President-elect Donald Trump Repeats False Claims in NBC Interview
During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” President-elect Donald Trump repeated numerous false claims, including his old lie that the US is the world’s only country with birthright citizenship. Trump reiterated his intention to try to end birthright citizenship, claiming, “We’re the only country that has it.” However, this is not true; around three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including US neighbors Canada and Mexico, as well as the majority of South American countries.
Trump also falsely claimed that crime is at an all-time high, despite FBI data showing that crime rates have plummeted in the US since the early 1990s and are far below all-time highs. He also maintained that his tariffs did not cost Americans anything, when studies, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, found that Americans bore almost the entire cost of his tariffs on Chinese products.
In addition, Trump falsely claimed that inflation was low during his presidency and that it was so low that Joe Biden’s administration “didn’t have inflation for a year and a half.” In reality, cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency was around 8%, and there was cumulative inflation of about 14% over Joe Biden’s first two years as president.
Trump also repeated his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as his false claim that there were “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years.” The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have disputed this figure, which refers to immigrants with homicide convictions in the US, not those released over the past three years.
Other false claims made by Trump in the interview include assertions about the European Union’s trade practices, claiming that the EU does not import US products, when in fact the US exported $368 billion in goods to the EU in 2023. Additionally, Trump claimed to have “saved Obamacare,” but this is misleading, as he and his administration took steps to weaken the law rather than repeal it.
These are just a few examples of the many false and misleading claims made by Trump during the interview, highlighting the need for fact-checking and scrutiny of such statements.
