In the first State of the Union address of his second term, President Donald Trump proclaimed that “our nation is back, bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.” But our review of his speech found that he distorted a number of facts about the state of the economy, health care, immigration and other topics.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has made a series of claims about the economy, a topic that should feature prominently in his State of the Union address to Congress on Feb. 24.
In the second and third quarters of 2025, the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in two years. Those growth rates were not “numbers unheard of,” or figures the U.S. “never had” before, as President Donald Trump has claimed.
About six months into the second term of President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats are making conflicting and often misleading assessments of the Trump administration’s impact on inflation and prices. Both sides cherry-pick examples of consumer products to support their claims, while sometimes wrongly taking credit for lower prices or falsely casting blame for rising costs.
A TV ad from a group supportive of President Donald Trump makes misleading claims, and uses outdated data, to argue that he is “fixing” an economy “ruined” by Democrats.
President Trump has repeatedly touted the value of announced financial investments in the U.S. and taken credit for attracting them. He started out citing $3 trillion in investments and, four months later, was claiming totals of more than $10 trillion. It’s unclear where, exactly, he’s getting these totals. But they appear to be an exaggeration of pledges to invest made by various companies and countries.
A graphic circulating on social media compares Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s economic records as president and cites FactCheck.org as the source. But two of its figures are way off, and others are out of date — creating a more unfavorable comparison for Trump.
In arguing for more tariffs on goods imported to the United States, President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was its “richest” or “wealthiest” during the late 1800s and early 1900s because of tariffs. In multiple ways, his claim is wrong or misleading.
Here’s our fact-check of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in video form.
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.