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President Donald Trump made false claims about the war with Iran, the economy and other subjects during public comments at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Many of them have been debunked before. Here\u2019s a quick fact check of the false claims and some others that were misleading or lacked critical context.<\/p>\n
This is not intended as a comprehensive list; CNN is still looking into some of the president\u2019s remarks at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s military capabilities:<\/strong>\u00a0Trump, speaking of Iran\u2019s military capabilities, said, \u201cTheir navy is gone, their air force is gone,\u202feverything\u2019s\u202fgone.\u201d Though there\u2019s no doubt the US and Israel have significantly degraded Iran\u2019s military capabilities during the war that began in late February, it\u2019s not true that \u201ceverything\u201d is gone \u2014 as Trump implicitly acknowledged last week when he\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThey have a little ability. Their missiles are 82% gone, we estimate. \u2026 Same thing with drones, they\u2019re largely gone but they still have a little capacity.\u201d CNN\u202freported<\/a>\u202fin April that, according to three sources familiar with US intelligence findings, roughly half of Iran\u2019s missile launchers were still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remained in Iran\u2019s arsenal; CNN\u202freported<\/a>\u202flast week that four sources said US intelligence indicates Iran\u2019s military is reconstituting much faster than initially estimated and that \u201cIran also still maintains ballistic-missile, drone-attack and anti-air capability despite the serious damage inflicted by US-Israeli strikes, according to recent US intelligence assessments, meaning the quick rebuilding of military production capacity isn\u2019t starting from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n How Trump describes the war with Iran:\u00a0<\/strong>Mixing up Iran with Venezuela, Trump spoke about how Americans\u2019 401(k) balances are high \u201cdespite the conflict \u2014 I don\u2019t call it a war, I call it a conflict \u2014 despite the conflict with Venezuela.\u201d (His subsequent comments made clear he was referring to Iran.) Though Trump has indeed sometimes called the war with Iran a \u201cconflict,\u201d or used other words like \u201cexcursion<\/a>\u201d or \u201cskirmish<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s not true that he doesn\u2019t call it a \u201cwar.\u201d He has\u00a0repeatedly<\/a>\u00a0called it<\/a>\u00a0a war<\/a>\u00a0in recent weeks even as he has intermittently insisted he doesn\u2019t use that term; in fact, he called it a war later in this very same Cabinet meeting, noting that the US lost 13 servicemembers \u201cbetween two wars, two big wars, Venezuela and Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n Gas prices:<\/strong>\u00a0Trump claimed, \u201cWhen I was in Iowa, we had \u2014 driving by, we saw gas stations: $1.90 a gallon, $1.85, $1.87 were the three that we saw.\u201d He has previously made clear that such comments are referring to supposed prices on\u00a0the day he visited Iowa in late January<\/a>. But on that day, the AAA state average for regular gasoline was $2.57 per gallon; the firm GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon \u2014 $1.97, to be specific, not $1.85 to $1.90 \u2014 out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. And a CNN reporter\u202fnoticed<\/a>\u202fthat the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was at $2.69 per gallon that day.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible Trump was referring to\u202fthe price of E85<\/a>, an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a\u202fminority of gas stations<\/a>\u202fand can only be used in the\u202fsmall percentage<\/a>\u202fof vehicles that are compatible with it; the blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit. But, as when he made this claim about Iowa gas prices\u00a0on previous occasions<\/a>, he offered no indication on Wednesday that he was talking about a niche product.<\/p>\n Prescription drug prices:\u00a0<\/strong>Trump falsely claimed, of prescription drug prices, \u201cWe have drugs down 400, 500, 600%.\u201d He then added, \u201cNow you could say 80,\u202f90, 70,\u202f60, 50% if you want; there are two ways (to phrase it), depends on the way you ask the question.\u201d\u202fBut the first \u201cway\u201d is invalid; drug-price reductions of 400%, 500% and 600% are\u202fmathematically impossible<\/a>, as CNN and others have repeatedly noted. If Trump magically got companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut. A cut of 400%, 500% or 600% would mean that Americans would be\u202fpaid\u202f<\/em>money to acquire their medications, which is not happening.<\/p>\n Trump used more defensible phrasing when appearing to read from a prepared text moments earlier, claiming he is achieving \u201cprice differences\u201d of 400% to 600% through the website TrumpRX.gov. But then he reverted to his usual inaccurate phrasing.<\/p>\n Investment in the US:\u00a0<\/strong>Trump repeated a figure he has used for months about supposed investment in the US during his second presidency, saying there is \u201c$18 trillion\u202fcoming in\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s not including the 12th month, that\u2019s 11.\u201d The\u202f$18 trillion\u202ffigure is fiction. As of the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House\u2019s\u202fown website<\/a>\u202fsaid the figure for \u201cmajor investment announcements\u201d this term is \u201c$10.6 trillion,\u201d\u202fand even that is a major exaggeration of actual investment. A\u202fdetailed CNN review<\/a>\u202fin October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about \u201cbilateral trade\u201d or \u201ceconomic exchange\u201d rather than investment in the US, and vague statements that didn\u2019t even rise to the level of pledges.<\/p>\n Obama, Biden and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool:\u00a0<\/strong>Trump\u2019s administration is spending more than $13 million on a\u202fproject<\/a>\u202fto improve the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, federal records show. Trump falsely\u202fclaimed Wednesday, \u201cThe Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work,\u201d adding a bit later, \u201cThey spent hundreds of millions, over $100\u202fmillion.\u201d Those figures are incorrect; the White House could not offer any corroboration for them when CNN inquired last week. The Obama administration spent\u202fabout $35 million<\/a>\u202fon a contract to try to fix issues with the pool, but that\u2019s not hundreds of millions, and the Biden administration did not go ahead with any major pool repair project. Chuck Sams, who was director of the National Park Service under Biden, told CNN last week that they had received a cost estimate \u201cabove $100 million\u201d for a \u201cfull rehabilitation\u201d but had not done the project. (Sams said it \u201cwould have more than likely moved forward if we had remained in office,\u201d but Trump asserted that it already happened.)<\/p>\n what they allowed in.\u201d As usual, Trump didn\u2019t make clear that, as\u202fthe Department of Homeland Security and independent experts noted in 2024<\/a>, the figure it appears he is referring to is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including\u202fduring Trump\u2019s own first administration<\/em>. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s \u201cnon-detained docket\u201d \u2014 which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences. And it has never been clear whether there is a factual basis for Trump\u2019s claim that more than half of the people in question committed more than one murder; the White House did not respond in January to a CNN request to explain where Trump might have gotten this information. You can read more\u202fhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n Social Security and deceased people:<\/strong>\u00a0Trump said, \u201cI think we\u202fhave a chance to save\u202fSocial\u202fSecurity\u202fwithout doing anything to it, by just the numbers of fraudulent people on\u202fSocial\u202fSecurity \u2014 people that are 115 years old, 125 years old, getting payments.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is no evidence that there is even close to\u202fenough fraud involving people collecting Social Security\u202fpayments in the names of deceased people who would be 115 or older to meaningfully alter the fiscal trajectory of the program.\u202fEven before Trump became president the first time, Social Security had an automated\u202fsystem in place<\/a>\u202fto stop payments to deceased people listed as being at least 115 years old.<\/p>\n And while a 2023 report from the inspector general monitoring Social Security Administration\u202ffound<\/a>\u202fthat there were 18.9 million people age 100 or older who were not marked as deceased on their Social Security database entry, it also found that only 44,000 of these 18.9 million people were receiving payments. Even those 44,000 instances were not obviously fraudulent or erroneous; the inspector general noted that a larger number of\u00a0living<\/em>\u00a0people in the US, an estimated 86,000, were age 100 or older.<\/p>\n In early 2025, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration at the time, Leland Dudek \u2014 who was\u00a0elevated to that post by the Trump administration<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 tried to set the record straight after Elon Musk, then leading a government efficiency initiative for Trump,\u00a0promoted<\/a>\u00a0baseless claims of massive Social Security fraud involving people so old they were obviously dead. Dudek explained, \u201cThe reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, after Social Security\u2019s anti-fraud office\u00a0identified<\/a>\u00a0a supposed 114-year old who was receiving benefits but had actually been dead since 1971 \u2013 her nephew had\u00a0stolen<\/a>\u00a0the money for decades \u2013 the Justice Department\u00a0sais <\/a>the deceased woman \u201cappeared to be the second-oldest living person in the U.S. receiving Social Security retirement benefits.\u201d So while the case was troubling, there was no substantial number of fraud cases involving 115-to-125-year-olds.\u202f(And the oldest recipient at the time was likely legitimate, a woman who\u00a0lived until age 115 or 116.)<\/p>\n After CNN asked the White House on\u202fWednesday for any evidence of Social Security benefits being fraudulently collected on behalf of deceased people listed as being 115 to 125 years old, the White House provided some links to news articles and press releases about Social Security fraud involving deceased recipients of various ages. But none\u202fof this material identified the deceased people as 115 years old or older, and some of the examples involved deceased people much younger than that (the ages involved in some other examples were unclear). So while it\u2019s possible that there is some fraud involving people listed as being 115 or older, the White House has not publicly identified such cases to date.<\/p>\n This article has been updated with additional reporting and a White House response<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump made false claims about the war with Iran, the economy and other subjects during public comments at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation","category-military","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talesofmotivations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Prices and the economy<\/h2>\n
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool<\/h2>\n
Social Security<\/h2>\n