U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on the one-year mark into his second term in office, in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 20, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale recently unleashed a devastating fact-check on President Donald Trump, correcting several falsehoods the president claimed during his Tuesday press conference.
“So, he, again, claimed that he secured $18 trillion in investment in the U.S.,” Dale said. “That number is pure fiction. It is nearly double the $9.6 trillion number the White House's own website uses — and my detailed review found that even that number is wildly exaggerated.”
Dale then pulled up Trump’s fanciful claims about plummeting pharmaceutical product prices.
“He spoke of securing deals with drug makers to get 300, 400 or even 500, 600 percent reductions in prescription drug prices. He has secured some deals, but those numbers are debunked by math itself,” said Dale. “A 100 percent reduction would mean drugs would be free. A reduction of, say, 600 percent would mean Americans were getting paid to acquire their medications, which we know is not happening.”
“And it wasn't just his numbers,” added Dale. “He spoke, as he often does, of many countries. He identified Venezuela and the Congo opening up prisons and mental institutions and dropping people in the U.S. He's never presented a shred of proof that that has happened anywhere, let alone that many countries have done it.”
Dale then referenced Trump’s repeated claim of ending a war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and his boasts of lowering gas prices.
“That war is ongoing. It never stopped. Trump’s brokered peace agreements did not involve the main rebel militia doing the fighting,” said Dale. “And on gas prices — a very important number as we know in U.S. politics — he said ‘they're saying’ the average gas price is now $2.31 per gallon. I don't know who ‘they’ are, guys, but the actual national average is about $2.82 today. He also said that in some places it's $1.99.”
That number, according to fuel price monitoring firm Gasbuddy, only applies to fewer than 100 stations around the country.
“Aside from special discounts, that's out of 150,000 stations tht Gasbuddy tracks,” said Dale.
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