Trump repeats false, inaccurate claims in first sit-down broadcast interview since re-election

WASHINGTON – US President-elect Donald Trump, in his first sit-down broadcast interview since his re-election in November, repeated several false and inaccurate claims on a range of topics that were staples of his 2024 campaign.

In the interview, which aired on Dec 8 on NBC’s Meet The Press, Trump miscast the effect of tariffs, vastly overstated the number of unauthorised immigrants released under the Biden administration, falsely claimed that crime was at “an all-time high”, misleadingly described military spending under Nato and exaggerated his own polling, among other specious statements.

Here is a breakdown of the claims.

Trade and the economy

Trump wrongly claimed there was “no inflation” under his first term and that inflation did not begin occurring until 1½ years into the Biden administration. (Annual inflation generally hovered between 1 per cent and 2 per cent from 2017 to 2020, and had increased to 4.7 per cent in 2021.)

He exaggerated the United States’ trade deficits with Canada and Mexico as US$100 billion (S$134 billion) and US$300 billion, describing the figures as a subsidy. (The trade deficit in goods and services was US$41 billion with Canada and US$162 billion with Mexico; a deficit simply means that one country’s consumers are buying more from the other nation, not giving money away.)

He falsely claimed that European nations “don’t take our cars, they don’t take our food product, they don’t take anything”. (Europe is the United States’ second-largest car export market and American goods exported to Europe totalled almost US$415 billion in 2023.)

And he claimed that tariffs “cost Americans nothing”. (Economists overwhelmingly agree that the costs of tariffs are passed on to consumers.)

Immigration

Trump falsely claimed more than 13,000 immigrants who had committed murder were “released into our country over the last three years”. (The figure, from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, referred to immigrants who were currently not detained by the immigration authorities, though they may be in prisons or jails, and included those who had entered the country over the past 40 years.)

He falsely claimed that prisons in Venezuela “are at the lowest point in terms of emptiness that they’ve ever been”. (Venezuela’s prisons are overcrowded and the population is about level with that of 2021.)

He hyperbolically claimed that unauthorised immigrants in a Colorado town were “literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity”. (City officials said this had not happened.)

And he falsely claimed that “we’re the only country” that grants citizenship to any child born within its borders. (More than 30 others do so.)

Other topics

Trump falsely claimed that “crime is at an all-time high”. (It is not).

He claimed that he “was able to get hundreds of billions of dollars put into Nato just by a tough attitude”. (He can claim some credit for more countries in the alliance meeting a goal of spending on their own militaries, but they made that pledge in 2014.)

And he claimed that “just prior to Covid-19 coming in, I had polls that were the highest”. (He had a 48 per cent approval rating in late February 2020, according to a Gallup poll, lower than all but three of his predecessors dating to Mr Harry Truman at a similar time into their presidencies.) NYTIMES