Donald Trump spoke to the country and Congress Tuesday night, six weeks into his presidency, outlining his plans for the upcoming four years. Trump’s speech contains claims that were overstated, lacked context, or were untrue were fact-checked by news outlets like ABC News and PolitiFact.
Trump’s statement: We are making every effort to bring the price of eggs back down after Joe Biden, in particular, allowed it to spiral out of control.
Fact: Lacks context.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, bird flu has killed 136 million birds since 2022, which is why egg costs have lately increased under Trump’s administration, even though they did under former President Joe Biden.
Under Biden’s presidency, inflation caused the price of eggs to rise steadily, but the first notable price increase happened in 2022 when avian flu started to affect flocks of birds in the United States. In that one year alone, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that the price of an egg increased from $1.93 to $4.82 a dozen.
During the remainder of Biden’s administration, prices calmed once more, falling back to the $2–$3 range. However, this January, avian flu caused prices to spike back up to a record-high $4.95.
With egg prices soaring, planes falling out of the sky, Measles outbreaks, and laughing stock on the world stage, trump told his first big lie: “America is back.”
Those who did not drink the kool-aid remained seated. pic.twitter.com/ZCbYqZjedn
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) March 5, 2025
Trump’s statement: Trump won a mandate in elections
Fact: This depends on who is looking at it.
Although Trump’s win was obvious, it wasn’t a landslide by historical standards.
Trump can rejoice because he won the popular vote and the Electoral College. After George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection victory, he became just the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988. Political analysts predicted that the election would be decided by seven battleground states, all of which Trump won.
However, even in the last 25 years, when close elections have been the norm, like the Florida recount election in 2000 and Trump’s two prior contests in 2016 and 2020, his victory margins, both in terms of raw votes and percentages, were minuscule.
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TRUMP LIES IN STATE OF UNION ADDRESSDonald Trump will happily state
That the Union of America is great..he lies on reflection
..that he won the ElectionAnd he received a fictitious mandate.#SOTU #StateOfTheUnion #TrumpTariffs #TrumpisaNationalDisgrace pic.twitter.com/lytvcVkFRm
— LimeriTweets / WoodyGuth3 (@LimeriTweets) March 5, 2025
Trump’s statement: “We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”
Fact: Lacks context.
The Biden administration did not impose a mandate for electric vehicles. Last March, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency enacted tailpipe emissions regulations that set an average of permitted emissions for the whole fleet of vehicles sold by a car manufacturer.
Only vehicles manufactured between 2027 and 2032 would have been affected by the regulations. A variety of practical technologies, including hybrids, totally electric cars, and enhanced internal combustion engines, were made possible in the rules. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order rescinding these new guidelines.
MUST WATCH: President Trump touts ending Joe Biden and Democrats’ war on American energy:
“We ended all of Biden’s environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable, and importantly, we ended the last administration’s insane electric… pic.twitter.com/1PIdV5jw4c
— Fmr. Rep. Jason Isaac (@ISAACforEnergy) March 5, 2025
Trump’s statement: Paris Climate Accord was costing the U.S. “trillions.”
Fact: False.
In order to justify his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, Trump said that the accord was costing the United States “trillions of dollars.” It’s not true.
The Trump administration used forecasts from consultancy NERA Economic Consulting to support its decision to leave the global deal. It concluded that limiting emissions from fossil fuels would raise production costs, which would lead to the demise of manufacturing companies that were not competitive. As a result of those closures, manufacturing jobs would decline.
Therefore, the United States was not spending trillions of dollars on the climate deal. In theory, it might.
TRUMP CLAIM: The Paris Climate Accord was costing the U.S. “trillions”
FACT-CHECK: False.
Trump defended his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, saying the pact was costing the U.S. “trillions of dollars.”
That’s untrue.— SunBea2 (@bentsally11) March 5, 2025
Trump’s statement: Musk found people as old as 369 in the Social Security system
Fact: Misleading.
In an X chart, Elon Musk claimed to have discovered millions of individuals above 110 in a Social Security database; one of them was in the 360–369 age range.
According to the acting Social Security commissioner, those over 100 who do not have a death date linked to their Social Security record “are not necessarily receiving benefits.” Approximately 89,000 people aged 99 and more get Social Security benefits, according to recent data from the Social Security Administration.
For reasons unique to the intricate Social Security database or due to missing data, government databases may identify a person as 150 years old; nonetheless, this does not imply that millions of payments are fraudulently made to individuals with improbable ages.
🚨Alert: Elon Musk shares shocking Social Security stats revealing the number of people in each age bracket marked as alive in the database — are there REALLY two people in the US over 240 years old? pic.twitter.com/sRps0InPbq
— US Homeland Security News (@defense_civil25) February 17, 2025
Trump’s statement: “Gold cards” don’t need approval
Fact: Misleading.
According to immigration experts, without congressional action, Trump cannot end an existing green card program or establish a new one.
Trump declared that, in exchange for $5 million, he would grant anyone legal permanent residency in the United States. Similar to a green card, the so-called “gold card” would allow permanent residency and employment in the United States while offering a path to citizenship.
Trump has stated that the program will replace the EB-5 immigrant investment visa program and has characterized it as a means of reducing the U.S. deficit. However, he has not produced a formal document that establishes the program.
President Trump’s Gold Card plan will only help usher in the Golden Age of America.
…and yes, that’s the original Obama Hope poster behind me, serving as a reminder of past politicians who created our current immigration crisis.
We must never return to that sort of thinking. pic.twitter.com/c3nLjEJnNj
— Allison Huynh (@allihuynh) February 28, 2025
Trump’s statement: DOGE founded “Hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud”
Fact: Unverifiable.
This assertion cannot be verified because DOGE has not yet made all of its work public or identified which cuts are “fraud” rather than “waste.” Instead of “hundreds of billions” in fraud, DOGE has claimed to have saved $106 billion in total savings. Elon Musk has even stated that they have primarily discovered “waste” and “mostly not fraud.”
Only 30% of the receipts supporting DOGE’s claim that it has saved $106 billion in government funds have been uploaded on the agency’s website, and the amount is still unsubstantiated.
DOGE has not presented evidence of “fraud”; they have highlighted millions of dollars worth of spending that Musk considers wasteful.
By contrast, the GAO identified $233 billion of fraud in 2024. We don’t need to let a billionaire ignore federal law to do government oversight https://t.co/1IydxPnKz7 pic.twitter.com/fTYLDHlV2x
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) February 6, 2025
Trump’s statement: U.S. has “spent perhaps $350 billion” supporting Ukraine’s defense
Fact: False
Congress has budgeted or otherwise made available $182.75 billion for the whole U.S. response to the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, according to the special inspector general in charge of monitoring spending associated with the conflict in Ukraine. Approximately $119 billion of the sum has directly benefited Ukraine, including roughly $65.9 billion in military aid.
