President Donald Trump made a bizarre claim during his interview with Fox News' Bret Baier released on Friday, regarding the value of the "deals" he has inked with Middle Eastern countries in his tour of the region.
“Think of it, this trip, I made 12 times the money that we're talking about," Trump told Baier. "I made that money in a few days. I've always been good with money. I make money. In four days, I made 12 times what we spent in Ukraine."
Trump appears to be referring to deals he struck with several Middle Eastern countries for foreign direct investments into the United States. Aside from the fact that investments into the U.S. economy aren't comparable to a government outlay spent on a defense program, these commitments don't seem possible. Saudi Arabia pledged either $600 billion or $1 trillion in investments, according to Trump, which is about the size of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund or GDP. Even if feasible, it would require them to significantly jack up oil prices to accomplish.
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Regardless, commenters on social media immediately reacted to Trump's wild claim, particularly his attempt to compare how much money he "made" to the amount spent trying to defend Ukraine from Russian occupation.
"What the f--- is he talking about it?" wrote hedge fund founder Spencer Hakimian.
"I will use my Trump Dementia Word Salad Decoder Ring and translate for you," wrote the influencer account Spiro's Ghost. "In his delusional, dementia eaten, atrophied brain he thinks these totally fake 'deals' he signed with Qatar etc are somehow 12x more than what was spent helping Ukraine. So he 'made 12x the money.'"
"Uh huh, the check's in the mail," wrote the activist account Molly Ploofkins.
"There is so much wrong an corrupt in this statement that I don't know which fallacy to address first," wrote YouTuber "Machine Pun" Kelly Scaletta.
"The numbers he’s presented to us are obviously made up nonsense," wrote West Virginia political staffer Timothy Bellman.
