(CNN) Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump returned The campaign trail was littered with false claims — many of which he had previously made — with a rally speech in Waco, Texas, on Saturday.
Trump also offered baseless attacks on integrity Criminal investigations In his conduct in various matters, including Manhattan District Attorney Study Hush payments to an adult film actor. Trump will be said Deliberate “lawyer misconduct” without providing evidence for the charge.
Here’s a fact-check on some of Trump’s other claims in the speech.
Election
Trump claimed that he actually won the 2020 election but that it was a “fraud”.
“We won in 2016. We won in 2020, but it was rigged,” he said. He then reiterated the claim, “It’s a rigged system. Like we had a rigged election.”
First the facts: This is one of Trump’s usual lies. He lost the 2020 election, fair and square. Democrat Joe Biden won the Electoral College 306-232 — more than seven million votes over Trump, good for a margin. 51.3% to 46.8%.
Trade deficit with China
Trump repeated a false version of the claim He served as president more than 100 times — The US had a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. “China is ripping us off and making $600 billion a year,” he said before his inauguration on Saturday.
First the facts: America has Never There was a $600 billion trade deficit with China, even if you only count goods trade and ignore the services trade the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump record for the trade deficit with China was $367 billion in 2015. The goods deficit, which was about $418 billion under Trump in 2018, has fallen below $400 billion in subsequent years, hitting a new record.
Previous presidents and tariffs on Chinese goods
Trump repeated his familiar claim that no president before him had raised revenue from tariffs on China. He said, “We imposed massive tariffs, we took hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars out of China. No other president has taken anything out of China — not 10 cents.”
First the facts: As we’ve written many times, it’s not true that any president before Trump has raised revenue from tariffs on goods from China. In fact, the US has imposed tariffs on China for over two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported In 2019 the United States “collected an average of $12.3 billion in tariffs annually from 2007 to 2016, according to US International Trade Commission DataWeb.” Also, US importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments — and study After study During Trump’s presidency, Americans found themselves accepting higher tariff costs.
the wall
During the 2020 election, one of Trump’s campaign slogans was “promises, promises kept.” Now that he is running again, he is reiterating the promises he made during the campaign. On Saturday, he mentioned the construction of the border wall under his administration.
“I built hundreds of miles of wall, and completed that task as fully as I promised,” he said.
First the facts: Its Not even close to the truth That Trump “finished” the border wall.
According to the official “Border Wall Status” report written by U.S. Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump’s inauguration, about 458 miles of wall have been completed under Trump — but about 280 miles identified for wall construction have not. Completed. A report provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez said of those 280, about 74 miles of barriers are “in the pre-construction phase, not yet delivered, where barriers do not currently exist” and 206 miles are “currently under contract, of dilapidated and outdated designs, and where barriers did not previously exist.”
inflammation
“We’re at the highest inflation rate in 50 years,” Trump said.
First the facts: Trump’s “50 years” claim is an exaggeration, although the inflation rate remains high by historical standards.
Last June, year-on-year inflation hit its highest level since late 1981. 9.1%. But about 41 years is not “50 years”; The real annualized inflation rate over the last 50 years was 14.8% (early 1980), much higher than the level in mid-2022. More importantly, year-on-year inflation has fallen for eight months now 6% in February 2023 — not even close to a 50-year high.
Latin America and deportations
Trump told a story about what he knows about how, as long as he’s been president, he hasn’t been able to deport “really bad people,” including MS-13 gang members, to other countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, because those countries “don’t take it.” M.”
“The buses that were taking really bad people to Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries, they wouldn’t let us in. So, I said to them, ‘Well, how are we going to get them out?’ And they said, ‘Well, sir, we can’t deport them. We gave up years ago under the Obama administration because they ‘wouldn’t take them back,'” Trump said.
First the facts: It is not true that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador will not take back immigrants deported from the US during the Obama administration. Individual exceptions.
In 2016, shortly before the Trump presidency, none of these three countries had any. List of countries Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is considered “recalcitrant” or uncooperative in accepting the return of their nationals.
In fiscal year 2016, Obama’s last full fiscal year, Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third behind Mexico in terms of countries of citizenship removed from the United States, ICE reported. Read a longer fact-check from 2019, Here.
Military equipment was left to the Taliban
Trump repeated a claim that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan left behind “$85 billion worth of the best military equipment anywhere in the world.”
First the facts: Trump’s $85 billion account is wrong. While significant amounts of US-supplied military equipment to Afghan government forces were effectively abandoned by the Taliban upon their return to the US, the Department of Defense assessed A portion of the $18.6 billion worth of equipment delivered to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021 is worth $7.1 billion.
As are other fact-checkers explained earlier, “$85 billion” refers to the total amount of money (which is closer to $83 billion) that Congress appropriated during the war to fund support for the Afghan security forces. A minority of these funds were allocated for equipment.
Obama and Ukraine
While Trump gave Ukraine dangerous aid, he reiterated that the Obama administration gave Ukraine “pillows and sheets.”
First the facts: It is imprecise. While it is true that the Obama administration has refused to provide arms to Ukraine, it has provided much more than that $600 million Security aid to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 involved more than pillows and sheets. Help included Anti-artillery and anti-motor radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night vision devices and medical supplies.
Michael Bloomberg’s campaign spending
While talking about why he is running for president again, Trump joked about billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg’s failed 2020 presidential campaign. He said, “I mean, Mike Bloomberg spent $2.5 billion and he never got past the first (debate) question.”
First the facts: Trump’s $2.5 billion figure is a gross exaggeration. Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion on his 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. That’s a significant amount for a campaign that didn’t even last four months, but it’s less than $2.5 billion.
Trump and Nord Stream 2
Criticizing accusations that he was “soft” on Russia, Trump said, “I’m done with Nord Stream 2. The pipeline is done.”
First the facts: Trump “didn’t finish” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. He agreed to sanctions on companies working on a project to take natural gas from Russia to Germany, a move that came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already about 90% complete — and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said it would complete the pipeline itself after the sanctions. The company announced that construction would resume in December 2020. With just days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced it has renewed permits for construction in its waters.
Pipeline operations never begin; Germany called off the plan early last year when Russia was about to invade Ukraine. The pipeline was damaged later this year in what was described as vandalism.
Awareness of Nord Stream 2
Trump also said that before he railed against the pipeline, “no one in this audience, no one in Washington, had ever heard of Nord Stream 2.”
First the facts: We can’t speak to the pipeline knowledge of the people in this Waco audience, but Trump’s claim that no one in the nation’s capital had heard of Nord Stream 2 before Trump arrived is false. Before Trump took office, Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic debate in Washington. Indeed, Biden publicly criticized the pipeline as vice president in 2016.
Cost of consular activity
Trump retold a story he told during his presidency about moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for less than $1 million. He said, “I promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem, and I built it… at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. It cost $2 billion and I built it for $500,000.”
First the facts: In 2018, the State Department awarded a $21.2 million contract to a firm to design and build “composite security upgrades” related to Trump’s decision to convert the existing U.S. embassy facility in Jerusalem into an embassy. Although the initial change that allowed the building to open as an embassy was less than $400,000, that was not the final total, as Trump has repeatedly said or strongly suggested.
This story has been updated.
CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kanita Iyer contributed to this report.
