Fact checking Donald Trump’s marathon pitch to the US voter
Melissa Goldin And Calvin Woodward
washington: Donald Trump’s record-breaking 108-minute State of the Union address is filled with plenty of triumphalism, even as the US president’s approval ratings highlight growing public discontent.
From inflation to immigration, from tariffs to issues of war and peace, Trump’s key message to US voters was that the country had “won too much” and would continue to win as long as the current administration remained in place.
To persuade a skeptical public to vote Republican in the November midterm elections, Trump insisted that he had steered the US economy out of trouble. But how much of his fuss is about money and how much of it is about hot weather?
Here’s a closer look at the facts:
The economy is everything, and Trump wants voters to know he’s fixing that problem
Trump’s claim: “When I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I inherited a country in crisis with a stagnant economy.”
Facts: Not really. Voters were unhappy with high inflation in the 2024 elections, but the US economy was far from recession. U.S. gross domestic product increased by 2.8 percent in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. This is a stronger growth rate than the 2.2 percent growth achieved last year at the beginning of Trump’s second term.
Trump’s claim: “Incomes are soaring, the economy is roaring like never before.”
Facts: Not so. After-tax earnings, adjusted for inflation, rose just 0.9 percent in 2025, down from 2.2 percent in 2024, Joe Biden’s final year in office. Annual earnings in Trump’s first year are the lowest since 2022, when inflation rose and caused Americans’ inflation-adjusted income to fall.
Wages and salaries are the largest component of revenues, and their growth has slowed as companies sharply slowed hiring. In such an environment, workers generally have smaller wage increases.
Investments and jobs
Trump’s claim: “I have committed more than US$18 trillion ($25.4 trillion) from around the world.”
Facts: Trump has provided no evidence that he has secured that much domestic or foreign investment in the United States. According to statements made by various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, this figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and much higher than the actual figure. The White House website offers a much lower figure ($9.6 trillion), which appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.
A study published in January raised doubts about whether the more than $5 trillion in investment pledges many of America’s largest trading partners made last year will actually come true, and questioned how it would be spent if it did.
Trump’s claim: “More Americans are working today than at any time in our country’s history.”
Facts: Yes, but as the population grows, the number of Americans with jobs always increases. The relevant figure is the share of Americans with jobs, which has fallen significantly over the past quarter-century, in part because the workforce is aging and more people are retiring. The rate of Americans employed rose to 64.7 percent in April 2000 and 59.8 percent in January.
The unemployment rate is as low as 4.3 percent, but when Biden left office in January 2025 it was lower at 4 percent. During Biden’s presidency, this rate dropped to a 50-year low of 3.4 percent.
Peaceful Trump
Trump’s claim: “I finished eight battles in my first 10 months.”
Facts: This statistic, which Trump frequently mentions, is quite exaggerated. Although he has helped mediate relations between many nations, his influence is not as clear-cut as it seems. In at least two examples of peace he claimed to have achieved, there was no war to end: there was no fighting between Serbia and Kosovo, and there was friction rather than fighting between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Other wars that Trump listed among the wars he solved were between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand. His influence varied in these conflicts.
Tariffs
Trump’s claim: Tariff revenues “save our country, it’s the type of money we get.”
Facts: Although Trump has imposed large tax increases on imports, these increases are not large enough to dent the government’s annual budget deficits. Tariffs also do not match job gains in the manufacturing sector. Before the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs based on the emergency declaration, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that his new taxes would raise $3 trillion over 10 years, or $300 billion annually.
That’s not enough to cover the cost of $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, including additional interest cuts that favor corporations and the wealthy. It is not enough to close the annual budget deficit, which amounted to 1.78 trillion US dollars last year.
Trump’s claim: “Tariffs paid by foreign countries will largely replace today’s income tax system, as it has in the past.”
Facts: Not likely. Under the Trump administration, tariffs rose to $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, from $77 billion the previous year. But import taxes accounted for less than 4 percent of federal revenue. Income taxes and payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, account for 84 percent.
Lowering drug prices
Trump’s claim: “I bought prescription drugs, which are a huge part of healthcare, from the highest price to the lowest price all over the world. This is a great success. The result is a price difference of 300, 400, 500, 600 percent and more.”
Facts: This is impossible. Although the Trump administration has taken steps to lower drug prices, reducing prices by more than 100 percent would theoretically mean people are being paid to buy drugs.
Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California Schaeffer Center, said in August that the president’s claim was “complete fiction.” He acknowledged that this would mean drug companies paying customers rather than the other way around.
Crime is decreasing
Trump’s claim: “Last year saw the largest drop in the murder rate in recorded history. This is the biggest drop. Consider the lowest number in recorded history in over 125 years.”
Facts: Trump claims that the murder rate in the US has fallen to a 125-year low, suggesting a significant drop in violent crime by 2025. But this is misleading. Crime has already been on a downward trend in recent years.
A study published in January by the Independent Criminal Justice Council, which collected data on homicides from 35 U.S. cities, showed a 21 percent drop in homicide rates from 2024 to 2025.
There is a strong possibility that homicides will drop to about 4 per 100,000 people in 2025 when nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes are reported by the FBI later this year, the report said. This would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data dating back to 1900.
The FBI’s 2023 and 2024 reports show significant reductions in violent crime.
Crimes have increased during the coronavirus pandemic; homicides increased nearly 30 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year; This was the largest increase in a year since the FBI began keeping records. But violent crime fell to nearly pre-pandemic levels around 2022, when Biden became president.
Borders are being drawn on immigration
Trump’s claim: “We will always allow people to enter legally who will love our country and work hard to protect our country.”
Facts: Trump has actually taken steps to restrict who can immigrate to the United States, often in the name of protecting national security. He suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and resumed it in October, but only on a limited basis for white South Africans.
Trump also imposed restrictions on people who can travel to the United States from nearly 40 countries around the world. Most of these countries are in Africa.
Taxes and the ‘big beautiful bill’
Trump’s claim: “With the big, beautiful bill, we didn’t tax you on tips, we didn’t tax you on overtime, we didn’t tax you on Social Security.”
Facts: While the president often says his big tax cut bill means no tax on Social Security, that’s not the case for everyone. Not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction, which will last until 2029.
Those who can’t do so include the lowest-income seniors (those who don’t already pay Social Security taxes), those who choose to claim their benefits before turning 65, and those above a defined income threshold. Deductions phase out as income increases.
election fraud
Trump’s claim: “I am asking you to pass the Save America Act to prevent illegal aliens and others who are unauthorized from voting in our sacred American elections. Fraud in our elections is rampant.”
Facts: He and his allies never produced evidence of widespread election fraud. Experts say voter fraud is extremely rare and few non-citizens ever slip through the cracks.
For example, a recent review in Michigan found that 15 people who voted in the 2024 general election were noncitizens out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast in the state. Of those, 13 were referred to the attorney general for potential criminal charges. One of them involved a voter who has since died, and the last case is still under investigation.
Getting the date right
Trump’s claim: “The revolution that began in 1776 is not over. It continues because the fire of freedom and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot.”
Facts: Strictly speaking, the American Revolution began the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared their independence in 1776. It ended on September 3, 1783.
AP with a staff reporter
Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak, Paul Wiseman, Christopher Rugaber, Elliot Spagat and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
