[President Donald Trump Litters Interview with False Claims, Fact-Checkers Find
President Trump repeated many of the same false claims he made earlier in his first three days back in the White House in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. The claims related to the 2020 and 2024 elections, immigration, and the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, as well as a dubious new claim that the assaults of police officers that day were “very minor incidents.”
Here is a fact-check of 11 of his remarks.
1. Trump repeated his false claim that the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “deleted and destroyed all of the information that they collected.” The committee preserved a large volume of evidence, including a final report that was over 800 pages long, as well as transcripts of interviews with over 140 witnesses.
2. Trump repeated his false claim that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “on tape admitting” that Trump had offered her 10,000 soldiers in advance of January 6, 2021. The footage shows that Pelosi expressed frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, but there is no admission that she rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops.
3. Trump repeated his false claim that he got “almost 75 million votes” in the 2020 election, then falsely claimed that this was not an accurate figure. The votes were counted and reported accurately, and Trump’s vote total – about 74.2 million – was his actual total.
4. Trump described the Biden administration as election cheaters, saying that “the only thing they’re good at, really, is cheating” and that “anybody that cheats that much and that well is not stupid.” This is nonsense. US elections are free and secure; Biden beat Trump in a free and fair 2020 election held while Trump was president.
5. Trump said he believes the number of migrants who have entered the country under President Joe Biden is “21 million.” This figure is incorrect. Through December, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden administration.
6. Trump repeated his frequent unsubstantiated claim that foreign countries have “emptied their jails” to somehow bring prisoners into the United States. There is no evidence for this claim.
7. Trump repeated his baseless claim that Venezuela has “emptied its prisons” to send people to the United States. Experts on Venezuela have said they have seen no such evidence.
8. Trump claimed that the global prison population is down, but this is wrong. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people.
9. Trump repeated his false claim that “the Congo” has “emptied its prisons out into the United States.” Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN there is no evidence for these claims.
10. Trump reprised a false story he has told for years about something that happened during the impeachment saga related to the 2019 phone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden. Trump claimed that Adam Schiff made up the story, but this is not true.
11. Trump repeated his familiar false claim that “we got the largest tax cut in history” during his first presidency. Expert analyses have found that his 2017 tax cut law was not the largest in US history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source link