President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker tackled virtually every major policy issue the White House has touched in the more than three months since he took office again.
The pair discussed a broad variety of economic issues, including inflation, Trump’s tariffs and cryptocurrency — as well as the question of whether Trump was profiting off the presidency. They also delved into immigration issues during the hour-plus conversation, looking at border crossings, deportations and questions about due process, as well as budget issues, including how much money Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has saved and whether Medicaid will see cuts.
The sit-down comes just after Trump marked his first 100 days in office, with the president discussing what he sees as his accomplishments during that time as well as what he expects from the next 100 days and beyond. But Trump at times bent the facts on various issues, either making outright false or misleading claims or, at other times, mischaracterizing data or other information.
Here are some of the more notable instances arranged by topic.
Economic and trade issues
Inflation and other costs
Trump said, “I was able to get down the costs. But even that, it takes awhile to get them down. But we got them down good.”
Later in the interview he said, “oil is down, gasoline is down, groceries are down, eggs.” And at another point, Trump said that “even mortgage rates are going down.”
This is partly true.
More from the Trump interview
It is true that consumer price growth — a key inflation measure — has cooled during the first few months of Trump’s term, continuing a steady decline that traces back to the Biden administration. But some of the individual items that Trump referenced have not.
The latest figures, for March, showed that the consumer price index slowed to an annual rate of 2.4%, less than expected and below the 2.8% that came in the month before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In addition, a 12-month measure of price growth that excludes volatile food and energy prices climbed 2.8%, the smallest annual increase for that so-called core reading since March 2021, according to BLS data. Inflation rose just 0.1% between February and March — below the 0.2% monthly reading seen in February.
However, economists have expressed broad concerns that Trump’s tariff agenda could bring renewed price increases or inflation. Several major companies, including Stanley Black & Decker and Procter & Gamble, have said they will raise prices or have already started to raise prices.
Meanwhile, government and economic data also shows that the price of crude oil has declined consistently in the months since Trump took office — in part on concerns about slowing economic growth. However, on average across the nation, the prices of gasoline have not consistently gone down since Trump took office, according to economic and government data.
Trump added specific details to his claims on lower gasoline prices, saying, “Did you see gasoline is now below, in many cases, in many states, below $2 a gallon? $1.98, $1.99, $1.97?”
Wholesale gasoline did hit $1.98 in the past week, but that’s not the number that reflects what U.S. consumers are paying at the pump. AAA’s fuel prices data on Friday showed that no state had an average gasoline price below $2.66 a gallon, which was the average price listed in Mississippi. The organization’s national gasoline price average as of Friday was $3.18 a gallon.
Prices of groceries also have not declined. And the retail price of eggs also remains stubbornly high, according to the most recent government data, but it has come down off the peak in many places. It is also true that the wholesale price of eggs has declined, though that has not yet affected the retail prices that consumers pay at the grocery store.
Mortgage rates have fluctuated over the last year, but only by small margins, and have also remained elevated compared to their historic lows during the Covid-19 pandemic. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.76% for the week ending May 1 — roughly the same level it was during November and December, slightly lower than January and slightly higher than March, according to Freddie Mac.
Auto tariffs
At another point, Trump said, “What about the car business? They’re going to make a fortune because of the tariffs.”
This is too early to know.
Even after Trump carved out a break for U.S. automakers on some of his most sweeping tariffs, many car companies continue to say they’re likely to take a massive financial hit because of the policy. General Motors CEO Mary Barra, for example, said in a letter to investors on Thursday that Trump’s tariffs could subtract as much as $5 billion from the company’s profits this year.
Other major U.S. car manufacturers have praised Trump for revising his tariffs on automakers in recent days, even as their financial outlook remains cloudy. Auto industry analysts have told NBC News that car prices could increase this summer as tariffs begin to take effect.
Questions about profiting from the presidency and cryptocurrency
In the interview, Trump denied that he was profiting from the presidency.
Welker asked him specifically about his cryptocurrency token, called $TRUMP. In a two-day span last month, Trump and his allies made nearly $900,000 in trading fees from that token, according to blockchain data company Chainalysis.
The spike followed an announcement on the coin’s official website that the top 220 holders of the token were promised dinner with the president.
Welker, referring to that situation, asked Trump to respond to the notion that he is “profiting from the presidency.”
Trump replied, “I’m not profiting from anything.”
Welker pressed Trump again, asking him, “So you’re not profiting off of the cryptocurrency at all?”
“I haven’t even looked,” Trump replied, adding that “if I own stock in something, and I do a good job, and the stock market goes up, I guess I’m profiting.”
The $TRUMP coin jumped more than 50% on the dinner news. About 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliates, according to the project’s website.
Campaign finance and government accountability experts told NBC News last week that the coin and dinner scenario marked an ethics breach — though it was unlikely there was anything illegal about it. But some Republican lawmakers who are Trump allies have expressed concern, while prominent critics, including Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have urged the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate.
Trump and members of his family have faced repeated accusations dating back to Trump’s first term that they profited from his presidency. Republicans have typically defended them as unremarkable continuations of Trump’s long business career.
Investments in the U.S.
At another point, Trump said that “in just a short period of time — a matter of a couple of months — we have the largest number ever in history invested in the United States and committed.”
“We have between, guaranteed, spoken for and people that are going to make a decision and announce it pretty soon, close to $9 trillion.”
It’s not entirely clear where the $9 trillion figure comes from, although the White House announced on April 29 that it had secured more than $5 trillion in new investments in the U.S. so far in Trump’s second term.
Those include the announcement of a $500 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing by Apple, which Trump referred to in his interview, as well as $500 billion investment plans announced by NVIDIA and by a coalition of companies including SoftBank and Oracle.
These investments, however, effectively amount to promises, and some announcements have included previously disclosed plans. And they can change with economic conditions and other economic factors.
Trade deficit
Trump claimed that the trade deficit under Biden meant that “we lost 5 to 6 billion dollars a day.”
This is a mischaracterization of the data: The annual trade deficit for the U.S. in 2024 was about $918 billion, according to government figures. Sliced up in an average daily rate, that would be about $2.5 billion a day — less than Trump’s claims.
More importantly, however, trade experts take issue with Trump’s characterization of a trade deficit as “losing” money. A trade deficit refers to when a country is buying more goods and services from another nation than it is selling back to that nation. While it is integrally related to manufacturing, it has nothing to do with the concept of a nation making or losing money, and economic experts have explained that a trade deficit doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is losing money.
Immigration, border, crime, deportations
Migrants and crime
On multiple occasions Trump referred to violent criminals who were in the country illegally — explaining that he was elected to kick them out of the country.
“One of the primary reasons I was elected was to get people out of our country that were allowed. We have prisoners. We have murderers. We have terrorists in our country. We have people from mental institutions that are seriously insane. They all came in through Biden’s open border policy. And I was elected to get them out and to seal the border,” he said, adding: “These are really some really bad, criminal people, and they’re here illegally.”
He added later that there were “11,888 murderers” in the U.S. illegally and that “many people have been killed, maimed, badly hurt by illegal immigrants that came over.”
Instances of crimes committed by people who entered the country illegally have garnered significant attention in recent years, in part from Trump. One of the few pieces of legislation he has signed this year was the Laken Riley Act, named after a nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally. The act requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants who have been arrested, charged with or convicted of certain criminal offenses. However, there is no evidence of a broad, migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S.
Violent crime has declined, according to the latest available data. Violent crime was down about 3% from 2022 to 2023, and property crime took a similar drop of 2.4%, the FBI reported in September. The most serious crimes, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, dropped an estimated 11.6% — marking the largest single-year decline in two decades. Several years of national data show that crime has consistently been falling in cities and towns across the U.S.
There is little hard data about levels of crime committed by migrants once they’re inside the U.S. But criminologists have consistently found that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans.
As far as the 11,888 figure, Trump appears to be describing the existing data inaccurately. According to ICE data provided to Congress in September, more than 13,000 noncitizens who were convicted of homicide here or abroad were living outside of ICE detention centers. However, it’s not truthful to cast all of their entries into the U.S. as recent or due to Biden policies.
It’s not clear when many of these migrants crossed into the U.S. But they would have entered the country over the last four decades, or even earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The number includes noncitizens incarcerated in state and federal prisons, but it’s not clear how many are.
Due process
Trump blamed “activist judges” for ruling that “you don’t have the right to take out murderers and — and people that you don’t even want to talk about.”
“These are really some really bad, criminal people. And they’re here illegally. So, you know they talk about — your next question will be due process. But they talk about due process, but do you get due process when you’re here illegally?” Trump continued.
During another point in the interview, Welker asked Trump specifically about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a prison in El Salvador in March. A federal judge, an appeals court and the Supreme Court have all ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Lawyers for the Justice Department have acknowledged in court filings that the deportation was a mistake because an immigration judge had ruled that while Abrego Garcia could be deported, he could not be sent back to his native El Salvador. But administration officials have also said that because Abrego Garcia is in custody in El Salvador, the United States does not have the legal authority to bring him back.
“This is the point, sir, about due process,” Welker said. “The Constitution says every person, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process. Why not push to have him come back, present all of that evidence in court, let a judge decide,” Welker asked.
Trump replied, “I’ll leave that to the lawyers, and I’ll leave that to the attorney general of the United States.”
This topic requires a lot of context.
But ultimately, legal scholars — as well as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio — widely agree that the Fifth Amendment’s “due process” clause applies to all people in the U.S.
In its efforts to deport some immigrants it claims are in the country illegally, the Trump administration has made novel legal arguments or cited laws that have not previously been used for peacetime immigration enforcement to try to implement immediate deportations without hearings. In several recent orders, however, the Supreme Court has ruled that these immigrants are entitled to what can be interpreted as due process rights.
For example, the Trump administration has pressed the courts to allow the immediate deportations of immigrants it accuses of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act, without giving them a chance to plead their case before a judge.
In that case, the Supreme Court asked the administration to pause the deportations of some of those Venezuelan men after attorneys for the men asked for them not to be deported “before the American judicial system can afford them due process.” The Supreme Court also ruled earlier in April to allow the Trump administration to move forward with some deportations under the AEA as long as detainees “receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act.”
There have been other examples, however, of the Trump administration moving forward on deportations and visa revocations without due process. For example, the administration has revoked more than 300 student visas. In some of those cases, students have been apprehended and held in detention centers with little warning and few details about why they were being held.
Rubio has defended the administration’s deportation efforts, but told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” last week, “Yes, of course,” after he was asked whether citizens and noncitizens in the U.S. are entitled to due process.
In Welker’s interview with Trump, she pointed out Rubio’s comments, saying that “your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process.”
“Do you agree?” she asked.
Trump replied, “I don’t know. I’m not — I’m not a lawyer.”
Referring to the Fifth Amendment, he added, “it seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are, some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“And I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.
The border
Trump also said, “We have the best border in the history of our country.”
“It’s really secure,” Trump added at another point.
“Isn’t it a beautiful thing when you say, ‘It’s the most secure it’s ever been in the history of our country,’” Trump said.
Using the metric of border crossings and the available data, this statement is true.
The number of border crossers has plummeted, according to ICE data NBC News obtained in March. Encounters along the border were the lowest they have been since tracking began 25 years ago, that data showed.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said last month that March marked the “lowest southwest border crossings in history.”
In the interview, Welker acknowledged that “border crossings are at their lowest level ever recorded.”
Other data also showed that ICE agents deported fewer immigrants in February than they did under the Biden administration during the same month a year ago.
DOGE and government spending
DOGE
Trump said his Department of Government Efficiency, the division led by tech billionaire Elon Musk that was tasked with cutting federal spending and staffing, “found $160 billion worth of fraud, waste and abuse.”
That number is all but impossible to fact-check, largely because DOGE’s own, evolving accounting of its work has been laden with errors and misleading claims, NBC News previously reported. Musk has acknowledged that his team has made mistakes and will make more, but he said they will strive to correct them.
The group’s purported savings figure also doesn’t take into account the expenses related to its work.
In addition, multiple news outlets, including The New York Times and CBS News, have cited an analysis from the the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service stating that “firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers” brought on by DOGE’s actions will actually cost at least $135 billion in the current fiscal year — which would approximately offset the alleged savings in that period, pushing any potential benefit down the road. A White House spokesperson responded to the analysis by telling The New York Times, “It’s important to realize that doing nothing has a cost.”
Medicaid
Separately, in a conversation about Trump’s sweeping tax bill that Republicans are currently drafting, he said he would veto it if it had cuts to Medicaid.
“What happens if it comes to your desk, has the tax cuts, but also cuts to Medicaid? Would you veto that?” Welker asked.
Trump initially said, “Well, we’re not doing that,” before adding, “I would if they were cutting it, but they’re not cutting it.”
“We’re not cutting Medicaid, we’re not cutting Medicare, and we’re not cutting Social Security,” Trump added.
It’s too early to know exactly where this will go, as the specifics of Republicans’ big tax and spending bill have not yet been released.
Republicans, however, have clashed over whether and how to cut Medicaid — and the program appears to be the one major slice of the U.S. budget that GOP lawmakers have put on the table for cuts. Some House Republicans, for example, are suggesting slashing federal funding for Medicaid and advocating for states to jump in to cover more of it. That policy is known as reducing the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP.
Politics and the 2020 election
2020 election
Referring to the 2020 race that he lost to Joe Biden, Trump said that “the election was rigged — the facts are in and it’s still being litigated.”
This is false.
Trump lost the 2020 election, and allegations made by him and many of his political allies claiming widespread voter fraud during that race have been repeatedly debunked, disproven and rejected, including in courts across the U.S.
Welker pointed that out in the interview, noting to Trump, “You did take your case to court more than 60 times and didn’t win those cases.”
Teamsters endorsement
Trump also said the Teamsters union endorsed his 2024 presidential bid, which isn’t true.
“The Teamsters did,” he said, during a discussion about other union heads who didn’t endorse him, as well as supportive comments about his tariffs from the head of the United Auto Workers (who also did not endorse Trump).
The Teamsters declined to endorse a candidate for president in 2024 — though that itself broke precedent.
It was the first time in decades that the union, which at 1.3 million members is one of the largest in the world, hasn’t backed a candidate in the presidential election. The Teamsters, which represents truck drivers, freight workers and others, had for decades endorsed Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, Barack Obama in both of his presidential runs, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. The union released data indicating support for Trump among its membership when it announced it would not be endorsing in the 2024 race.
Teamsters president Sean O’Brien also spoke at the Republican convention last year, where he challenged the GOP on union support.
The post Fact-checking Donald Trump’s May interview with ‘Meet the Press’ appeared first on NBC News.
