'Exaggerated his own made-up claim': CNN rapid-fire fact-check busts Trump’s presser talking points

03 February

On Monday afternoon, February 3 — two weeks after President Donald Trump started his nonconsecutive second term — he spoke to reporters inside the White House. And Trump forcefully defended his new tariffs, which include 25 percent across-the-board tariffs on any goods coming into the United States from Canada or Mexico. For goods coming from Mainland China, Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff.

Following the press conference, CNN's Daniel Dale gave Trump a comprehensive fact-check — pointing out Trump's ability to build on his own exaggerations and false claims.

Dale told CNN hosts Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez, "There's a concept I think of as Trumpflation, where he makes a false claim — and then, it keeps getting falser and falser over time. The numbers keep rising."

Sanchez noted that Trump previously claimed that the United States, under former President Joe Biden, was sending $50 million to Gaza to buy condoms for members of Hamas — a number Trump increased to $100 million during the presser.

Sanchez told Dale and Keilar, "Trump actually exaggerated his own made-up, exaggerated claim during this. He doubled it." And Keilar added that the $100 million figure "is doubly incorrect."

Dale, during the fact-check, pushed back against Trump's claim that Canada and the European Union (EU) aren't buying as many U.S. exports as they should be buying.

Dale told his CNN colleagues, "He said, when talking about Canada: They don't take our agricultural products, for the most part. In fact, Canada is the third largest export market for U.S. agriculture: about $28 billion in purchases in 2023. There is a dispute about milk exports that he referred to, but in terms of agriculture as a whole, it's not true."

Dale continued, "He said that the European Union doesn't take our farm products. The European Union is the fourth largest export market, about 12 billion per year. He said we have about a $350 billion trade deficit with the EU — another gross exaggeration. It's about 125 billion. And he repeated this claim about aid to Ukraine that he repeatedly makes: He said that the EU provides way less aid to Ukraine than the U.S. does — they need to catch up and so on. In fact, according to the latest numbers we have, the EU has committed about double the aid to Ukraine during this war than the U.S. has."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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