President Trump will address Congress on Tuesday night to sell his vision for his second administration, as he seeks to remake American government and tests the limits of executive power.
The speech comes after a blitz of executive actions seeking to purge a federal bureaucracy he views as disloyal and otherwise reshape domestic and foreign policy. In pursuing his agenda, Mr. Trump has repeatedly made false statements and claims lacking evidence, including that Ukraine started the war with Russia and that diversity programs at the Federal Aviation Administration led to a plane crash this year.
The president’s address is expected to touch on the major cuts that he and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have ordered for federal programs and the government’s work force. He is also expected to trumpet his immigration crackdown and his moves to impose steep tariffs in an effort to bolster domestic manufacturing.
Mr. Trump’s remarks on these issues over the past few weeks offer a preview of possible talking points. Here’s a fact-check:
What Was Said
“We were richest — the richest, relatively — from, think of this, from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest because we collected tariffs from foreign countries that came in and took our jobs and took our money, took our everything, but they charged tariffs.”
— at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22
False. Mr. Trump is wrong that the United States was richest during the Gilded Age, and he is overstating the impact of tariffs. He is also wrong that the country grew less prosperous in 1913, when a permanent federal income tax was introduced.
A White House spokeswoman noted that wages and the economy grew rapidly during the Gilded Age, but did not provide evidence of unparalleled prosperity in that era. The United States is far richer now than it was during that time, even when accounting for inflation. From 1870 to 1913, the country’s gross domestic product grew to nearly $1 trillion from about $190 billion, and to $10,000 from $4,800 per capita. Those figures have continued to rise precipitously, reaching nearly $20 trillion and more than $58,000 per capita in 2022.
Relative to other countries, the United States was just as rich or richer in the post-World War II era than in the Gilded Age. The United States was the third-largest economy in 1870, after China and India, but had become the world’s largest by 1920, making up about 23 percent of global G.D.P. It remained the world’s largest economy until 2014, when China took the lead.
Inequality, though, reached a peak during the Gilded Age. The United States had one of the highest rates of economic disparity in the world in 1910. Estimates of U.S. inequality, using a standard global metric, fell after the introduction of taxes aimed at wealthier people but rebounded somewhat in recent decades.
The U.S. economy did grow at a rapid clip in the Gilded Age, but tariffs were not the sole factor, said Richard White, a historian at Stanford University and an expert on the Gilded Age. He noted other reasons, including the U.S. seizure of Native land and the population’s doubling from 1860 to 1890, in large part because of immigration.
What Was Said
“We have found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud so far.”
— before a bilateral meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France on Feb. 24
This lacks evidence. The White House spokeswoman said the Department of Government Efficiency had identified hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud in the federal government. But even the government overhaul team itself does not purport to have found that much in specific savings or fraud.
According to Mr. Musk’s team, it has generated $105 billion in savings, as of Sunday. The initiative’s website includes details for canceled contracts that it says total about $8 billion in savings and broad descriptions for around $10 billion in terminated grants and $660 million in terminated leases. That’s a total of less than $20 billion, with the rest appearing unexplained.
As The New York Times and other news outlets have documented, the roughly $20 billion in savings is also not verified. The initiative has updated its website periodically to address mistakes such as contracts erroneously listed as worth billions but actually worth millions, contracts that were counted multiple times and contracts that have long ended or were not actually canceled.
The federal Government Accountability Office estimated last year, before the creation of DOGE, that the government loses $233 billion to $521 billion a year to fraud. But it is unclear if any of the Trump administration cuts announced thus far were canceled payments for fraudulent services.
While Mr. Trump and other officials have cast spending with which they disagree as wasteful, fraud involves deception or misrepresentation. For example, DOGE has said that it has canceled leases at underused and vacant properties and that there is “plenty of available office space for the current workforce.” It did not mention fraud in those leases.
What Was Said
“Europe has given $100 billion. The United States has given $350 billion because we had a stupid, incompetent president and administration, 350. But here’s worse: Europe gave it in the form of a loan; they get their money back.”
— at CPAC on Feb. 22, in reference to aid to Ukraine
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump is overstating the United States’ financial support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, understating Europe’s, and misrepresenting the proportion of loans and grants that each has given.
Official and independent estimates of American aid to Ukraine show it is about half of Mr. Trump’s figure. The Congressional Research Service reported that Congress has appropriated $174 billion in aid for Ukraine since the 2022 fiscal year. The Pentagon’s inspector general estimated that figure was about $182 billion.
The White House spokeswoman argued that there were tens of billions more in indirect costs, which she said included lost trade with Russia because of economic sanctions as well as the war’s inflationary impact. But lost trade and inflation also affected Europe, which was one of Russia’s biggest trading partners before the war. Mr. Trump, at other times, has conceded that the amount of aid the United States has provided to Ukraine might be less than $350 billion.
The European Union has estimated that its member states made available about $145 billion in aid, with tens of billions more committed.
Mr. Trump has a point that the bulk of American aid has been in grants and direct assistance rather than loans, but he is overstating the proportion of loans the European Union has provided.
The Pentagon’s inspector general noted that the United States provided about $20 billion, or roughly 10 percent of total aid, in loans. In comparison, the European countries have provided about $44 billion, or about a third of total aid, in loans, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Faced with an expansionist Russia and an unpredictable American president, European leaders are also looking to increase their own military spending and shoulder a heavier burden in Ukraine’s and the continent’s defense.
What Was Said
“For four long years, you had a president who put illegal aliens up in penthouse suites and beautiful hotels on Park Avenue or on Madison Avenue or on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.” — at CPAC on Feb. 22
“They sent $59 million to New York City for a hotel, for a little bit of nothing, what they’ve done. A hotel that was not luxury that’s getting luxury rates for migrants, where they’re making a fortune.” — at a swearing-in ceremony on Feb. 12
This is misleading. New York did house tens of thousands of migrants in hotels, but Mr. Trump is largely wrong about where the migrants were housed, the payments and the Biden administration’s role.
In 2023, Congress created the Shelter and Services Program, which in the 2024 fiscal year doled out about $640 million in grants to groups and localities that provide shelter and other services to migrants. The program does not directly pay for hotel rooms or decide where exactly migrants are housed.
New York City received around $190 million total in the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, according to federal data.
But the city has spent far more than what it has received from the federal government to house migrants, as it sought to provide lodging beyond already-squeezed city shelters. According to a comptroller report, the city spent nearly $1 billion on housing migrants at 119 hotels from September 2022 to August 2024. Most were budget or midscale properties, receiving an average nightly rate of $156 in the 2024 fiscal year, compared with a cost of around $52 for a shelter bed. About 19 of the hotels were in Manhattan.
Luxury hotels in Manhattan generally have much higher rates. They had a revenue per room of around $440 in 2024 and an average daily rate of more than $560, according to an estimate by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Trump International Hotel & Tower, a luxury hotel overlooking Central Park, charges $475 to $700 per night for a standard room.
The $59 million figure Mr. Trump cited is the value of one of the grants awarded to the city in the 2024 fiscal year by the federal government, not the amount paid to any single hotel.
