Fact check: Trump makes false claims about crime, January 6 and the economy in GOP speech

(CNN) — President Donald Trump abandoned his teleprompter in favor of impromptu musings in a speech at a retreat for House Republicans on Tuesday. And those ad-libbed Trump comments were filled with false claims.

Trump littered his meandering address with at least 18 inaccurate statements, most of which have been previously debunked. Here is a fact check of some of his assertions; this is not intended as a comprehensive list of falsehoods.

Crime

Murder in Washington, DC: Trump touted last year’s federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, and he falsely claimed the capital hasn’t had a single murder “in seven months,” though he did note the deadly attack that killed a member of the National Guard in November. In fact, there have been dozens of additional murders in Washington, DC, in the last seven months, as police statistics and Washington Post tracking show – including some in the last two weeks. Local police announced last week that a man was shot dead on December 31, another man died December 28 after being shot days prior, and a third man had been shot dead on December 27.

Where the capital ranks on crime: Trump also falsely claimed, “Washington, DC, is now the safest city in the country.” Crime data expert Jeff Asher told CNN in a text on Tuesday: “That’s obviously not true.” It’s not yet clear where the capital currently ranks compared to every other US city, since crime data takes time to trickle in from around the country, but it is abundantly clear that it’s far from the number-one safest. Asher said: “For example, DC has seen a large drop in shootings over the last two years, including potentially a further drop since mid-August, but there have still been over 100 people shot there in the last 4.5 months.”

The January 6 attack on the Capitol

The Jan. 6 committee and Trump’s speech: On the fifth anniversary of a pro-Trump mob storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump falsely claimed that the House of Representatives select committee that investigated the attack “didn’t report” that, in his speech at a Washington rally prior to the riot, he had urged people to go to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.” In fact, the committee explicitly mentioned the “peacefully and patriotically” comment in its official final report — but correctly noted that this remark was at odds with much of the rest of Trump’s largely combative speech. The report said: “President Trump used the phrase scripted for him by his White House speechwriters, ‘peacefully and patriotically’ once, about 20 minutes into his speech. Then he spent the next 50-or-so minutes amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own Vice President and Republican Members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight.”

Pelosi and Jan. 6: Trump falsely claimed that Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker at the time of the riot, “was offered 10,000 soldiers, National Guard soldiers, whatever you want – ‘No, I don’t want them.’” He added: “Nancy got caught when her daughter did a documentary” in which, Trump claimed, “She has her mother saying, ‘It’s my fault, I should’ve taken the soldiers.’”

But Pelosi’s filmmaker daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, didn’t film her saying “I should’ve taken the soldiers.” And there is no evidence Pelosi ever turned down a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops; it is the president, not the speaker, who is in charge of the District of Columbia National Guard, so Pelosi wouldn’t have had the power to reject such an offer even if she had received it, which she has steadfastly said she never did.

In a video recorded by Alexandra Pelosi on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, Nancy Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But that general statement is clearly not a specific admission that she had rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops. And in another part of the video, she said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” That question undercuts, rather than corroborates, Trump’s narrative that Pelosi turned down the National Guard.

Elections

The 2020 election: Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election “was rigged.” Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Joe Biden.

Trump and Minnesota: While slamming Minnesota as “corrupt,” Trump falsely claimed: “I won Minnesota.” He lost Minnesota in all three of the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. (He did add moments later in the Tuesday speech that he was “surprised three times” in Minnesota, a possible concession that he had lost, but he suggested this was because “those elections are corrupt.” There’s no basis for that claim.)

Mail-in voting: Trump falsely claimed: “We’re the only country that votes by mail, essentially.” This is wrong even with the “essentially” qualifier; dozens of countries use mail-in voting, including Canada, Germany, Switzerland,  the United Kingdom, and Spain, though the specifics of their policies vary. Trump repeated the claim without the qualifier moments later on Tuesday, saying, “We’re the only country that’s stupid enough to vote by mail.”

Jimmy Carter and mail-in voting: Trump falsely claimed of mail-in voting: “Even Jimmy Carter’s commission said, ‘Don’t do it.’” The commission Carter co-chaired was skeptical of mail-in voting, but it did not say that mail-in voting shouldn’t be used.

Specifically, the commission’s 2005 report said that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and are “vulnerable to abuse in several ways.” But the report also highlighted how Oregon had successfully introduced safeguards to prevent fraud with mail-in voting. The report made recommendations for the secure use of mail-in voting, and it called for “further research on the pros and cons.”

The 2024 election: Trump said it was “very unfair” that Biden dropped out of the race during the 2024 campaign and was replaced by then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and Trump claimed, “I was beating Joe by 30 points, and then they changed him.” The “30 points” claim is a massive exaggeration. Trump did lead in most national polls taken after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June 2024 presidential debate, but polls generally showed his lead in the single digits – and sometimes within the margin of error.

Tom Rice: Trump mocked former Republican Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, who lost a Republican primary in 2022 after voting to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 attack, and Trump said: “This guy named Rice, he lost by 48 points, right? Remember him?” Rice did lose handily, but Trump greatly exaggerated this margin, too; Russell Fry defeated Rice in the primary by about 26.5 points.

Inflation, economy and taxes

Inflation and Biden: Trump falsely claimed he “inherited the greatest inflation in history.” Trump could have fairly said the year-over-year US inflation rate hit a 40-year high under President Joe Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. Trump’s claim was also wrong if he was claiming there was record cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency; it was less than half of the cumulative inflation during Carter’s presidency. And the year-over-year inflation rate had declined to 3.0% by January 2025, the month of Trump’s inauguration.

Prescription drug prices: Trump falsely claimed that he is reducing prescription drug prices by “thousands of points, thousands.” He also said, “Depending on the way you calculate it, it could be thousands of percent down; it could also be 90% and 80%. You know, there’s two ways of calculating, I don’t know if you know … but the other way is more accurate.” It’s not. Trump’s claim of a reduction of “thousands of percent” is debunked by math itself; a decline of more than 100 percentage points would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications.

Investment in the US: Trump falsely claimed, “We have $18 trillion being invested in the United States.” This figure is fiction. At the time he spoke, the White House’s own website said the figure was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.

Tax on Social Security: Trump claimed that he had achieved his 2024 campaign promise of “no tax on Social Security.” The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.

Gas prices: Trump claimed of gasoline prices: “It’s now $1.99 a gallon in many stations, many stations.” This claim isn’t false, since there’s no firm definition of “many stations,” but context is needed: a tiny percentage of US gas stations were offering gas for $1.99 per gallon or less on Tuesday. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the firm GasBuddy, said gas was being offered for below $2 (aside from special discounts) at about 650 out of roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks – so “about 0.43% of US stations.”

Miscellaneous

Prisons and “the Congo”: Trump repeated his false claim that the US under Democratic leadership took in “prisons from the Congo” as migrants. Experts on both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN there is no evidence for Trump’s frequent claims about these countries supposedly emptying prisons to somehow get criminals to go to the US; the government of each of the countries has told CNN that the claims are baseless; and Trump’s own presidential campaign and White House team have never been able to corroborate the claims.

The Los Angeles wildfires: Trump repeated his baseless suggestion that the Los Angeles wildfires of early 2025 were affected by California’s use of some water to protect a fish species in the north of the state, saying, “So they cut it off (water) and then they have 25,000 houses burned down.” The wildfires, and efforts to fight them, had nothing to do with the environmental protection efforts hundreds of miles to the north, as experts on California water policy have long explained.

Olympic boxers and gender: Trump falsely claimed that two 2024 Olympic gold medalists in women’s boxing who were the subject of gender-related scrutiny, welterweight champion Imane Khelif of Algeria and featherweight champion Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, were men who “transitioned” to female. Neither Khelif nor Lin transitioned; as the International Olympic Committee pointed out in 2024, both competitors were identified as female at birth and have always competed as women. (A boxing authority with extensive ties to the Russian government and a history of corruption disqualified Khelif and Lin from a 2023 competition, claiming that a gender eligibility test showed they had “competitive advantages over other female competitors,” but the authority has never substantiated the assertion; regardless, it wasn’t an assertion that they “transitioned.”)

Trump’s 2019 call with Zelensky: Trump, speaking of the 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to his first impeachment, said, “Thank goodness I had a transcript. Essentially, the call was taped. Because they tape calls, I didn’t even know. ‘So was that call taped?’ ‘Yes sir!’ I said, ‘Oh, well, I don’t even know.’ And we read the transcript, and it was perfect. I told Ukraine not to cheat, and if you see any cheating, report it to the attorney general of the United States.”

There is no known US tape of the call; presidential calls with foreign leaders are not typically recorded by the American side. It is true that the White House released a rough written transcript of the call – but it shows that Trump’s description of the call here is inaccurate by omission. Trump did not merely advise Zelensky to report any “cheating” to the US attorney general; he pressed Zelensky to work with the attorney general to investigate Biden, then his looming 2020 election opponent.

The rough transcript cites Trump as saying, among other things: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.” Trump also asked Zelensky to take a call from the attorney general on the subject of a US election conspiracy theory related to a cybersecurity firm, which Trump was pressing Zelensky to “get to the bottom of.”

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