U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks, as an image of an F-47 sixth-generation fighter jet is displayed, in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
President Donald Trump's latest Oval Office speech was full of fabrications, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote in an extensive analysis tearing apart the newest fake claims.
Dale has become a mainstay in attempting to fact-check Trump, who was notorious for unleashing lies throughout his career and pushing self-serving conspiracy theories. Trump was documented to have made tens of thousands of false or misleading statements from fact-checkers, averaging 21 false claims per day during his first term.
On Friday, Dale wrote, Trump made no fewer than nine false claims while speaking to reporters.
"Trump used inaccurate figures for the number of votes he received in the 2024 presidential election, US aid to Ukraine, the number of migrants who entered the US during the Biden administration, the US trade deficits with China and Canada, and annual US fentanyl deaths," wrote Dale. In fact, Trump got about 77 million votes, not "much more than 80 million" as he claimed; he also vastly overstated U.S. trade deficits and misstated how Canadian dairy tariffs work, and he overstated U.S. fentanyl deaths per year sixfold.
ALSO READ: ‘I miss lynch mobs’: The secretary of retribution's followers are getting impatient
But Trump didn't stop there.
"He also wrongly declared, again, that Honda announced it is building a new factory in Indiana. He repeated his years-old baseless claim that NATO would no longer have existed if not for his first presidency. He told his familiar unsubstantiated story about large numbers of migrants having come from jails in 'the Congo' and elsewhere," Dale railed.
Indeed, Dale noted, he was being generous in only saying Trump made nine falsehoods because he also went on to say that "nobody was killed" during the Jan. 6 attack other than Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist who was shot trying to force her way through a window.
"We won’t call Trump’s claim false, but it’s worth noting that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was attacked with pepper spray during the riot, died after suffering strokes the next day. (The chief medical examiner for Washington, DC, found that Sicknick died of natural causes, but also told the Washington Post that 'all that transpired played a role in his condition.' Experts subsequently noted to CNN that stressful or traumatic events can lead to strokes.)" wrote Dale. Moreover, "three other Trump supporters who were at the Capitol on January 6 died in medical emergencies, two from natural causes and one from accidental amphetamine intoxication, according to the chief medical examiner."