Washington CNN –
Former President Donald Trump began his 2024 presidential campaign just as he ended his presidency in 2021 — with a lot of inaccuracy.
Like many of Trump’s speeches as president, his announcement speech in Florida on Tuesday was filled with false and misleading claims about a variety of topics, from his record in office to his Democratic opponents on the economy, the environment and foreign policy.
Here’s a look at some of the things he said at Mar-a-Lago. This article will be updated with additional claims.
Trump claimed on Tuesday evening that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan after its military withdrawal in 2021.
“Perhaps the most shameful moment in the history of our country, where we lost lives, left Americans behind and gave away $85 billion of the best military equipment in the world,” Trump said, speaking from his compound Mar-a-Lago.
Facts first: Trump’s number is bogus. While a significant amount of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was effectively abandoned to the Taliban after the US withdrawal, the Department of Defense has estimated that this equipment was worth about $7.1 billion, a portion of about $18.6 billion. equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.
There is no basis for Trump’s claim that $85 billion worth of equipment was left behind. As other fact-checkers have previously explained, this is a rounded figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war into a fund to support the forces Afghan security forces. Only part of this funding was for equipment.
Trump claimed that his administration “filled up” the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but it has now been “virtually depleted” by the Biden administration.
Facts first: Both parts of Trump’s claim are false. It did not fill the reservation and the reservation is not “virtually sold out”.
While Trump has repeatedly boasted about supposedly filling the reserve, it actually held fewer barrels of crude when he left office in early 2021 than when he took office in 2017. That’s not all about him: the law requires some mandatory sales of the reserve for budgetary reasons, and Democrats in Congress blocked the funding needed to carry out Trump’s 2020 directive to buy tens of millions more barrels and fill the reserve to its maximum capacity, but nevertheless it was not filled.
As CNN’s Matt Egan and Phil Mattingly reported in mid-October, the U.S. stockpile remains the largest in the world, even though it was at a 38-year low after President Joe Biden released it an important part in helping to keep oil prices down. in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and, coincidentally or not, before the midterm elections). The stockpile stood at more than 396 million barrels of crude in the week ending Nov. 4.
Trump also bragged about his tariffs on China, claiming that “no president had ever sought or received $1 for our country from China until I came.”
Facts First: As we’ve written repeatedly, it’s not true that any president before Trump has raised any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. The US has actually had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in customs duties per year from 2007 to 2016 , according to the US International Trade Commission.” DataWeb”.
Moreover, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual payments for the tariffs, and study after study during Trump’s presidency has found that Americans bear the cost of the tariffs.
Trump claimed that the unnamed people don’t talk about the threat of nuclear weapons because they’re obsessed with environmental issues, which he said, “they say could hit us in 300 years.” He added, “They say the ocean will rise 1/8 of an inch in the next 200 to 300 years. But don’t worry about nuclear weapons that can wipe out entire countries with one shot.”
First facts: Trump’s claims are false, even if you ignore the absurd claim that people don’t pay attention to nuclear threats because they focus on the environment. Sea levels are expected to rise much faster than Trump said. The US government’s National Ocean Service said on its website that “sea level along the US coast is projected to rise, on average, by 10 to 12 inches (0.25 – 0 .30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020 – 2050), which will be as much as the increase measured during the last 100 years (1920 – 2020).
And while Trump didn’t use the words “climate change” in that statement, he strongly suggested that people say climate change can only hit us in 300 years. This is very inaccurate; is affecting the US today. The Department of Defense said in a 2021 report: “Increasing temperatures; changes in precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and unpredictable extreme weather conditions caused by climate change exacerbate existing risks and create new security challenges to U.S. interests.”
Trump claimed that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had told him that China has no “drug problem” because of its tough treatment of drug traffickers. Trump then repeated the claim himself, saying, “if you get caught dealing drugs in China, you have an immediate and swift trial, and at the end of the day, you’re executed. That’s a terrible thing, but they don’t have no problem with drugs.”
Facts first: Trump’s claim is not true, just as it was when he made similar claims as president. Joe Amon, director of global health at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health, said that “yes, China has a drug problem” and that “China, like the US, has a large number of who use (a wide range of) drugs.” The Chinese government itself has reported that “there were 1.49 million registered drug users nationwide” at the end of 2021; in the past, Chinese officials have acknowledged that the number of registered drug users is a significant undercount of actual drug use there.
And while Trump only credits harsh punishments for what he claims is China’s success in dealing with drugs, the Chinese government also touts its rehabilitation, education and anti-poverty efforts.
Complaining about how he is under criminal investigation for taking presidential documents to his Florida home and resort, Trump repeated a debunked claim about former President Barack Obama’s handling of presidential documents.
“Obama took a lot with him,” Trump said.
First facts: This is false, as the National Archives and Records Administration pointed out in August when Trump previously made this claim. Although Trump claimed that Obama had brought millions of records to Chicago, NARA explained in a public statement that he himself had brought those records to a NARA-run facility in the Chicago area, near where will house Obama’s presidential library. He said that under federal law, “Former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores his administration’s presidential records.”
NARA has also debunked Trump’s recent claims about several other presidents allegedly taking documents to their own home states; in these cases it was also NARA that moved the documents, not the former presidents. It is standard for NARA to set up temporary facilities near where the permanent libraries of former presidents will be located.
As he has done at other times during Biden’s tenure, Trump used misleading numbers when talking about the price of gas. He said, “We were $1.87 a gallon for gas, and now it’s five, six, seven, even eight dollars, and it’s going to be really bad.”
Facts first: This is misleading. While the price of a gallon of regular gas briefly dipped to $1.87 (and below) during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the national average for regular gas on Trump’s last day in position, on January 20, 2021, it was a lot. higher than that: $2.393 per gallon, according to data provided to CNN by the American Automobile Association. And while there are some remote gas stations where prices are always much higher than the national average, Tuesday’s national average is $3.759, according to AAA data, not $5, $6, $7 or $8. California, the state with the highest prices as usual, averages $5,423.
Trump claimed Tuesday evening that his administration, unlike the Obama administration, had convinced countries like Guatemala and Honduras to take back gang members who had come to America.
“The worst gangs are MS-13. And under Barack Hussein Obama’s administration, they couldn’t get them out. Because their countries where they came from wouldn’t take them,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago.
Facts first: It is not true that, as a general rule, Guatemala and Honduras would not take back their citizens during the Obama administration, although there were some individual exceptions.
In 2016, just before Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras were on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deemed “recalcitrant” or uncooperative in accepting return of their nationals.
For fiscal year 2016, Obama…