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Summary
In his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term, President Donald Trump distorted the facts on fraud, immigration, aid to Ukraine, the economy, autism and more.
- Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” However, the DOGE website currently states that the department has only generated $105 billion in savings, and only purports to provide evidence to support $19.8 billion of that total. It’s unclear how much, if any, of that is related to fraud.
- The president read data purportedly showing that millions of dead individuals were incorrectly labeled as alive in the Social Security database, and misleadingly claimed that “money is being paid to many of them.” Social Security Administration internal audits show that the number of dead recipients still being sent benefits is likely in the thousands, not the millions.
- In talking about aid to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion, Trump inflated U.S. aid by about double when he claimed that the U.S. has “spent perhaps $350 billion,” and he wrongly claimed Europe had spent only $100 billion. European aid is larger than that from the U.S.
- Trump exaggerated when he claimed to have “inherited … an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare” from his predecessor. Economic growth was strong, and inflation had fallen significantly.
- He also wrongly said that inflation was “perhaps” the worst in history under President Joe Biden, and he ignored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while claiming that the Biden administration “drove up” prices on energy, groceries and other necessities.
- Trump misleadingly claimed that “not long ago” just 1 in 10,000 children had autism. Estimates that low are from many decades ago, before the definition and awareness of the condition expanded.
- He misleadingly said Biden’s administration had “closed more than 100 power plants.” According to the Department of Energy, the total number of electric power plants increased by 2,187 from 2020 to 2023. Coal- and petroleum-powered plants decreased.
- While talking about building up America’s military might, Trump claimed that “now we have the technology” for an air defense system to protect the U.S. like Israel’s Iron Dome. But that technology has not been developed yet, and weapons experts question its feasibility for protecting the entire U.S.
- Trump repeated his unsupported claim that “people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country,” and he exaggerated when he again claimed that under Biden “21 million people poured into the United States.”
- The president misleadingly lumped Canada in with Mexico as a significant source of fentanyl in the U.S., claiming those countries have “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before.” Less than 1% of fentanyl seized by border officials comes through Canada.
- In pushing for more oil and natural gas drilling, Trump, again, falsely claimed that “we have more liquid gold under our feet” than all other nations. There are several countries that have larger estimated oil and natural gas reserves than the U.S.
- He repeated his false claims that 38,000 American lives were lost during construction of the Panama Canal and that Panama had ceded control of the canal to China.
While this address, coming early in a new term, technically isn’t a State of the Union address, Trump’s March 4 speech was longer than any prior SOTU, clocking in at an hour and 39 minutes, as measured by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Analysis
DOGE Savings
Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, led by White House adviser Elon Musk, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” However, the most recent update on DOGE’s website from March 2 reports that the department has only created an estimated $105 billion in savings thus far. Although Trump ticked off several examples of what he called “appalling waste” found by DOGE, it’s unclear if any of the savings touted by DOGE are related to actual fraud.
We also cannot verify DOGE’s savings figure, as the department has not yet uploaded evidence of each transaction it has conducted. The website includes a “Wall of Receipts” described as “a subset of contract, grant, and lease cancellations, representing ~30% of total savings.”
However, the “subset” of transactions listed on the website does not meet this 30% threshold. In total, DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” lists about $19.8 billion in estimated savings, which is less than 19% of the $105 billion in total savings claimed by the department. Of this $19.8 billion in savings, $8.9 billion comes from the cancellation of contracts, $10.3 billion comes from the termination of grants, and $660 million comes from the termination of government leases.
DOGE has faced scrutiny for inflating and miscalculating the savings figures posted on its website. The New York Times reported that DOGE deleted hundreds of transactions previously posted to its “Wall of Receipts” and also found that DOGE incorrectly claimed credit for canceling government contracts that had already been terminated before Trump entered office. Other errors by DOGE identified in media reports include a typo mislabeling $8 million in savings as $8 billion and triple-counting the cancellation of a single contract.
Speaking about DOGE’s efforts on Feb. 11, Musk said, “We will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”
Trump went on to cite a Government Accountability Office report that estimated annual fraud losses to the government of between $233 billion and $521 billion. But we could not verify how much, if any, of the DOGE savings identified to date includes instances of fraud. Rather, most of the savings appears to be related to spending that it deemed wasteful.
Overstating Social Security Fraud
In a Feb. 16 post on X, White House adviser Elon Musk shared a screenshot of a spreadsheet denoting that the Social Security database categorizes nearly 21 million people over the age of 99 as alive. Trump read the data from Musk’s post during his speech and misleadingly claimed that “money is being paid to many of” the centenarians still listed as alive.
As we’ve written, internal audits conducted by the Office of Audit in the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General have identified that millions of deceased individuals were still listed as living in the Social Security database. However, the number of dead recipients still being sent benefits is likely in the thousands, not the millions.
In total, the SSA distributed payments to 89,106 individuals aged 99 and older in December 2024.
A July 2023 report published by the Office of Audit found that there were 18.9 million people with Social Security numbers born in 1920 or earlier with no record of their deaths. The vast majority of these records are clearly outdated, as the Pew Research Center estimated that there were only 101,000 Americans who were 100 and older in 2024.
However, very few of these dead individuals incorrectly labeled as alive still receive Social Security benefits. Among this group of 18.9 million, the report found that only 44,000, or 0.2%, were still receiving Social Security benefits. The report did not specify how many of these benefit payments were believed to be improper. A portion of the 44,000 recipients were likely living Americans over the age of 103 who continued to receive payments in July 2023.
The Office of Audit provided a more specific estimate of improper payments to deceased individuals in a November 2021 report. That report concluded that the “SSA issued approximately $298 million in payments to about 24,000 deceased beneficiaries in suspended payment status.” The report also noted that while the SSA did recover some of the funds, $214 million of the improper payments remained unaccounted for.
In a statement published on Feb. 19, Lee Dudek, the newly appointed acting commissioner of the SSA, explained that the data posted by Musk does not reveal millions of dead individuals who continue to receive benefits.
“I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” he said. “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
In September 2015, the SSA began a process that automatically designates individuals aged 115 and older as deceased and ends payments to them.
Exaggerating Ukraine Aid
Trump repeated a claim he’s made frequently in recent weeks – telling the joint session of Congress that “we’ve spent perhaps $350 billion” to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion since 2022, while Europe has spent $100 billion. Those figures are wrong.
As we’ve written before, the total amount that Congress has appropriated since 2022 is $174.2 billion. According to a report from the special inspector general who is overseeing the U.S. support for Ukraine, the U.S. has made a total of $182.75 billion available for the broader response.
Figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization that tracks funding for Ukraine, show that the U.S. has so far allocated about $121 billion compared with about $140 billion from Europe. Additionally, the institute shows that Europe has committed another $122 billion that hasn’t yet been allocated, while the U.S. has committed another $5 billion. The institute’s figures include direct, bilateral aid.
We didn’t get an immediate response from the White House to an email asking where Trump had gotten his numbers.
What Trump Inherited
Trump exaggerated the state of the economy when he took office earlier this year, and he misleadingly placed the blame for higher consumer prices solely on the Biden administration.
“As you know, we inherited, from the last administration, an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare,” Trump said. “Their policies drove up energy prices, pushed up the cost of groceries, and drove the necessities of life out of reach for millions of Americans. We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country — they’re not sure.”
As we wrote in January, before Trump began his second presidential term, he inherited a “resilient economy that has grown by at least 2.5% every year since he left office in early 2021,” as well as a “post-pandemic jobs boom that has driven the unemployment rate well below the historical norm.”
We also noted that inflation “has come down significantly” from the annual inflation rate of 9.1% in June 2022. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that was “the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981” — not in history, as Trump said. Most recently, the Consumer Price Index increased 3% for the 12-month period ending in January.
It’s also wrong to suggest that Biden administration policies alone increased prices on energy, food and other consumer goods. As we’ve also written, economists primarily blame the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain disruptions that followed and rising labor costs, among other reasons, for the dramatic price increases while Biden was president.
Autism
Shortly after introducing DJ Daniel, a 13-year-old who was diagnosed six years ago with brain cancer, Trump cited two autism prevalence figures that need context.
“Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong,” the president said. “As an example, not long ago — and you can’t even believe these numbers — 1 in 10,000 children had autism. 1 in 10,000. And now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong. 1 in 36 — think of it.
“So we’re going to find out what it is and there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you,” he continued, referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “to figure out what is going on.”
Trump made nearly identical remarks about the autism rate on Feb. 13 when swearing in Kennedy as the new health secretary.
Trump’s higher figure of 1 in 36 is correct. That’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest estimate, in 2020, of the number of U.S. children who have been identified with autism.
The 1 in 10,000 number, however, is decades old — and isn’t directly comparable to today’s figure. As we’ve explained before, some studies in the 1960s and ’70s estimated autism affected about 1 to 5 in 10,000 kids. But these studies used a much more stringent definition of autism. Awareness and recognition of autism has also dramatically improved since then.
Much of “what is going on,” then, is actually a broader clinical definition of autism capturing more mild cases, along with better awareness. There may be a slight true increase in the condition, researchers say, in part due to known risk factors, including parents having children at older ages and more babies surviving birth complications. Autism is largely a genetic disease.
Kennedy and others around him have previously used the same or similar statistics to falsely suggest that vaccines may be behind the surge in autism diagnoses. Numerous studies have failed to find any link between autism and vaccines.
Power Plants
Trump said the Biden administration had “closed more than 100 power plants.” That’s misleading. The number of electric power plants went up by 2,187 since the last full year of Trump’s first administration to 2023, according to the latest data from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.
The number of power plants fueled by coal did decrease by 57 plants, from 284 in 2020 to 227 in 2023. Plants powered by petroleum and other fossil gas also declined by 23 plants. But the number of other types of electric power plants, including natural gas and renewable energy, went up.
In April 2024, a rule finalized by the Biden administration to limit the pollution from existing coal power plants required those plants, and any new natural gas-fired power plants, to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032, if they intend to operate after 2039. The rule was contested by some Republican states and industry groups, but in October the Supreme Court decided that the rule could go into effect while legal cases work their way through the courts. During his campaign, Trump promised to kill Biden’s power plant rules.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently advocated for the need for coal-fired power plants, Bloomberg reported. In February, the EIA reported that electricity generators plan to retire about 8 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity this year.
During his address to Congress on Tuesday night, Trump said, “We are opening up many of those power plants right now.”
Golden Dome Defense System
Trump said he is focused on “building the most powerful military of the future,” and one of the first steps will be building a “Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland.”
“Ronald Reagan wanted to do it long ago,” Trump said, “but the technology just wasn’t there, not even close. But now we have the technology. It’s incredible, actually. And other places, they have it. Israel has it. Other places have it, and the United States should have it too, right?”
But the technology for the U.S. isn’t there yet.
Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that during his presidency the U.S. would develop a missile defense system similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. Israel has used that air defense system since 2011 to shoot down short-range rockets fired from neighboring Gaza. Israel’s Iron Dome, along with its Arrow 3 system — an air defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles — and with help from the U.S. and others, shot down nearly 300 drones and missiles launched at Israel by Iran in April 2024.
Israel’s system, developed by an Israeli company and the U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon, can detect and intercept “a variety of shorter-range targets such as rockets, artillery and mortars,” Raytheon’s website explains. The system can target threats launched from 2.5 to 43.5 miles away.
But “against the normal threats to U.S. security, the Iron Dome is not a useful system,” Stephen Biddle, adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told us when we wrote about this issue last year. “Iron Dome is designed to deal with short-range threats, especially unguided rockets,” not long-range ballistic missiles that could be launched by China, Russia or North Korea.
“If the North Koreans launched intercontinental ballistic missiles at the U.S., an Iron Dome would not be able to intercept reentry vehicles,” explained Biddle, referring to the parts of intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying warheads back into Earth’s atmosphere before hitting a target.
The defense technology company Lockheed Martin is apparently working on a “Golden Dome” system that Trump referred to in his remarks to Congress, and the Pentagon is seeking proposals from other defense contractors. The Lockheed Martin website says, “[W]e will bring in the best and brightest of American innovation to rapidly develop game-changing tech – like space-based interceptors and hypersonic defenses – that will ensure America’s Golden Dome stays well ahead of adversary threats.”
But the Golden Dome technology is still being developed, and defense experts are skeptical that a missile defense system will be able to protect the entire U.S.
Immigration
Trump made several misleading and unsupported claims about immigration.
Trump began by boasting that after declaring a national emergency on the southern border and cracking down on illegal immigration, by February, his first full month in office, apprehensions of those crossing the border illegally “were by far the lowest ever recorded.”
Although U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not yet released its official February apprehensions data, the agency reported via X on March 1 that February “saw just 8,326 encounters at the Southwest border—the lowest documented by U.S. Border Patrol.” That eclipses the figure of 11,127 in April 2017, Trump’s third full month in office during his first term — and previously the lowest month going back to at least 2000. However, it’s not the lowest “ever recorded.” Government data going back to 1925 shows entire years in the 1920s and 1930s that were close to the February figure.
Trump went on to say that under Biden, “there were hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month.” Illegal immigration did soar through most of the years Biden was in office, with apprehensions by Border Patrol averaging about 150,000 per month. Apprehensions reached a monthly high of 251,178 in December 2023.
But the numbers dropped dramatically after Biden enacted emergency measures in June 2024 to restrict asylum eligibility for those illegal border-crossers. Between July and December, the last full month under Biden, apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally averaged about 55,000 per month. That’s lower than the average during the last few months of Trump’s first term.
We should note that after tough talk on immigration in the 2016 campaign, the number of apprehensions plummeted in the first few months of Trump’s first term as well, what some referred to as “the Trump Effect.” After that dip in the months immediately after he took office, apprehensions of illegal border-crossers steadily increased over the next two years, reaching a peak of 132,856 in May 2019. The figures then began to steadily decline again, going to 16,182 in April 2020 at the height of the pandemic.
Trump also made his oft-repeated but unsupported claim that “people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country.” As we have written, immigration experts in the U.S. and in countries in South America where Trump has alleged that kind of activity have told us they have seen no evidence of that.
And finally, Trump claimed that “over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States.” As we have written, that’s double the total number of people caught trying to enter the country illegally (7.3 million, which includes repeat attempts), those who came to legal ports of entry without authorization to enter (1.2 million), and the estimated number who evaded capture (2 million). Comprehensive Department of Homeland Security data on the initial processing of these encounters show that 2.9 million were removed by CBP and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or given other classifications, such as parole.
Fentanyl Smuggling
While talking about his reasons for putting new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, Trump claimed that both countries have “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens.” But comparing Canada to Mexico is misleading.
No one knows exactly how much illicit fentanyl comes into the U.S. each year because comprehensive data is not available. U.S. Customs and Border Protection does publish drug seizure statistics, which are often used as a proxy for how much gets into the country undetected.
The 43 pounds of fentanyl seized by authorities at the northern border in fiscal year 2024 is more than the 2 pounds seized in fiscal 2023 and the 14 pounds seized in fiscal 2022. But that is significantly less than the 21,148 pounds of fentanyl seized by officials at the southwest border with Mexico during the 2024 fiscal cycle.
As we’ve written, for at least the last three full fiscal years, the amount of fentanyl captured coming into the U.S. from Canada has made up less than 1% of the fentanyl seized nationwide by the Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations.
‘Liquid Gold’
Trump repeated a false claim about the oil and natural gas reserves in the U.S.
“As you’ve heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far,” Trump said. “And now, I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”
As we’ve written before, Trump is wrong. The Brookings Institution has noted that while “estimating reserves is an inexact science and methodologies differ,” the U.S. generally ranks between ninth and 11th in the world in the size of its crude oil reserves, and it ranks fourth or fifth in recoverable natural gas reserves.
And although Trump would like oil and gas companies to do more drilling, it’s worth noting that oil and gas production in the U.S. already reached new record levels in 2024.
Panama Canal
Trump wrongly repeated his claims that 38,000 American lives were lost during construction of the Panama Canal and that Panama had ceded control of the canal to China.
The canal was “built at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure, 38,000 workers died building the Panama Canal. They died of malaria. They died of snake bites and mosquitoes. Not a nice place to work,” Trump said.
As we have written, Trump grossly overstates the number of American lives lost building the canal. About 7,600 people died during the more than decade-long American phase of the construction of the Panama Canal, which started in 1904, according to Noel Maurer, an associate professor of international affairs and international business at George Washington University, and co-author of the book, “The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal.”
Most of those deaths weren’t Americans, Maurer told us via email. “Rather, about two-thirds of them were either West Indian (mostly from Barbados), and a smaller unknown share of Spanish laborers who were hired at the start of construction.” In total, fewer than 1,000 Americans died due to accident or infectious disease during the canal’s construction phase, he said.
Trump also continued to falsely suggest that China has been operating the canal.
The canal “was given away by the Carter administration for $1 but that agreement has been violated very severely,” Trump said. “We didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
It’s not accurate to say the canal was given to China. A Hong Kong-based company managed ports at either end of the canal, which has raised concerns among some in the U.S., including the head of U.S. Southern Command, who last year warned Congress the ports could be used by the Chinese military as “points of future multi-domain access.” But canal experts and Panamanian officials have said China had no involvement in operation of the canal.
And in any case, as Trump noted in his speech, an American investment group led by BlackRock has agreed to purchase both ports owned by the Hong Kong company.
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