Fact-checking Trump’s false claims ahead of State of the Union address

President Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver his first State of the Union address in his second term on Tuesday. The Republican administration’s priorities have largely focused on the economy, immigration, crime, energy and national security.

Trump has spent the past year touting his accomplishments while mocking the record of his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. But much of this threat is based on false and misleading claims — many of which are likely part of the president’s rhetoric to the nation.

Watch live: President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address

Here’s a look at some of the false and misleading statements Trump has made in recent public appearances.

economy

Trump often says the United States is now “the hottest country anywhere in the world” after years of being a “dead country.” The US economy was not “dead” when Trump returned to office last year. But in his second term, his performance was generally strong – after a bumpy start.

In 2024, the final year of Biden’s presidency, US GDP grew by 2.8%, adjusted for inflation, faster than any rich country in the world except Spain. It also expanded at a healthy rate from 2021 through 2023.

GDP contracted for the first time in three years during the first quarter of 2025. Growth rebounded in the second half of the year, but slowed again in the fourth quarter. Annual GDP growth in 2025 was 2.2%.

A key measure of inflation fell to its lowest level in nearly five years in January. However, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, it remains high as the cost of goods such as furniture, clothing and groceries increases.

Companies also sharply reduced hiring. Employers added just 181,000 jobs in 2025, the fewest — outside of a recession — since 2002. Economists blame a combination of factors: Uncertainty caused by tariffs and artificial intelligence likely prompted many companies to hold back on adding workers. Many companies have hired staff in the wake of the pandemic and have since decided to forego creating any new jobs.

The US stock market performed well last year, but it underperformed many foreign stock markets. The S&P 500 rose 17% — a nice gain but less than the 71% rise in South Korea, 29% in Hong Kong, 26% in Japan, 22% in Germany, and 21% in the United Kingdom.

Investments

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States received up to $18 trillion in investments, but he has provided no evidence of such a high figure. This number appears to be either exaggerated, highly speculative, or both.

The White House website offers a much lower figure, $9.6 trillion, and that number appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether the more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made by many of America’s largest trading partners last year would actually materialize, and asked how they would be spent if they did.

Immigration

A key aspect of the Trump administration’s agenda is to reduce illegal immigration, although the president often uses lies to support his arguments.

For example, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the influx of immigrants has led to a massive increase in crime rates. While FBI statistics do not break down crimes by the immigration status of the offender, there is no evidence of a sharp rise in crimes committed by immigrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities with the largest influx of immigrants, such as New York. Studies have found that people living in the United States illegally are less likely to be arrested for violent, drug, and property crimes than Native Americans.

Read more: Fact-checking of Trump White House claims about illegal immigration declines sharply

The president also repeatedly refers to as many as 300,000 migrant children who are allegedly missing. This distorts information contained in an August 2024 report published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, which criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement for failing to “continuously monitor the location and condition of unaccompanied migrant children” once they were released from federal custody.

energy

Trump constantly praises coal as the ideal source of energy, describing it as “beautiful, clean coal.” Coal production is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean.

Global warming carbon dioxide emissions from the coal industry have declined over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, UN-backed research has found that coal production worldwide still needs to be reduced sharply to tackle climate change.

Besides carbon dioxide, burning coal emits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain, smog and respiratory illness, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The president also regularly denigrates wind energy, claiming that it is too expensive and that windmills kill birds.

Onshore wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation, with new wind farms expected to produce energy costing about $30 per megawatt hour, according to July estimates from the Energy Information Administration.

Wind turbines, like all infrastructure, can pose a danger to birds. However, the National Audubon Society, dedicated to bird conservation, believes developers can manage these risks and that climate change poses a greater threat.

elections

In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, Trump has resorted to repeating the claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

This is a blatant lie that has been refuted several times, as the 2020 elections were not stolen.

Biden’s victory was confirmed by recounts, audits and audits in battleground states where Trump disputed his loss in 2020. He and his allies lost dozens of court challenges related to the election, and the attorney general said at the time that there was no widespread fraud that would have changed the results.

Biden received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. He also won over 7 million more popular votes than Trump.

Additionally, the president boasts that his 2024 victory was “landslide.” But Trump’s margin of victory was not as large as it seemed.

He won by 312 votes to 226, including all seven swing states, according to the Federal Election Commission. However, the popular vote was much closer, with Trump receiving 49.8% of the vote with 77,302,580 votes to Democrat Kamala Harris’ 75,017,613 votes (48.32%).

crime

Trump takes credit for the significant decline in violent crimes during 2025, claiming that the murder rate in the United States fell to its lowest level in 125 years. But this is misleading. Crime has actually been trending down in recent years.

A study released by the independent Criminal Justice Council in January, which collected data on homicides from 35 US cities, showed a 21% decline in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025.

Read more: Violent crimes decreased in 2025 for the third year in a row in New Orleans. That was before the National Guard began patrolling

The report noted that when the FBI reports national data for jurisdictions of all sizes later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will decline to about 4 per 100,000 residents. This would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data dating back to 1900.

FBI reports for 2023 and 2024 show significant declines in violent crime.

Crime rates have soared during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides up nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. But violent crime fell to roughly pre-pandemic levels in 2022 when Biden was president.

The increase in violent crime during the pandemic defies easy explanation, and experts similarly said the historic decline in violence last year defies easy explanation despite the rush by elected officials at all levels — both Democrats and Republicans — to claim credit.

Foreign policy

One of Trump’s most frequent talking points is that he has “solved” eight wars, a statistic that is greatly exaggerated. Although it has helped mediate relations between many countries, its influence is not as clear as it seems.

The conflicts that Trump considers among those he has resolved are between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.

Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Josh Boak and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.