LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — President Donald Trump took liberties with the truth at several points during his Tuesday address to a joint session of Congress, according to the fact-checking website PolitiFact.
Out of 12 claims rated by fact-checkers at PolitiFact, nine were rated "false" or "mostly false." Another two were rated "half true," while the final claim required more context.
Read: PolitiFact's fact-checking of President Trump's speech.
In addition to claims about foreign policy and government waste, PolitiFact examined some of the president's claims of particular interest to locals here in Las Vegas.
Social Security: Trump read a lengthy list — drawn from the files of the Social Security Administration — that purported to show people of fairly advanced age who were still allegedly receiving payments from the government retirement program. One person, Trump said, was older that the United States, which celebrates its 250th anniversary next year.
But Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact says those numbers were due to errors in the Social Security datebase, and not fraud, although the administration does list 89,000 people who are aged 99 or holder who do receive benefits.
"These are old systems and technology," Jacobson said. "Government does not have, really, the reimbursement rates to hire the top of the line, cutting-edge [information technology] people, and so they sort of make the old systems work."
The Associated Press also investigated the claim and found it lacking.
Immigration: According to Trump, "Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States, many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities, all throughout the world."
Trump has made the claim before, including on the campaign trail, where he repeatedly assailed the Biden administration over its border policies.
But PolitiFact found that the actual number of illegal immigrants is far less than Trump said, partly as a result of how immigration officials report their activities. For example, an "encounter" at the border only means officials came into contact with a person trying to get into the country; it doesn't mean the person was successful, and a single person can have multiple "encounters," each one of which counts individually.
According to PolitiFact, the number of actual immigrants who got into the country illegally is about 12.4 million, a large number but far less than what Trump said. And when accounting for immigrants who were removed from the country during that time, the number drops further, to about 8 million.
"The combination of the number and the fact that he's saying that some of them were murderers, traffickers, gang members and other criminals, the combination of those two claims and has generally led us to rate it false," Jacobson said.
Other organizations — including the Brennan Center for Justice, the American Immigration Council and the Cato Institute — have all said immigrants are less likely to be criminals than other groups.
Tariffs: When Trump visited Las Vegas in September, he told Channel 13 in an interview that tariffs would help the economy, and "not necessarily" raise prices for consumers.
On Tuesday, he acknowledged there may be a little disruption from tariffs, but that "we will take in trillions and trillions of dollars that create jobs like we have never seen before. I did it with China, and I did it with others."
But Jacobson said studies by various think tanks showed that some domestic industries did benefit from tariffs during Trump's first administration, from 2017 to 2021. But those gains were overshadowed by harm to the economy and to consumer prices, he said.
"Tariffs, you know, likely some portion will be passed along to the consumer," Jacobson said. "Other countries will hit us with retaliatory tariffs, which will also raise prices."
Trump promised to impose retaliatory tariffs starting April 2, matching the levies that other countries impose on U.S. goods.
The Tax Foundation looked at tariffs and found an increase in government tax revenue, but concluded that "academic and governmental studies find the Trump-Biden tariffs have raised prices and reduced output and employment, producing a net negative impact on the US economy."
The Foundation estimated that revenue from tariffs would be more like $140 billion rather than the "trillions and trillions" Trump predicted.
Egg prices: Trump flatly blamed former President Joe Biden for the higher cost of eggs, a claim PolitiFact rated half true.
It was during the Biden administration that more than 100 million egg-laying chickens died from the bird flu, or were killed to prevent the spread of the bird flu. Euthanizing chickens to control disease is a longstanding public health practice, including during the first Trump administration.
As a result, there was a shortage of eggs, leading to an increase in prices. Lowering prices will take time, as young chickens advance to egg-laying age.
Jacobson said prices have continued to climb under Trump. "First, just looking at the price of eggs right now, it is actually higher than it was during the peak under Joe Biden," he said. "So just since Donald Trump was sworn in a few weeks ago, the price has gone up by about $2."
