President Donald Trump made a large number of false and misleading claims in the State of the Union address, including a bunch of egregious lies. Here’s a brief fact check of 26 of his remarks – some false, some misleading, some without important context. There's a link at bottom for more detail.
Immigration and foreign affairs
- Trump said the man who killed a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte last summer “came in through open borders.” Wrong. The man charged with the murder is from the US. His Facebook page says he was born in Charlotte, the Charlotte Observer reports.
- Trump said he’s ended eight wars. False. His list included an Egypt-Ethiopia diplomatic dispute that wasn’t a war, some mystery Serbia-Kosovo situation that also wasn’t a war, a war in the DRC that hasn’t actually ended, and the Gaza war he acknowledged himself “proceeds at a very low level.” The list also has several other issues.
- Trump said he hasn’t heard Iran say “secret words”: “We will never have a nuclear weapon.” It’s not clear what Iran is saying in closed-door negotiations, but Iranian officials have said those words publicly – in fact, yesterday afternoon before the speech, Iran’s foreign minister tweeted, “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.” Skepticism of those words is very reasonable, but those were the words.
- Trump said Joe Biden allowed “11,888 murderers” into the country as migrants. That’s a wild distortion of federal data, which is about people who immigrated legally or illegally over multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration, and were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US. Many of them are currently serving their prison sentences.
- Trump suggested a large number of migrants have come in from prisons and “mental institutions.” He has never corroborated such claims.
- Trump said that NATO members are now “paying” 5% of GDP on defense “as opposed to not paying 2 (percent).” But 18 NATO members of 31 were at or above the former 2% target in 2024; no member was up to 5% (or even above 4.5%) in 2025; the US was at 3.2% in 2025. And, again, these are defense expenditures, not payments to the US or NATO.
The economy, inflation and tariffs
- Trump said foreign countries pay his tariffs. Wrong. The payments are made by US importers, and study after study shows the costs of the 2025 Trump tariffs, like his previosu tariffs, are overwhelmingly borne by a combination of US businesses and US consumers.
- Trump said he’s secured $18 trillion in investment commitments in just a year. Fiction. The White House website says it’s $9.7 trillion, and even that is a wild exaggeration.
- Trump said he inherited record inflation. He didn’t. It was 2.9% in Biden’s last full month and 3.0% in the month Trump came back. It peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, a 40-year high but nowhere close to the record of 23.7%, and it then fell steadily before Trump returned.
- He said he inherited a “stagnant economy” but it’s now “roaring like never before.” Baseless. The economy grew faster in 2024 (and 2023, 2022 and 2021) than in 2025, and though the fall shutdown played a role in 2025, there wasn’t anywhere close to a record boom before it happened.
- Trump said gas prices are “$1.99 a gallon” in “some places.” He didn't make clear that it's extremely, extremely few places. GasBuddy found *4* stations at the time of the speech selling for $1.99 or lower aside from special discounts, out of 150,000 stations the firm tracks.
- Trump said gas is “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states.” Various states had some stations selling for $2.30 a gallon or less yesterday, but there were zero states with an average below Oklahoma's $2.37 and only two with an average below $2.50, per AAA; the US average was $2.95.
- Trump accurately noted that eggs, butter, chicken and fresh fruit have declined in average price during this presidency, but he didn’t acknowledge that overall grocery prices are up 2.1% or that far more grocery products have gotten more expensive than have gotten cheaper. He said “even beef, which is very high, is starting to come down significantly”; it did fall 0.9% in January (0.4% seasonally adjusted), but it was still 15% higher than a year ago.
- He said his $1,776 “warrior dividend” for members of the military came “from tariffs and other things.” It didn’t come from tariffs at all; it was taken from funds designated in his big bill last year as supplemental money for the military’s basic allowance for housing.
- He correctly said more Americans are working now than ever, but he didn’t mention that this number rises over time because of population growth. The employment-population ratio and labor force participation rate are both down slightly since he returned, while the unemployment rate has ticked up and job gains have been weak.
Taxes and government programs
- He said he achieved “no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.” He didn’t. His big bill last year created an additional, temporary tax deduction for people 65 and over, but millions will still pay taxes on Social Security.
- He said he can balance the budget overnight by finding sufficient fraud. There is no credible estimate that there is that much fraud in federal programs.
- He said Somali residents of Minnesota have committed much more than $19 billion in fraud. There’s no proof of that to date. A federal prosecutor estimated that there might be fraud in half or more of $18 billion in billing by certain Medicaid services in the state, but half of $18 billion in $9 billion, the prosecutor didn’t say all of this supposed fraud was committed by Somalis, and Gov. Walz’s administration has sharply contested the estimate.
- He said he’ll always protect Medicaid. He’s already broken that promise. His big bill last year slashed more than $900 billion in federal funding over 10 years for Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO estimated that its Medicaid provisions would increase the number of uninsured by 7.5 million in 2034.
- He said he passed the largest tax cuts in American history. That’s not true as a share of GDP, a common way to measure.
Elections
- He said “cheating is rampant in our elections.” It’s simply not. The incidence of fraud is minuscule.
- He referred to “crooked mail-in ballots.” Just baseless to categorically describe mail-in ballots this way. Experts say there is slightly more fraud with mail-in voting than with in-person voting, but all evidence shows it’s still tiny.
- He said Democrats can only get elected by cheating. An obvious lie.
Crime
- He said he inherited “rampant crime.” Crime data expert Jeff Asher: “The US violent crime rate in 2024 was the lowest since 1969 and the property crime rate was the lowest since 1961.”
- He said Washington, DC is “now one of the safest cities in the country.” That’s not true, though crime has fallen there in the past year – before and after Trump’s takeover of local law enforcement.
- He said DC has “almost no crime anymore.” Not true, as a cursory glance at public data or police press releases shows. It did have a rare three-week stretch of no murders to start the year, but that’s over.
cnn.com/2026/02/24/politics/…