In a Sept. 22 press conference that he had billed as “one of the biggest [medical] announcements … in the history of our country,” President Donald Trump touted an unproven link between autism and the use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, during pregnancy.
An hourlong press conference about autism was filled with false and misleading claims about the condition and vaccines from President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., many of which we have written about before.
Reviving an unfounded claim he has made for several years, President Donald Trump on Sept. 5 overstated the number of Americans who died in 2024 of drug overdoses, saying that he believed 300,000 or “350,000 people died last year from drugs.” A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us the provisional number of drug overdose deaths in 2024 was 79,383, and an expert in addiction medicine told us Trump’s number was “a gross exaggeration.”
After the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, social media claims offering political views of the assassination and the reaction to it quickly spread. One message falsely claimed that “not a single Republican condemned” the targeted shooting of a Democratic politician in Minnesota in June. Many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, condemned it.
President Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Sept. 2, “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!” That’s not the case, experts told us, and Chicago’s overall homicide rate declined more than 30% in the first six months of this year as compared with last year.
At a Cabinet meeting on Aug. 26, President Donald Trump proposed seeking the death penalty for anyone convicted of murder in Washington, D.C., claiming the death penalty is “a very strong preventative.” But the research, which has been difficult to conduct, is inconclusive on whether capital punishment is a deterrent.
Q: Did President Donald Trump solve seven wars in seven months?
A: Trump has claimed he “ended” six or seven wars since returning to the White House in January. Experts in international relations said the president has had a significant role in ending fighting in four conflicts, though officials in one country refute Trump’s claim. But some of the international disagreements Trump cites have not been wars, and some clashes have not ended, experts said.
While signing executive orders at the White House on Aug. 25, President Donald Trump wrongly said that an 11-day span of no homicides in Washington, D.C., was the “first time that’s taken place in years,” a claim reiterated by other members of the administration who credited Trump’s federal takeover of the district’s law enforcement.
In early August, President Donald Trump claimed that a trade deal he negotiated with the European Union in July came with hundreds of billions of dollars that the U.S. can use for “anything we want.” But that’s not how the terms were described in a joint statement with the EU on Aug. 21.
Since announcing the temporary federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s, law enforcement, President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized state laws limiting the use of cash bail. But his arguments have strayed from the facts in three key areas.