President-elect Donald Trump is telling a lot of lies.
As Election Day gets closer, the Republican candidate for president has been making false claims about a huge range of topics.
He has both made up new lies about important issues, like how the federal government responded to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and repeated old ones about things he has been ranting about since he ran for president in 2016.
Trump held two campaign events in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, one in Scranton and one in Reading. We watched both of them and talked about what he said. During those two speeches alone, he made at least 40 different lies.
Here’s a fact check.
FEMA and migrants:Trump told lies about the Federal Emergency Management Agency when he said, “They have no money.” Do you know where the cash went? To people coming in illegally.” He also said, “They spent all their money; they do not have any more to pay for care.”
In two ways, this is not true. FEMA does have money to help with Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton right away, but its disaster aid fund is almost empty after a string of recent disasters; as of Wednesday, it only had about $11 billion left in it.
Also, FEMA did not give all of its disaster aid money to undocumented people. As required by Congress, FEMA also manages a separate pool of money for migrants to stay in while they are waiting for their cases to be processed.
FEMA and employees:Trump said something else that was not true about FEMA: “They have no workers, they have no nothing.” More than 20,000 people work for FEMA.
Trump lied when he said that Vice President Kamala Harris “did not send anything or anyone at all” to help people in North Carolina who were desperately trying to stay alive during Hurricane Helene.
Rescue and aid efforts by the federal government and states were very strong right after Hurricane Helene.
Some people did die and others were stuck for days, but Harris and the Biden administration did not ignore the state. In fact, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has thanked President Joe Biden many times for his help.
Schools and transgender children: Trump told a slightly less specific version of his usual lie about transgender children getting or having surgeries to change their gender behind their parents’ backs. He said, “Your child goes to school, and they take your child.” It started with a “he” and ended with a “she.” They do this all the time, and parents do not always agree to it.
There is no proof that US schools have sent kids to get gender-affirming surgery without their parents knowing or done the surgery themselves. Even Trump’s campaign for president could not come up with a single case of this ever happening. Even in states where gender-affirming surgery is allowed for people younger than 18, a minor needs permission from their parents before they can have it done.
Campaigning against Trump: In Reading, Trump said, “Those people are cheatin’ dogs, I will tell you that.” In Scranton, he said, “Their first meeting is, ‘How do we cheat?'” Both claims were false.”This is all making sense. People who are against Trump are not cheating in the poll.
In his false claim that Harris dropped out of the Democratic race for president in 2020, Trump said again that Harris was “the first one to drop out, of like 22 people.”
Before Harris dropped out in December 2019, 13 other Democratic candidates did as well.
These included the current or past governors of Washington, Montana, and Colorado, the current mayor of New York City, and current or former members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Trump said about Harris, “She does not do any interviews,” which was not true. Trump can say that Harris has not done enough interviews as the Democratic presidential nominee, but saying she does not do “any” is false; Harris has done several interviews in the past few weeks.
Harris did an interview with the CBS News show “60 Minutes,” which ran on Monday. Trump, on the other hand, did not show up for his own interview with the show.
Trump said, “They want to add—they are thinking about – first time; I heard this number – 25: they want to have 25 Supreme Court justices.” He was correct when he said that Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently said he wanted to get rid of the Electoral College.
However, Trump was wrong when he said that Harris and Walz are pushing for a 25-justice Supreme Court.
When it comes to Walz and period products in schools, Trump called Walz “Tampon Tim” and then said, “You know why they call him that? Because they sell pads in boys’ locker rooms, which is against the law. Trump’s claim is not true.
The law that Walz signed in 2023 says that schools must offer free menstrual products in bathrooms but not sell them in changing rooms. All 18 public school districts that CNN asked about the law said they do not offer the products in boys’ bathrooms. Read more here.
Wind power: Trump repeated a tired, nonsensical story about how people “can not watch” TV if “there is no wind tonight.” Using wind power as part of a mix of power sources does not cause power outages when the wind is not blowing, as the Department of Energy explained on its website even while Trump was in office.
When talking about the Biden administration and electric cars, Trump said that “everybody’s got to have an electric car almost immediately” because of an electric vehicle mandate. This is not true.
The Biden administration does not require people to buy an electric car or give up their gas-powered cars, “almost immediately” or not. Although consumers are not required to buy electric cars, the Biden administration has been pushing automakers to cut down on pollution and switch to cleaner models.
The goal of the tailpipe rules for automakers, which were released earlier this year, is for 35% to 56% of all new cars sold in 2032 to be electric.
The Paris climate accord and emissions: Trump said again that the Paris climate accord meant that the US “had to pay a trillion dollars” while other countries didn’t. This was not true.
Trump’s number of “trillions” is way too high. During the Obama government, the US paid $1 billion of the $3 billion it promised in 2014. The US did not contribute to the global finance goal after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris agreement.
And even though Biden promised that the US would give $11.4 billion a year, that amount of money has not come through. That is because Congress, which is in charge of allocating the country’s budget, has only given a small portion of that—about $1 billion in 2022.
What Harris said about fracking: Trump said, “Listen to Kamala in her own words very recently.” He then showed two videos in which Harris said she wanted to stop fracking.
But those clips are from 2019, which is a long time ago compared to what “very recently” means. Harris said during her campaign for 2024 that she no longer supports stopping fracking.
About Venezuela, jails, and migration: Trump said, “In Venezuela and many other countries, prisoners are coming to our country.” This is not true.
This claim has never been backed up by Trump, not even about “many countries.” Experts have told CNN, PolitiFact, and FactCheck.org that they also do not know of any proof for it.
According to Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (an independent group that tracks violence in the country), there is no proof that the Venezuelan government is sending people out of the country, to the U.S. or any other country. He said this in an email to CNN in June, after Trump made similar claims.
Trump made up a story about Venezuela that was full of colourful language. He said, “They take the criminal gangs from Caracas off the streets and they bus them into the United States and drop them off.” This is not true. There is no proof that Venezuelan police bring gang members into the US in some way.
The number of people in prison around the world: Trump said again that it was false that “the prison population all over the world is down, because they put them in our country.”
According to the World Prison Population List, which was made by experts in the UK, the number of people in prison around the world rose from at least 10.77 million in October 2021 to at least 10.99 million in April 2024.
Trump made a similar claim in June. Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said, “I do a daily news search to see what is going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US.”
When Trump talked about immigration, he said falsely that “21 million people or more came into our nation” during the Biden-Harris administration.
During the Biden-Harris administration, there were about 10.3 million “encounters” with migrants across the country through August.
This number includes millions who were quickly deported, so even if you add in the so-called “gotaways” who got away without being caught—which House Republicans say is about 2 million—the total can not be “21 million.”
When Trump criticised Harris on immigration, he again used the wrong words to describe a set of data that came out in September. In Scranton, he lied when he said, “You saw that last week: 13,099 murderers were allowed to come in through them.
” In Reading, he lied when he said, “As we speak she has—and this was just announced last week—13,099, or over 13,000 illegal alien convicted murderers loose in our country.”
This number of 13,099 includes people who are in federal, state, and local bars and jails. It also includes people who came to the U.S. over many years, not just during Biden and Harris’s administrations, but also during Trump’s. Read more here.
When Harris was attorney general of California, Trump said she “said under no circumstances” that people would be charged with crimes like child sex trafficking, assault with a dangerous weapon, or raping someone while they are unconscious.
This was not true. Trump was seriously misrepresenting a discussion about the language Harris’ office used to sum up California ballot proposals. Harris did not say anything like that.
Trump’s border wall: Trump said again that he “built over 500 miles of wall” along the southern border, which is not true. According to official government figures, 458 miles of wall were built under Trump. This includes both new walls that were built where there were none before and walls that were built to replace old ones.
The crowds at Trump rallies: Trump said, “We never have an empty seat,” which was not true. There have been empty seats at many Trump rallies over the years, including hundreds of seats at this Reading speech. Plus, at many Trump events, some seats that were full before his speeches are empty while he speaks.
Trump’s crowd in Butler: Trump lied when he said there were “over 100,000 people” at the gathering he held on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, which was the same place where a gunman tried to kill him in July.
CNN affiliate KDKA in Pittsburgh said that the Secret Service said there were 24,000 people in the crowd. However, Trump supporter and Blair County, Pennsylvania sheriff James Ott said that he could see “21,000 or more” people at the rally itself, more than three hours before Trump took the stage.
Reaction to the assassination attempt: When asked about his reaction to the July assassination attempt, Trump said, “I said as I was getting up—before I even got up—I said, ‘How many people were killed?'” This was not true.I asked, “How many people were killed?” because there were so many people there.They told me, “We think three,” and I told them, “That is not good.”
The mic at Trump’s gathering picked up what he and Secret Service agents said while he was on the ground and right after. He did not ask how many people were killed before or after he got up. He might have done that after being taken off stage, or he might have been remembering things wrong in the middle of a very scary situation.
Trump and firefighters: Trump lied when he said, “You probably heard that the firefighters backed us.” The recent national news was that the International Association of Firefighters had decided not to back any candidate.
Trump can say this was a victory for him, but it was not really an endorsement because the union backed Biden in 2020. Some people in the Scranton crowd had signs that said “Scranton Firefighters for Trump,” but the Scranton chapter of the union has not backed Trump either.
The chapter’s head told the Scranton Times-Tribune that the people holding the signs were not local firefighters, either now or in the past.
“I had the Presidential Records Act; I was totally allowed to do it,” Trump said again when asked about the criminal case against him for keeping classified documents after leaving office.
The Presidential Records Act says that as soon as a president leaves office, all presidential records are turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
(In July, a federal judge threw out Trump’s case on the other grounds that the hiring of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional. Smith has since filed an appeal.)
When talking about the Russia investigation, Trump called the claims that his 2016 campaign had ties to Russia a “scam.” He also said again that The New York Times “admitted they were wrong” about the coverage that won its journalists and those from The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize.
In 2023, when Trump made a similar claim, a spokesperson for the Times, Charlie Stadtlander, told CNN, “The claim is completely false.”
Stadtlander also said that “the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an independent review” and that the Times’ reporting “was also substantiated by the Mueller investigation and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”
“Remember in 2016 they had to do an editorial apologising to their readers because they said, ‘He is going to lose,’ and then I won?’” Trump said about The New York Times’ coverage of the 2016 election, repeating a false claim he made while he was president.“
As the Times pointed out in 2017 in response to these kinds of Trump claims, it did not say sorry for how it covered the 2016 race.
After the election, executive editor Dean Baquet and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote an open letter in which they said the election had brought up many issues, such as the question: “Did Donald Trump’s unusualness cause us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”But there was no apology in the letter, not to Trump or anyone else.
A lot of times, Trump has said things that were not true, like “we defeated ISIS in four weeks; it was supposed to take four or five years.” The ISIS “caliphate” was not officially over until more than two years into Trump’s administration.
Military equipment given to the Taliban: Trump said again that it was wrong that “we gave $85 billion worth” of US military equipment to the Taliban. Trump’s number is way too high.
According to the Pentagon, the equipment that Afghan forces gave to the Taliban when they were defeated in 2021 was worth about $7.1 billion. This is a small part of the $18.6 billion worth of equipment that was given to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021.
Biden and foreign income: Trump kept saying the false thing that “Biden got a lot of money from China.” Even though House Republicans have been looking into this for years, there is still no proof that Biden has gotten any money from China.
When asked about the Biden family, Trump told the usual lie that he had asked Biden at a 2020 presidential debate why the wife of a Moscow mayor had paid Biden $3.5 million. In reality, the money was sent to a company connected to the president’s son Hunter Biden, not to Biden himself.
But moderator Chris Wallace, who used to work for Fox News and now works for CNN, told Trump, “Well, please do not ask him that question.” Wallace never did that.
However, Wallace stepped in during the debate to try to convince Trump to let Biden answer his question about the payment. He did this to encourage Trump to ask the question, not to stop Trump from asking it.
Inflation: Trump said again that the inflation rate under Biden and Harris is “the worst inflation in the history of our country.”
He was correct that the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was nowhere near the all-time high of 23.7% set in 1920, and the rate has since dropped dramatically. At the time Trump spoke here, the most recent available inflation rate was 2.5% in August.
Trump said that young people can not buy a house because interest rates are higher than 10%, which is not true. He said, “It is not 10%, it is 11, 12, 13, 14, 15%.” Mortgage lender Freddie Mac says that the average rate on a normal 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.12% in the week ending October 3. It dropped to 6.32% in the week ending October 10.
What about Trump’s tax cut? Trump said again, “As you know, I gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country.” However, studies have shown that his 2017 tax cut law was not the biggest in US history, either in terms of percentage of GDP or dollars corrected for inflation.
China’s taxes: Trump made two of the same false claims about tariffs on Chinese goods that he always does. He lied when he said that China “paid hundreds of billions of dollars” in taxes while he was president. He then lied when he said that “nobody ever brought in 10 cents, not one other – not 10 cents, you check those records.”
It is true that the US was making billions of dollars a year from tariffs on China before Trump took office. In fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese goods since the 1700s. Second, these taxes are paid for by US importers, not China. In fact, study after study has shown that Trump’s tariffs were mostly paid for by Americans.
The 1890s and tariffs: Trump lied when he said that “our country was the richest it ever was” in the 1890s, when the US had very high tariffs. The US is much richer now than it was then; per capita gross domestic product is many times higher now than it was then.
The trade deficit with China: Trump said again that the US trade imbalance with China has been an average of “$500 billion” per year, which is not true. If you only count trade in goods and do not count trade in services, which the US usually has a surplus in, the US has never had a $500 billion trade imbalance with China. The all-time high, about $418 billion, was set by Trump in 2018.
Regarding Harris and taxes, Trump showed a video that was falsely edited to show Meghan McCain, co-host of “The View,” telling Harris in 2019 that she would support “everything from a 70 to 80% tax rate.” Harris replied, “I think that is fantastic.”
Certain words from the conversation have been cut out of this tape. When Harris said “fantastic,” she was not specifically supporting high tax rates.
The conversation from 2019 is written out below:
Trump: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the new party favourite.” She now has more people following her on Twitter than Nancy Pelosi does. This past weekend, she was on “60 Minutes” and was happy to call herself a radical.
One of the ideas she supports is that all carbon emissions from cars in the country should be cut out within 11 years, which would mean a tax rate of between 70% and 80%. Do you agree with the idea that she and this socialist left philosophy could split your party?“
Harris replied, “No.” I think she is questioning the way things are now. That sounds great to me. I believe that—you know, I used to teach, especially before the last few years—and the thing I loved most about it was that you had to explain your point of view. And you need to look at the assumption again.
And the question is: Does it still matter? Does it make a difference? Does it mean something? I also believe she is bringing up big ideas that should be talked about. I believe it is good for the country and the party. Take a look at the big ideas. And I am excited for those talks to happen. If we can support the status quo, then let us do that. But if there are problems with that, then let us look into other options.
When Trump talked about Biden’s handling of classified documents, he said that “Biden was essentially convicted” and that “they ruled on him, they said he is guilty” in Reading and Scranton, which were both lies.
Biden was not convicted, “essentially” or not, and he was not even charged with a crime. In his public report, Robert Hur, the special counsel in the case, said, “The evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” He also said, “several defences are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges.”
Trump said, “But the worst was when he was in New Hampshire and said, ‘It is great to be in Florida.’ That is palm trees.'” This was not true.
Trump was making fun of Biden’s mistakes. Like Trump, Biden has made some mistakes with geography, but he never said he was in Florida when he was in New Hampshire.