Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) went to X to post some of the triumphs that President Donald Trump had accomplished in just a few short months in office — the only problem is, almost none of what he advertised was actually true.
"Scorecard under @realDonaldTrump: ✅ Stock market up 10% ✅ Egg prices down 55% ✅ Inflation at 5 year low ✅ Gas prices down 20% ✅ $6 trillion+ in new US investment ✅ Consumer confidence highest in 4 yrs," wrote Moreno, who previously worked in the used car business before being elected in 2024. "That’s all in 4 months. Now Republicans in the Senate have to step up!"
But many commenters on social media, noted The Daily Beast, swiftly debunked most of these statistics.
"The stock market is down 1.37%, not up 10%, since Trump took office," wrote The Atlantic financial journalist James Surowiecki. "The price of gas is up 2.6%, not down 20%. Consumer confidence is lower than it was at any point in 2023 or 2024. Just baffling that a U.S. senator goes on Twitter to tell obvious, easily checkable lies."
One user even asked Grok, the sometimes-manipulated artificial intelligence chatbot used on tech billionaire Elon Musk's X platform, to fact-check Moreno — and it delivered.
"The claim of a 10% stock market rise is false; the S&P 500 dropped ~1.37% from Jan 20 to May 27, 2025," wrote Grok. "Egg prices may have fallen, but a 55% drop lacks confirmation. Inflation, gas prices, investment, and consumer confidence claims need more data to verify. Current evidence suggests some inaccuracies."
Moreno's only factual claim appeared to be the "$6 trillion+ in new U.S. investment." Yahoo Finance confirmed this month that all of the commitments from foreign governments and corporations to invest in the United States since Trump took office add up to roughly $6 trillion. But even there, Moreno is leaving out some critical context.
For one thing, many of these commitments come from countries whose entire GDP is comparable to the amount of investment they are promising, making the full figure dubious, and according to Yahoo Finance, "After analyzing the announcements and stripping out less tangible commitments — like purchases of goods, partnerships, and reannounced projects — [Goldman Sachs] estimates that only $135 billion in new annual investment is directly tied to GDP-relevant projects like physical capital expenditures and R&D."