On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump gave his first joint address to Congress. He was almost immediately picked apart by journalists, fact-checkers, elected officials and others for his rapid pace of outright lies and false claims.
In just the first few minutes of the speech, Trump proclaimed that he won the 2024 election with "a mandate like has not been seen in many decades." New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel pointed out that Trump won the popular vote by just a 1.48% margin, while Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama each had margins of victory of 4.45% and 7.27%, respectively.
This led Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) to stand up and shout that he has "no mandate to cut Medicaid." House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) then ordered the House sergeant-at-arms to remove the longtime lawmaker from the chamber. Aaron Fritschner, who is the deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) posted the viral photo of Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shouting during Biden's State of the Union address with the text: "They weren't removed."
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Trump also used a significant portion of his speech to falsely assert there was widespread fraud in the Social Security Administration (SSA), arguing that people well over 100 years old were receiving benefits. On Bluesky, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump called that claim "total horses---" and posted a link showing that Trump was misreading data from the SSA. The agency has a database of every American who has been issued a Social Security number, but many of them don't have a date of death listed, as they passed away before electronic records were put in place.
Kansas University law professor Corey Rayburn Yung described the president's remarks about Social Security as "a lengthy diatribe that is all false." And Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson called Trump a "f---ing liar" who is "coming to steal our Social Security."
"Trump is making up stats about Social Security so he has an excuse to cut your benefits," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote on Bluesky.
At one point, Trump gave a shout-out to centibillionaire Elon Musk, and mentioned that he leads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Multiple legal experts immediately flagged this claim and pointed out that the Trump administration has argued in federal court that Musk does not lead DOGE. This may result in legal problems down the road, with Tech Policy Press journalist Cristiano Lima-Strong reminding his Bluesky followers: "This is a point of contention in ongoing lawsuits over its work."
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Trump also promised to cut Americans' taxes. But as Brendan Duke of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, Trump's new 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico "would wipe out any tax cuts the bottom of 40% of Americans would receive." And he noted that this "doesn’t count additional import taxes he’s considering or the cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance."
"Donald Trump, who is trying right now to pass a $4 trillion tax cut that would give households in the 0.1% a $278k tax cut, says he's going to balance the budget," wrote Center for American Progress senior director of federal budget policy Bobby Kogan.
Other journalists were amazed at the dizzying speed at which Trump lied. Journalist Mythili Sampathkumar observed that "quite literally every line of this State of the Union is a lie and/or has factual error." Former CBS News journalist Zev Shalev wrote: "The litany of lies is endless — it's impossible to keep track of."
"This is a rally speech, but it's also a list of things he claims to have done that he actually hasn't done," tweeted Atlantic contributor Tom Nichols. "It's utterly bonkers."
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