Trump's 'total fiction' economic boasts shot down one by one by CNN fact-checker

President Donald Trump's record-long State of the Union address was subjected to a rigorous fact check by CNN's Daniel Dale.

The 79-year-old president boasted about his economic successes in a one-hour, 48-minute speech to Congress, but Dale told "CNN News Central" that many his claims were exaggerations at best or simply not true at all.

"A whole lot of nonsense there," Dale began. "So the president claimed that tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. They simply are not. Tariff payments to the U.S. government are made by U.S. importers, and we know from life experience and from academic study after study that they often pass on some or all of their costs to the final consumer."

"He claimed again that he secured $18 trillion in investments so far this term – that number is total fiction," Dale continued. "The White House's own website uses, at this very moment, a figure of $9.7 million in so-called major investment promises or announcements, and I found that even that $9.7 trillion figure is a wild exaggeration, and then this whole economic narrative that he inherited record inflation, he didn't."

"He inherited 3 percent inflation, just a bit above where it is now 2.4 percent, and this claim he inherited a stagnant economy [that] is now roaring like never before," Dale added. "Look, economic growth in 2025, mostly under Trump, was 2.2 percent. That was partly affected by the government shutdown in the fall, but it was 2.8 percent under President Biden in 2025. It was also higher than 2.2 percent in every other year of the Biden administration before 2024, and other metrics also don't suggest any corroboration of this narrative that there is some terrible diseased, stagnant economy that is now booming. It just just not the case."

Host Sara Sidner agreed there was a "huge discrepancy" between Trump's figures and those touted by his own White House, and she asked Dale to comment on the president's claims about gasoline prices.

"He said most states have gas prices below $2.30 – not a single state yesterday had a gas price average, according to AAA, below $2.37, and then how many stations were below $2?" Dale said. "Well, I spoke to Gasbuddy, a firm that tracks more than 150,000 gas stations around the U.S., [and] they told me that four stations yesterday were selling for below $2 aside from special discounts – four out of 150,000. So yes, they exist, but the president didn't make clear that we're talking like beyond needle in a haystack territory here."

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