on military transparency This point reviews Trump’s repeated denial of statements he made on camera regarding the release of military footage. Lie: Trump ‘didn’t say’ he had no problem releasing full footage of a September boat strike Trump has been willing for years to brazenly deny having said something that he had said on camera. He did it again in December. On December 3, the president told an ABC News reporter that he would “certainly” release, “no problem,” all additional Pentagon footage of a follow-up strike the military conducted in early September to kill survivors of its initial strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean. On December 8, he falsely told another ABC News reporter that “I didn’t say that” – then referred to ABC as “fake news” and personally disparaged the reporter who had accurately summarized his quote from five days earlier. 14. Claiming mass prison and asylum dumps by foreign nations This section examines Trump’s repeated, unsubstantiated claims that foreign governments sent criminals and psychiatric patients to the US as migrants. Lie: Numerous foreign leaders emptied prisons and mental institutions to send their most undesirable people into the US No matter the alleged subject of a speech or interview, Trump often managed to find a way to recite his most frequent migration tale. Numerous foreign countries, he claimed again and again, emptied their prisons and mental institutions and sent the unwanted people formerly living in them to the US as migrants. (He sometimes added vivid flourishes; in a speech in June, he said, “Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, ‘Go in there. If you ever come back, we’re going to kill you.’”) It did not seem to bother Trump that his own campaign and White House teams were never able to produce proof that even one foreign leader had done this, let alone foreign leaders “all over the world” as he claimed. 15. Claiming to have ended multiple wars This claim reviews Trump’s assertions of ending wars that either never existed or were unresolved. Lie: Trump ended seven or eight wars Trump used deception in his campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize, asserting at the United Nations in September: “I ended seven wars, and in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed.” He proceeded to list these supposed raging wars…and, as he did on other occasions, included “Egypt and Ethiopia,” who were never at war during his presidency. (They have an ongoing diplomatic dispute about an Ethiopian dam project.) That wasn’t the only problem with Trump’s list, either; among other issues, he included a mystery situation between Serbia and Kosovo that also was never a Trump-era war and a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo that hadn’t ended. Trump started claiming he “ended eight wars” after he helped to broker an October ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, even after some killing in Gaza continued and even after another conflict on his list, between Thailand and Cambodia, resumed in December. 16. Claiming Canadians want annexation This point analyzes Trump’s false assertion that Canadians supported becoming the 51st US state. Lie: ‘The people of Canada like’ the idea of becoming the 51st US state Trump’s long list of early-2025 false claims about Canada, which he was proposing to annex, included a variety of inaccurate comments about trade and defense. One assertion stood out as especially wrong: the claim that “the people of Canada like” his idea of Canada becoming the 51st US state. Polls found the idea was wildly unpopular with the people of Canada, opposed by somewhere around 9 in 10 adults. Justice and Elections 17. Denying violence during the Capitol riot This section documents Trump’s continued attempts to minimize or deny the violence of January 6, 2021. Lie: Capitol rioters ‘didn’t assault’ Trump has tried for more than four years to rewrite the facts of the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in which a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. This year, after granting clemency to the perpetrators, Trump claimed that “the people that went down there, they had no guns,” though multiple rioters had guns; that rioter Ashli Babbitt “was innocently standing there, they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd,” when she was killed by a Capitol Police officer, though video evidence shows she was shot as she was trying to climb through a broken window to the Speaker’s Lobby outside the House of Representatives; and, perhaps most egregiously, that rioters “didn’t assault,” though video after video and trial after trial made clear that many of them did. 18. Claiming critical journalism is illegal This point addresses Trump’s repeated false assertion that unfavorable media coverage violates the law. Lie: Critical media coverage of Trump is ‘illegal’ Trump so regularly claimed that news outlets’ critical coverage of him is “illegal” that these accusations were not treated as news by most outlets. It is worth noting that Trump’s claim is a lie. 19. Denying pressure on the Justice Department This claim examines Trump’s denial of influencing prosecutions, despite public evidence to the contrary. Lie: Trump didn’t pressure the Justice Department to go after his opponents CBS journalist Norah O’Donnell reminded Trump in late October that three of his political opponents had recently been indicted – former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James – and she asked Trump if he had instructed the Justice Department to “go after them.” His response? “No, and not in any way, shape or form. No.” But that definitive claim was definitively debunked by a scroll through his own Truth Social feed. Less than two months prior, Trump had made a social media post publicly pressuring the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to take legal action “NOW” against Comey and James. (Plus another Trump foe, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.) 20. Claiming Epstein files were fabricated This section reviews Trump’s false claim that Epstein-related documents were invented by political opponents. Lie: Obama, Biden and Comey made up the Epstein files Trump deployed an audacious lie in support of his effort to prevent the release of documents related to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He said in July: “You know, these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden (administration).” The Epstein files are real documents that were not “made up” by anyone. And, as PolitiFact noted, federal investigations into Epstein occurred during the George W. Bush administration and the first Trump administration, while Comey was in the private sector; Epstein died more than a year before Biden was elected president, though accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence. (Comey’s daughter Maureen Comey was a prosecutor in the cases against Epstein and Maxwell, but that doesn’t help Trump’s claim.) 21. Repeating claims of a stolen 2020 election This point examines Trump’s continued promotion of disproven election fraud narratives. Lie: The 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen’ One of Trump’s biggest lies of 2025 was also one of his biggest lies of 2020…and 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Months after his triumphant return to the White House, he continued to relentlessly push nonsense about his defeat in 2020 – wrongly saying the election was “rigged and stolen,” though it was free and fair, and that this has now “been caught,” though all that has been caught is the baselessness of such claims. 22. Claiming the US is alone in using mail-in voting This section addresses Trump’s false assertions regarding election practices worldwide. Lie: The US is ‘the only country in the world’ with mail-in voting While seeking to eradicate mail-in voting, Trump repeatedly lied that the US is “the only country in the world” that uses it. Dozens of other countries use mail-in voting, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland. Trump deployed similar false claims in his quest to end birthright citizenship, wrongly saying the US is the only country that has that policy actually used by dozens of others. Health Care, Legislation, and Democrats 23. Spreading false vaccine information This claim reviews Trump’s inaccurate and potentially harmful statements about childhood vaccinations. Lie: Babies get 80-plus vaccines at once Few political lies are as potentially harmful as lies about vaccines, and Trump delivered a flurry of those, too. Making up numbers again, he falsely claimed in September that “you have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in.” He falsely claimed in October, “You give 82 vaccines in a shot to a little baby that hasn’t even formed yet.” Babies don’t get 80 or 82 different vaccines in total, let alone all at once, and different vaccines aren’t mixed together in a “vat.” 24. Claiming Medicaid was untouched by legislation This section examines Trump’s denial of Medicaid changes despite documented reductions. Lie: Trump’s big domestic policy bill didn’t change Medicaid Lots of Americans were concerned about how Trump’s “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill would affect Medicaid. Trump’s solution? False claim it wouldn’t affect Medicaid. “Your Medicaid is left alone. It’s left the same,” he said in June – though the bill made major changes to Medicaid rules, reduced federal funding for the program by hundreds of billions of dollars, and was expected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to result in millions more people being uninsured in 2034. 25. Claiming historic popularity for an unpopular bill This final point reviews Trump’s repeated claims of record-breaking approval for legislation shown to be widely unpopular. Lie: The domestic policy bill was ‘the single most popular bill ever signed’ As with prices, Trump portrayed up as down on his poll numbers. After multiple polls showed that the big domestic policy bill was highly unpopular – more unpopular than any major bill passed in more than 30 years, according to one scholar’s analysis – Trump proclaimed it “the most popular bill ever signed in the history of our country,” repeating that “this is the single most popular bill ever signed.” He didn’t, and couldn’t, provide any evidence for the boast. Source: CNN