Fact check: Trump litters UN speech with false claims about climate, inflation, immigration and world peace
By Daniel Dale, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday was littered with numerous false claims, many of which have been debunked before.
Trump was inaccurate about a wide variety of subjects. They included inflation in the US, climate policies both in the US and abroad, immigration, his role in settling international conflicts, and his standing in opinion polls. Here is a fact check of some of his remarks.
Trump’s accomplishments and popularity
Trump and wars: The president claimed, “I ended seven wars, and in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda — a vicious, violent war that was — Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
But Egypt and Ethiopia were not actually at war during Trump’s time in the White House. They have a long-running and unresolved dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River, but this is not a war, so Trump couldn’t have ended one there. Similarly, while Trump has previously claimed to have prevented the eruption of a new war between Serbia and Kosovo — providing few details about what he was talking about — those countries weren’t in an actual war either during Trump’s current term or during his first term, when they signed an economic normalization agreement brokered by Trump’s administration in 2020.
In addition, Trump hasn’t actually ended the conflict involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration and signed by the DRC and Rwanda in June did not involve the rebel coalition, allegedly backed by Rwanda, that has seized territory in the eastern DRC, and CNN reported from the ground this week: “The scores of militia groups that have fought for three decades in one of the most protracted and complex conflicts in the world are still engaging in deadly fighting, and US President Donald Trump’s claimed peace deal for the nation feels like a distant dream.”
Trump’s importance and success in addressing the other four conflicts he mentioned can be debated. Notably, while Pakistan has heaped praise upon Trump for playing a critical role in brokering its May ceasefire with India, India has rejected the claim that he did so and said it resolved the conflict directly with Pakistan.
Trump’s poll numbers: The president claimed, “I was very proud to see this morning I have the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had. Part of it is because of what we’ve done on the border. I guess the other part is what we’ve done on the economy.” It’s theoretically possible Trump saw some private polling that gave him dramatically better numbers than public polling has produced, but his standing in public polling is nowhere near his highest ever — in fact, it’s down substantially from the beginning of this year.
A New York Times polling average put Trump’s approval rating at about 43% as of Tuesday (with 54% disapproval), down from 52% approval in the first week of his second term in January (with 43% disapproval).
Similarly, a polling average produced by data journalist G. Elliott Morris put Trump’s approval rating at about 42% as of Tuesday (with about 54% disapproval), down from about 51% approval in the first days of his second term (with about 39% disapproval). And a polling average produced by data journalist Nate Silver put Trump’s approval rating at about 44% as of Tuesday (with about 53% disapproval), down from about 52% approval in the first days of the term (with about 40% disapproval).
CNN’s Poll of Polls average had Trump at 41% approval as of Tuesday (with 57% disapproval), down from 48% approval in our first average of this term in early February (with 49% disapproval). And Trump’s average ratings for his handling of immigration and the economy have both fallen from positive territory to negative territory since the beginning of the term, the averages from Morris and Silver show.
Inflation and the economy
Inflation: Trump baselessly claimed that “inflation has been defeated” under his leadership. This is vaguer than his frequent false claim that there is now “no inflation,” but there’s no basis even for the vaguer version. Inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index, has been worsening since May after hitting a four-year low in April. It was about 2.9% in August, up from about 2.7% in July; the August figure was nearly identical to the 3% rate in January, the last partial month of the Biden administration Trump said left him an “economic calamity.”
Grocery prices: Trump also claimed that under his leadership, “grocery prices are down.” False. Average grocery prices have increased during Trump’s presidency, though the prices of some individual items have fallen; Consumer Price Index figures show that average grocery prices were about 1% higher in August than they were in January, when Trump returned to the White House. And while we should be careful not to read too much into any single month of data, the increase in grocery prices from July to August was about 0.6%, which was the highest month-to-month jump since late 2022.
Electricity bills: Trump said electricity in Europe is much more expensive than in China or the US, which is generally correct. But then he added, “And our bills are coming way down.” In fact, US electricity prices are spiking, rising more than twice as fast as overall prices; Consumer Price Index figures show they were about 6.2% higher in August than they were a year prior and about 4.9% higher in August than they were in January.
Foreign investment: Trump, talking about “new investment into the United States,” claimed, “In just eight months since I took office, we have secured commitments and money already paid for $17 trillion.” This figure is unproved at best. Just a day ago, Trump’s own White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, used a much lower figure, saying Trump “has secured nearly $9 trillion in US investment.” She did say “we expect that number to be upwards of $15 trillion very soon,” but Trump didn’t explain how an additional $8 trillion supposedly materialized in a day — and even Leavitt’s $9 trillion figure should be treated with skepticism, since it is heavily based on vague semi-commitments from foreign countries that may never materialize.
Environment and energy
Global warming and climate change: Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and he also referred to “the global warming hoax.” He didn’t precisely explain what he was calling the con job or hoax, but global warming is a demonstrated fact. Trump also baselessly suggested that scientists now use the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming” so that they can’t be accused of getting things wrong if the world ends up cooling; in reality, climate scientists use both phrases, often saying “global warming” when referring to the long-term trend of increasing global temperature and “climate change” when referring to the numerous effects the world is experiencing because of that trend.
NASA says on its website: “‘Climate change’ encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet. These include rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.”
For example, a 2023 report from the UN’s climate change panel, titled “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report,” said this: “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.” In a section titled “Future Climate Change,” the report also said this: “Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).”
China and wind power: Trump repeated his false claim that although China is the leading manufacturer of wind turbines, “they have very few wind farms” themselves. He added, “So why is it that they build them and they send them all over the world, but they barely use them? You know, they use coal, they use gas, they use almost anything, but they don’t like wind. But they sure as hell like selling the windmills.” In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US.
Coal and renewables: Trump referred to coal as “clean, beautiful coal,” as he usually does, but coal is just not clean; its use as a power source creates polluting emissions that harm humans and the environment, even with technological improvements that can reduce the emissions levels. Trump also wrongly said renewable energy sources “don’t work,” saying that “they’re not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great” and that “the wind doesn’t blow.” But energy generated by wind is still a useful power source when the wind isn’t blowing, just as solar energy is still a useful power source when the sun isn’t shining — since the energy can be stored in industrial batteries or using other methods, allowing it to be deployed as part of a power mix along with energy from traditional fossil fuels.
The Paris climate accord: Trump repeated some false claims about the Paris climate accord from which he has withdrawn the US during each of his presidencies.
At one point, he wrongly said the US was “supposed to pay like $1 trillion” under the accord. It wasn’t. The US has never spent or committed anywhere close to $1 trillion in connection to the accord; Biden pledged upon taking office to pay $11.4 billion per year toward international climate financing, but Congress appropriated less than even that.
Trump also said, “China didn’t have to pay until 2030.” This was confusing, but it appeared to be a reference to his previous false claim that the accord gave China more time than the US to hit its targets for reducing carbon emissions. In reality, the accord came into effect for all participating countries at the same time, November 2016, but allowed each country to set its own voluntary targets for reducing carbon emissions. China picked 2030 as the year it planned to meet its primary targets while the US picked 2025, but this was simply a choice of each country.
Immigration
Biden and migrants: Touting his efforts to secure the southern border, Trump said, “Just a year ago, millions and millions of people were pouring in, 25 million all together over the four years of the incompetent Biden administration.” The “25 million” figure is fictional; even Trump’s previous “21 million” figure was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the last full month under the Biden administration, the federal government had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was even close to what Trump has said.
Biden and migrant children: Trump repeated his misleading claim that “the previous administration also lost nearly 300,000 children,” then quickly said it was “more than 300,000 children.” He continued to say that many of these children “have been raped, exploited and abused and sold,” while others are dead.
He appeared to be referring to a 2024 report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General, which said Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. The report also said that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children during this period were not given notices to appear in court.
There are two key things to note here. First, the period covered by the report includes two years and four months under the first Trump administration. Second, while the report said immigration authorities have “no assurances” these children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” it did not definitively assert that any of them were being exploited or had been killed.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN last summer: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”
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