President-elect Donald J. Trump, in his first news conference since the election, again displayed his penchant for exaggeration.
During more than an hour of questions on Monday, Mr. Trump made a number of new claims — false, misleading or overstated — about a range of topics, in addition to repeating a number of familiar inaccuracies.
Here’s a fact-check of his remarks.
What Was Said
“We’re, you know, having a 41-year record for optimism from small businesses.”
This is exaggerated. In its most recent survey, the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center said its small-business optimism rose by 8 points, to 101.7, from October to November. Earlier in the news conference, Mr. Trump correctly noted that this was the largest one-month increase since the organization began releasing monthly surveys in 1986. But the index was higher most recently in June 2021, at 102.5; the highest ever recorded in the survey was 108.6 in August 2018.
What Was Said
“We’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it’ll have no impact. Actually, it’ll make life better but it’ll have no impact on people. It’s not like — we will never cut Social Security, things like that. It’s just waste, fraud and abuse.”
This lacks evidence. Of the federal governments’ $6.9 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, about $4.2 billion was mandatory spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare and about $892 billion was in interest payments. Only $1.8 trillion was in “discretionary” spending and about $954 million of that was in military spending. So to reach the $2 trillion in cuts, the Trump administration would need to eliminate all discretionary spending — which would include spending on Mr. Trump’s policy priorities of mass deportations and enhancing border security, protecting farmers and providing more military funding — and then some. Cutting all discretionary spending would, without a doubt, have an impact on people.
What Was Said
“I won youth by 34 points.”
False. Mr. Trump made significant gains with young voters compared with Republicans in recent presidential elections, but exit polls show that he still lost the youth vote. Several exit polls show that Vice President Kamala Harris won 51 to 54 percent of voters under 30, leading Mr. Trump among those voters by 4 to 12 points.
What Was Said
“If you look at autism, so 30 years ago, we had — I’ve heard numbers of like one in 200,000, one in 100,000. Now, I’m hearing numbers of one in 100 so something’s wrong.”
This is exaggerated. Asked whether he believed that vaccines cause autism, Mr. Trump exaggerated the increases in the prevalence of autism and said he and his health appointees would “find out” why.
Reported rates of autism have increased from about 1 in 150 children in 2000, the first year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began collecting data, to about 1 in 36 in 2020. That is roughly a quadrupling of prevalence, not an increase of 1,000 or 2,000 times, as Mr. Trump said. Experts have suggested that almost all of the increase can be attributed to greater awareness and screening.
What Was Said
“Everyone’s being killed. It’s the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II.”
False. Official estimates and independent analyses show that Russia and Ukraine have suffered immense casualties, but the numbers remain lower than the casualties in several post-World War II conflicts.
Ascertaining the exact number of casualties is difficult in any war and is made more difficult by Russia and Ukraine treating the figures as state secrets. Ukraine and its allies have estimated that Russia has suffered between 600,000 and 700,000 dead and wounded as of October, while journalists have estimated about 150,000 dead and as many as 484,000 seriously injured. Ukraine’s president said this month that 43,000 of the country’s soldiers had been killed and 370,000 wounded. The United Nations estimated in October that about 11,700 civilians had been killed and another 24,600 had been wounded.
In comparison, an estimated six million people have died as a result of decades of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998, about three million people during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, between one to three million in the Vietnam War, about one million during Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s and an estimated 193,000 American and allied troops and 408,000 civilians in the post-Sept. 11, 2001 wars in the Middle East.
What Was Said
“Europe doesn’t use pesticides.”
False. Mr. Trump has a point that the European Union has banned several pesticides used in the United States and has plans to halve its use of harmful pesticides by 2030, but European nations still apply other pesticides.
In 2022, the European Union used more than 320,000 tonnes of pesticides, or about 705 million pounds, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. That same year, the United States used about 468,000 tonnes or 966 million pounds.
The post Fact-Checking Trump’s First Post-Election News Conference appeared first on New York Times.
