Fact check: Trump makes false claims about Iran war, the economy and the reflecting pool at Cabinet meeting

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump made false claims about the war with Iran, the economy and other subjects during public comments at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Many of them have been debunked before. Here’s a quick fact check of the false claims and some others that were misleading or lacked critical context.

This is not intended as a comprehensive list; CNN is still looking into some of the president’s remarks at the meeting.

The war with Iran

Iran’s military capabilities: Trump, speaking of Iran’s military capabilities, said, “Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, everything’s gone.” Though there’s no doubt the US and Israel have significantly degraded Iran’s military capabilities during the war that began in late February, it’s not true that “everything” is gone — as Trump implicitly acknowledged last week when he said, “They have a little ability. Their missiles are 82% gone, we estimate. … Same thing with drones, they’re largely gone but they still have a little capacity.” CNN reported in April that, according to three sources familiar with US intelligence findings, roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers were still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remained in Iran’s arsenal; CNN reported last week that four sources said US intelligence indicates Iran’s military is reconstituting much faster than initially estimated and that “Iran also still maintains ballistic-missile, drone-attack and anti-air capability despite the serious damage inflicted by US-Israeli strikes, according to recent US intelligence assessments, meaning the quick rebuilding of military production capacity isn’t starting from scratch.”

How Trump describes the war with Iran: Mixing up Iran with Venezuela, Trump spoke about how Americans’ 401(k) balances are high “despite the conflict — I don’t call it a war, I call it a conflict — despite the conflict with Venezuela.” (His subsequent comments made clear he was referring to Iran.) Though Trump has indeed sometimes called the war with Iran a “conflict,” or used other words like “excursion” or “skirmish,” it’s not true that he doesn’t call it a “war.” He has repeatedly called it a war in recent weeks even as he has intermittently insisted he doesn’t use that term; in fact, he called it a war later in this very same Cabinet meeting, noting that the US lost 13 servicemembers “between two wars, two big wars, Venezuela and Iran.”

Prices and the economy

Gas prices: Trump claimed, “When I was in Iowa, we had — driving by, we saw gas stations: $1.90 a gallon, $1.85, $1.87 were the three that we saw.” He has previously made clear that such comments are referring to supposed prices on the day he visited Iowa in late January. But on that day, the AAA state average for regular gasoline was $2.57 per gallon; the firm GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon — $1.97, to be specific, not $1.85 to $1.90 — out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. And a CNN reporter noticed that the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was at $2.69 per gallon that day.

It’s possible Trump was referring to the price of E85, an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a minority of gas stations and can only be used in the small percentage of vehicles that are compatible with it; the blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit. But, as when he made this claim about Iowa gas prices on previous occasions, he offered no indication on Wednesday that he was talking about a niche product.

Prescription drug prices: Trump falsely claimed, of prescription drug prices, “We have drugs down 400, 500, 600%.” He then added, “Now you could say 80, 90, 70, 60, 50% if you want; there are two ways (to phrase it), depends on the way you ask the question.” But the first “way” is invalid; drug-price reductions of 400%, 500% and 600% are mathematically impossible, as CNN and others have repeatedly noted. If Trump magically got companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut. A cut of 400%, 500% or 600% would mean that Americans would be paid money to acquire their medications, which is not happening.

Trump used more defensible phrasing when appearing to read from a prepared text moments earlier, claiming he is achieving “price differences” of 400% to 600% through the website TrumpRX.gov. But then he reverted to his usual inaccurate phrasing.

Investment in the US: Trump repeated a figure he has used for months about supposed investment in the US during his second presidency, saying there is “$18 trillion coming in” and “that’s not including the 12th month, that’s 11.” The $18 trillion figure is fiction. As of the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House’s own website said the figure for “major investment announcements” this term is “$10.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration of actual investment. A detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool

Obama, Biden and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool: Trump’s administration is spending more than $13 million on a project to improve the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, federal records show. Trump falsely claimed Wednesday, “The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work,” adding a bit later, “They spent hundreds of millions, over $100 million.” Those figures are incorrect; the White House could not offer any corroboration for them when CNN inquired last week. The Obama administration spent about $35 million on a contract to try to fix issues with the pool, but that’s not hundreds of millions, and the Biden administration did not go ahead with any major pool repair project. Chuck Sams, who was director of the National Park Service under Biden, told CNN last week that they had received a cost estimate “above $100 million” for a “full rehabilitation” but had not done the project. (Sams said it “would have more than likely moved forward if we had remained in office,” but Trump asserted that it already happened.)

The size of the reflecting pool: Trump claimed that the reflecting pool is “like 2,400 feet long,” claimed that is “longer than the tallest building in the world,” and added, “the world’s tallest skyscraper is shorter than 2,400 feet.” This is a matter of trivia rather than substance, but none of the president’s claims are correct. The reflecting pool is 2,028 feet long, according to the National Park Service website; Trump correctly wrote in a social media post earlier this month that it is “approximately 2,030 feet.” And even 2,400 feet would not be larger than any building in the world; the tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is more than 2,700 feet tall.

Immigration

Biden, migrants and murder: After denouncing the Biden administration’s immigration record, Trump claimed there were “11,888 murderers, more than half of which have committed more than one murder; that’s what they allowed in.” As usual, Trump didn’t make clear that, as the Department of Homeland Security and independent experts noted in 2024, the figure it appears he is referring to is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” — which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences. And it has never been clear whether there is a factual basis for Trump’s claim that more than half of the people in question committed more than one murder; the White House did not respond in January to a CNN request to explain where Trump might have gotten this information. You can read more here.

Social Security

Social Security and deceased people: Trump said, “I think we have a chance to save Social Security without doing anything to it, by just the numbers of fraudulent people on Social Security — people that are 115 years old, 125 years old, getting payments.”

But Trump’s White House has not presented evidence of obviously deceased people who were born 115 or 125 years ago continuing to be sent Social Security payments after their deaths, let alone that there is enough of this kind of fraud to meaningfully alter the fiscal trajectory of the program. (It’s possible there have been some such payments at some point, either due to fraud or administrative error; CNN reached out to the White House once more after the Cabinet meeting.) Even before Trump became president the first time, Social Security had an automated system in place to stop payments to deceased people listed as being age 115 and older. And while a 2023 report from the inspector general monitoring Social Security Administration found that there were 18.9 million people age 100 or older who were not marked as deceased on their Social Security database entry, it also found that only 44,000 of these 18.9 million people were receiving payments. Even those 44,000 instances were not obviously fraudulent or erroneous; the inspector general noted that a larger number of living people in the US, an estimated 86,000, were age 100 or older.

In early 2025, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration at the time, Leland Dudek — who was elevated to that post by the Trump administration — tried to set the record straight after Elon Musk, then leading a government efficiency initiative for Trump, promoted baseless claims of massive Social Security fraud involving people so old they were obviously dead. Dudek explained, “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.”

This article has been updated with additional reporting.

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