During Donald Trump's first presidency, CNN's Daniel Dale spent a lot of time fact-checking his claims. Now, eight and one-half months into the second Trump administration, Dale is still scrutinizing Trump's speeches and press conferences and separating fact from fiction.
Dale examined Trump's latest talking points during a Tuesday, October 7 fact-check, analyzing the U.S. president's claims on everything from investment in the United States to crime to drug policy.
"The president repeated this imaginary figure he keeps using, saying that he secured more than 17 trillion worth of investment in the U.S. in just eight months," Dale told his CNN colleague Manu Raju. "The White House itself, on its website, uses the figure 8.8 trillion — so just over half of the one the president keeps citing. And even that 8.8 trillion is a wild exaggeration. It includes a bunch of vague promises, a bunch of vague statements from foreign countries that I wouldn't say even rise to the level of promises."
Dale noted that Trump is counting "hundreds of billions in promised trade expansion as investment."
The CNN fact-checker dismantled Trump's claims about crime in Washington, D.C.
"The president also said that under his leadership, with his (National) Guard deployment and takeover of D.C. law enforcement, nobody is being shot now in Washington, D.C.," Dale observed. "It is true that crime is down in D.C., but it hasn't vanished as he keeps claiming. In fact, just this morning, the Washington Post ran a headline that said three people (were) found fatally shot in D.C. in three days. So, shootings do continue."
Dale tore apart Trump's claims about U.S. military attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean supposedly saving lives.
Dale noted, "The president also made just an absurd claim that he saved at least 100,000 lives with a smattering of military strikes on alleged drug boats off Venezuela in the Caribbean. Now, aside from the fact that we don't have firm evidence of what was on these boats — aside from the fact that fentanyl, the most deadly of these synthetic opioids that is killing Americans, is generally brought over the border by Americans (via) the land border, rather than on boats from Venezuela — it is just absurd to say 100,000 lives because there were well under 100,000 total overdose deaths in the U.S. last year."
Dale added, "So the notion that 100,000 lives were saved by striking four or five boats is simply not credible."
The CNN fact-checker went on to tear apart Trump's claims about trade with the European Union (EU).
"And the president (was) also talking about his trade deal with the European Union, repeated his claim that before this trade deal, the U.S. couldn't sell any agriculture to the EU," Dale told Raju. "Of more than $12 billion worth of farm products to the EU last year, before the trade deal, the EU was the fourth biggest buyer in the world of these products."