Fact checking Trump’s marathon press conference a year into his second term

This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.

On the one-year anniversary of the start of his second term, President Donald Trump spent 104 minutes in the White House press room listing his accomplishments.

Trump began the briefing by showing a series of photos of people arrested by ICE in Minneapolis, the site of widespread raids and counter-protests, as well as the fatal shooting of a US citizen by an ICE agent.

He watches: Trump joins White House press conference after recent threats over Greenland and tariffs

Addressing a room full of reporters, Trump set out to highlight the policies he has put in place since taking office in January 2025. He sometimes stuck to the prepared script, but often veered off into relevant and unrelated issues, sometimes repeating remarks more than once.

Trump also took questions, many of which touched on foreign policy, including his efforts to acquire Greenland, the creation of a “peace council” to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, and the state of the government in Venezuela following the US arrest of its then-leader, Nicolas Maduro. Trump is scheduled to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, starting Wednesday.

Regarding the economy, Trump said: “Everyone said, ‘Tariffs will cause inflation.’” We don’t have inflation. “We have very little inflation.” Marking Trump’s one-year anniversary, we looked at a wide range of price data for the past year and found that overall prices are still rising, although some specific items, such as eggs and gasoline, saw price declines.

Regarding immigration, Trump said his administration prioritizes deporting criminals. “We focus on killers and drug dealers.”He said. In his first year, Trump deported between 300,000 and 600,000 people. The administration has not published detailed deportation data, so it is unclear how many of these people have a criminal history. But about 74% of the nearly 70,000 immigrants held in immigration detention centers have no criminal convictions.

During the press conference, Trump repeated some inaccurate claims he has made in the past. He said The United States received “a record $18 trillion in commitments for new investments.” Since mid-November, the White House website has shown a figure of $9.6 trillion. In addition, experts warned PolitiFact that some of the $9.6 trillion pledges may not come to fruition, and others are unrealistically large compared to the GDP of the countries in question.

Trump also said Gasoline is “$1.99 in many states.” In the second week of January 2026, the national average price of a gallon was $2.78, compared to $3.11 in January 2025. No state saw its average price fall below $2. The lowest average price of any state in mid-January was $2.34 per gallon in Oklahoma. Four states — Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming — had at least seven stations selling gasoline for less than $2 on January 20, according to gas price app Gas Buddy, and a few other states had between one and four stations selling gasoline for less than $2.

Trump said that during the era of his predecessor Joe Biden, “One in four jobs added was a government job.” This is exaggerated. Over four years, the economy added more than 16 million jobs, including about 1.8 million jobs in federal, state, or local governments; This is about 11% of the total. During Biden’s final year in office, the economy added more than two million jobs overall, compared to 473,000 jobs in 2025 under Trump.

Trump said 300,000 people died last year from fentanyl overdosesBut that’s much higher than the most recent federal data. In the 12 months leading up to August 2025, about 69,000 people died in the United States from all types of drug overdoses, not just fentanyl, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Trump reiterated this “He ended eight endless wars in 10 months.” An exaggerated claim similar to the claim we rated “Mostly False.” He also said “Perhaps no president has ever been able to resolve a single war.” Which we rated Pants on Fire.