Former President Donald Trump “flubbed numbers, misstated facts, or omitted critical context” after boasting that he had “all the facts” to NBC News moderator Kristen Welker during her debut as the new host of Meet the Presson Sunday, according to NBC News correspondent Jane C. Timm’s fact-check.
“Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more” on “at least” eleven occasions, Timm writes. “Trump’s presidency was marked by repeated false, exaggerated, and misleading claims. Some of those claims drove policy, while another triggered an impeachment. Trump’s false view that the election was stolen helped land him and dozens of others in legal trouble in Georgia. One senior aide — during a Meet the Press interview — even coined the phrase ‘alternative facts‘ in defense of the president.”
Below are four of Trump’s most notable whoppers.
Immigration:
- Trump: “Millions of illegal immigrants coming into our country, flooding our cities, flooding the countryside. I think the number is going to be 15 million people by the time you end this, by the end of this year. I think the real number is going to be 15 million people.”
- Timm: “There’s no evidence that 15 million people will cross the border this year. That’s more than the total number of people, 11.4 million, that the U.S. government estimates are here without legal authorization.”
- The January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol:
- Trump: “These people on January 6th — some of them never even went into the building, and they’re being given sentences of many years.”
- Timm: “This is missing critical context. Some of the defendants who received some of the longest sentences of any January 6th participants — including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — did not enter the Capitol building themselves but received lengthy sentences after they were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Some of the most vicious assaults of the Capitol attack were committed by January 6th participants who never stepped foot in the building, and some of those individuals received significant sentences, too.“
The 2020 election:
- Trump: “If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged.”
- Timm: “Trump and his supporters brought more than 50 lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the election; none were successful in overturning the results.”
Bacon:
- Trump: “Things are not going right now very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times. Food is up horribly — worse than energy.”
- Timm: “Inflation has absolutely raised the cost of many consumer goods, including food. But Trump’s exaggerating the the price of salt-cured pork: In U.S. cities on average, the cost of sliced bacon is up by about 12% from the end of Trump’s term in office, though at one point in 2022, it was 30% more expensive than it was at the end of 2020.”
Explore Timm’s analysis at this link.
