President Donald Trump's record-long State of the Union address was subjected to a rigorous fact check by CNN's Daniel Dale.
The 79-year-old president boasted about his economic successes in a one-hour, 48-minute speech to Congress, but Dale told "CNN News Central" that many his claims were exaggerations at best or simply not true at all.
"A whole lot of nonsense there," Dale began. "So the president claimedthat tariffs are paid for byforeign countries. They simplyare not. Tariff payments tothe U.S. government are made byU.S. importers, and we know fromlife experience and fromacademic study after study thatthey often pass on some or allof their costs to the finalconsumer."
"He claimed again thathe secured $18 trillion ininvestments so far this term – that number is total fiction," Dale continued. "The White House's own websiteuses, at this very moment, afigure of $9.7 million inso-called major investmentpromises or announcements, and Ifound that even that $9.7trillion figure is a wildexaggeration, and then thiswhole economic narrative that heinherited record inflation, hedidn't."
"He inherited 3 percentinflation, just a bit abovewhere it is now 2.4 percent, and thisclaim he inherited a stagnanteconomy [that] is now roaring likenever before," Dale added. "Look, economicgrowth in 2025, mostly under Trump, was 2.2 percent. That was partlyaffected by the governmentshutdown in the fall, but it was2.8 percent under President Biden in2025. It was also higher than2.2 percent in every other year of the Biden administration before2024, and other metrics alsodon't suggest any corroborationof this narrative that there issome terrible diseased, stagnanteconomy that is now booming. Itjust just not the case."
Host Sara Sidner agreed there was a "huge discrepancy" between Trump's figures and those touted by his own White House, and she asked Dale to comment on the president's claims about gasoline prices.
"He said most stateshave gas prices below $2.30 – nota single state yesterday had agas price average, according toAAA, below $2.37, and thenhow many stations were below $2?" Dale said. "Well, I spoke to Gasbuddy, afirm that tracks more than150,000 gas stations around theU.S., [and] they told me that fourstations yesterday were sellingfor below $2 aside from specialdiscounts – four out of 150,000. Soyes, they exist, but thepresident didn't make clearthat we're talking like beyondneedle in a haystack territoryhere."