By Daniel Dale, CNN
President Donald Trump littered his new “60 Minutes” interview with a wide-ranging assortment of false claims, the overwhelming majority of them beforehand debunked. We counted at the least 18 inaccurate assertions.
Trump advised his traditional lie that the free and honest 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied once more that grocery costs “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell knowledgeable him they’re up. He declared as soon as extra that there’s now “no inflation,” although there actually is, after which that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” although the latest obtainable Client Worth Index determine is now as much as 3%.
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The president additionally deployed a number of different fictional numbers throughout his exchanges with O’Donnell, which had been recorded Friday and launched by CBS on Sunday.
And Trump made a wide range of extra false claims on a number of topics, together with the federal government shutdown, the unreal intelligence increase, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former authorized battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
CBS posted a full transcript of the interview, which O’Donnell mentioned ran for almost 90 minutes, and a virtually 73-minute video; it aired about 28 minutes on tv.
Here’s a extra detailed breakdown of Trump’s claims.
The economic system
Grocery costs
When O’Donnell famous that People have “seen their grocery prices go up,” Trump repeated his common false declare that grocery costs are literally declining: “No, you’re wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now they’re going down. Other than beef, which we’re working on, which we can solve very quickly.” Trump repeated later within the interview, “Our groceries are down.”
Grocery costs are up underneath Trump — and whereas there was a very massive improve within the worth of beef, there have additionally been will increase within the worth of quite a few different merchandise. Client Worth Index figures for September confirmed common grocery costs had elevated since August (about 0.3%), since September 2024 (about 2.7%), and since January 2025 (about 1.4%), the month Trump returned to workplace. Costs in all six main grocery product classes tracked by the Client Worth Index, reminiscent of “fruits and vegetables” and “cereals and bakery products,” are up over the previous yr.
Inflation underneath Trump
Trump falsely claimed, “We have no inflation” and “we don’t have any inflation.” (He mentioned at one other level of the interview that “essentially we don’t have inflation.”) He additionally falsely claimed, “We’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.” There’s inflation; it has been worsening since Might after hitting a four-year low in April; and it’s not 2% or lower than 2%. The year-over-year charge was about 3% in September, up from about 2.9% in August; the September determine was almost an identical to the roughly 3% charge in January, the final partial month of the Biden administration and first partial month of the second Trump administration.
Inflation underneath Biden
Trump falsely claimed that President Joe “Biden gave me the worst inflation rate in the history of our country” and that “I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Trump may have pretty mentioned the US inflation charge hit a 40-year excessive underneath Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, however that was not near the all-time file of 23.7%, set in 1920 — and, once more, the speed then declined to about 3% in January 2025, the month Trump took over from Biden. Trump’s declare was additionally incorrect if he was claiming there was file cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency. It was about 21%, in contrast with about 49% throughout President Jimmy Carter’s time period.
Funding within the US
Who pays tariffs
Trump claimed, as he usually does, that China and different international international locations pay the tariffs he has imposed on their exports. In actuality, US importers, not China or different international international locations, make the tariff funds to the US authorities, they usually usually move on at the least among the prices to customers; research after research, together with one from the federal authorities’s bipartisan US Worldwide Commerce Fee, discovered that individuals and entities within the US bore nearly all the value of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese language merchandise.
AI and energy
International coverage
Strikes on alleged drug boats
After Trump was requested in regards to the current US navy strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats within the Caribbean, he mentioned, “Every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that’s shot down kills 25,000 on drugs, and destroys families all over our country.”
Apart from the truth that the Trump administration has not offered public proof for his repeated claims that the boats carried fentanyl, the drug concerned within the highest variety of US overdose deaths — the Caribbean shouldn’t be identified to be a big fentanyl-smuggling route — his “25,000” quantity doesn’t make sense. The whole variety of US overdose deaths from all medicine in 2024 was about 82,000, in accordance with provisional federal knowledge. Trump is basically claiming, in different phrases, that attacking 16 boats prevented greater than 4 years’ value of American overdose deaths.
The president’s determine is “absurd,” Carl Latkin, a professor on the Johns Hopkins College Faculty of Public Well being with a joint appointment at its medical college, mentioned in October. “He’s claiming that he’s solved the overdose mortality crisis” with 4 boat strikes, and “that does not have any semblance of reality.” You possibly can learn an extended truth examine right here.
Trump and wars
Trump repeated his false declare that he “knocked out eight wars,” including, “I took eight wars and stopped (them) during an eight-month period” this presidency. Studying from a paper, he listed “Cambodia-Thailand,” “Kosovo-Serbia,” “the Congo and Rwanda,” “Pakistan and India,” “Israel and Iran,” “Egypt and Ethiopia,” “Armenia and Azerbaijan,” and “Israel and Hamas.”
Trump’s “eight” determine is a transparent exaggeration.
There was no battle between Egypt and Ethiopia for Trump to finish; the 2 international locations had been in a long-running diplomatic dispute a couple of main Ethiopian dam mission on a tributary of the Nile River, however that’s not a battle, and the dispute is unresolved. Trump’s listing consists of one other supposed battle that didn’t happen throughout his presidency, between Kosovo and Serbia. (He has typically claimed to have prevented the eruption of a brand new battle between these two entities, offering few particulars about what he meant, however that’s completely different from settling an precise battle.) And the battle involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has continued regardless of a peace settlement brokered by the Trump administration this yr — which was by no means signed by the main insurgent coalition doing the preventing.
One can debate the significance of Trump’s function in having ended the opposite conflicts on his listing, or pretty query whether or not a few of them have actually ended. For instance, killing has continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Regardless, Trump’s “eight” determine is simply too massive.
Biden and assist to Ukraine
Trump repeated his false declare that “Joe Biden gave $350 billion to Ukraine, including a lot of weapons, a tremendous amount of weapons.” The “$350 billion” determine isn’t near correct.
The US authorities inspector common overseeing the federal Ukraine response says the US had disbursed about $94 billion as of the tip of June 2025 (and had appropriated about $93 billion extra), together with cash that was spent within the US and in broader Europe slightly than Ukraine itself. And a German suppose tank that has intently tracked wartime assist to Ukraine says the US allotted about $135 billion to Ukraine (and had dedicated about $5 billion extra) by way of August, at present change charges.
Immigration
The shutdown, Democrats and immigrants
Speaking in regards to the ongoing authorities shutdown, Trump mentioned of Democrats, “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” However that’s not what Democrats are in search of.
Democrats are primarily proposing to reverse Trump-approved cuts to Medicaid and different well being applications and to increase the improved pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies which might be scheduled to run out on the finish of the yr. Undocumented individuals are not eligible for both Obamacare subsidies or federal Medicaid insurance coverage protection (although hospitals are required to supply individuals with emergency care no matter immigration standing or means to pay).
Trump’s White Home itself has claimed that Democrats are proposing to spend about $193 billion (not $1.5 trillion) on well being look after “illegal immigrants and other non-citizens” and the White Home revealed an itemized listing that makes clear that even by its personal contested calculations, nearly all of even that smaller sum can be for these “other non-citizens” who’re within the US legally.
The Committee for a Accountable Federal Finances, a fiscal watchdog group, has estimated that the spending proposal the Democrats launched in September would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the following decade. However that determine shouldn’t be about spending on undocumented individuals specifically.
International leaders, prisons and migration
Trump repeated his common declare that international international locations are intentionally emptying their prisons to someway ship inmates to the US as migrants, at one level figuring out Venezuela as a supposed perpetrator and at one other level talking extra broadly — saying “very smart” international leaders “want people that are bad out” and so “what do they do? They open their jails, they let ‘em out. They get rid of their drug dealers, they let ‘em out. But you know who else they get out? The people that are on welfare that aren’t working. In other words, they have people that just don’t work. They don’t want people that just don’t work, so they put them into our country.”
Trump has by no means substantiated such claims, although he has been making them since his 2024 marketing campaign. Consultants on worldwide jail coverage and crime in Venezuela have advised CNN they’ve seen no proof of Venezuela or some other nation emptying jails for migration functions, not to mention that these international locations actively inserted former prisoners into the US.
Migration underneath Biden
Trump repeated his false declare that 25 million migrants had been allowed into the nation underneath Biden, although he was extra tentative this time than traditional, saying, “Probably, I say, 25 million people were let into our country. A lot of people say it was 10 million people. But whether it was 10 or — I believe I’m much closer to the right number. Of the 25, many of them should not be here.”
The “25 million” determine is wildly inaccurate; even Trump’s earlier “21 million” determine was a significant exaggeration. By December 2024, the final full month underneath the Biden administration, the federal authorities had recorded underneath 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants throughout that administration, together with tens of millions who had been quickly expelled from the nation. Even including within the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by Home Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no approach the full was even near Trump’s declare.
Authorized points, impeachment and the 2020 election
Earlier presidents and the Revolt Act
Trump spoke of the Revolt Act, which provides the president sweeping powers to deploy troops to US states if sure imprecise circumstances are met, and mentioned, “Do you know that some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times? 28 times.” No president has invoked the act on extra events than President Ulysses S. Grant’s six (after the Civil Warfare within the 1800s), and no president has invoked it since President George H.W. Bush in 1992, in accordance with analysis revealed in 2022 by New York College’s Brennan Middle for Justice. The truth is, the Revolt Act and the same legal guidelines that preceded it have been invoked on a whole of 30 events in US historical past, the Brennan Middle discovered.
Trump’s authorized dispute with “60 Minutes”
Trump mentioned his now-resolved authorized dispute with “60 Minutes” over an edit the present made to an October 2024 interview together with his election opponent, then-Vice President Harris — and, as CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter famous Sunday, Trump falsely claimed this supposedly “election-changing” interview occurred “two nights before the election.” The interview really occurred on October 7, 2024, 4 weeks and a day earlier than Election Day on November 5, 2024.
This wasn’t the primary time Trump made the Harris interview sound nearer to Election Day than it was. He falsely claimed in June that it occurred “the day before the election.”
Trump and the Justice Division
CBS’ O’Donnell famous the current indictments of three targets of Trump criticism — former FBI Director James Comey, former Trump nationwide safety adviser John Bolton, and New York Legal professional Basic Letitia James — and requested him whether or not he instructed the Justice Division to “go after them”; Trump responded, “No, and not in any way, shape or form. No.” However that is clearly false: he just lately put public stress on the Justice Division to go after Comey and James.
Trump wrote in a September social media submit directed to “Pam” — Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi, the top of the Justice Division — that Comey, James and Schiff are “all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” that “we can’t delay any longer” and that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” (Trump meant the submit to be a personal message to Bondi, a supply accustomed to the matter advised CNN after The Wall Avenue Journal first reported it.) Trump didn’t point out Bolton in that social media submit; nonetheless, it’s value noting he beforehand made public requires his former adviser to be imprisoned over Bolton’s alleged inclusion of labeled info in a memoir.
A false story about Democrats and Trump’s first impeachment
Trump delivered one other model of a false story he has advised since 2019 about Democrats’ response to a telephone name that yr through which he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden, who was his looming opponent within the 2020 election. This time, Trump mentioned, “The Democrats knew that I wasn’t guilty, because they didn’t know the — the call was — I didn’t know either: The call was essentially taped. So we knew exactly what the call — when they found out that the call was taped, Nancy Pelosi went crazy. She said, ‘You made me go into this mess.’ She screamed at all these people that made her do it, bad people like (Democratic Rep. Adam) Schiff, etc., etc.”
Trump’s narrative is completely inaccurate.
Pelosi couldn’t presumably have been indignant with Schiff or different allies after discovering out the decision was “taped” as a result of, greater than six years later, there may be nonetheless no identified US tape of the dialog; presidential calls with international leaders usually are not sometimes recorded by the American aspect. In actuality, the day after Pelosi introduced an impeachment inquiry in September 2019, Trump’s White Home launched a tough written transcript of the decision. There has by no means been any indication that seeing the tough transcript made Pelosi really feel she had been deceived into the impeachment push; the day the doc was launched, Pelosi issued a scathing assertion accusing Trump of “lawlessness” and making an attempt “to shake down other countries for the benefit of his campaign.” A Pelosi spokesperson advised CNN in 2024 {that a} Trump story much like the one he advised on “60 Minutes” was “fact-free nonsense.”
Trump and the Presidential Information Act
Trump decried the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago membership and residence in 2022, through the investigation into his dealing with of labeled paperwork after his presidency, and he introduced again his false declare that the Presidential Information Act permitted him to own these paperwork: “They took things that I was allowed to have … under the Presidential Records Act, that I was allowed to have. I had records. I was allowed to have them.”
That’s not true. The Presidential Information Act clearly says that each one presidential data belong to the federal authorities the second the president leaves workplace. The important thing sentence from the regulation is unequivocal: “Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”
Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation on the Nationwide Archives and Information Administration, advised CNN when Trump made such claims through the Biden administration: “Under the Presidential Records Act, not a single document pertaining to the official business of the White House — classified or unclassified — should have been carted off to Mar-A-Lago. President Trump might consider such records to be ‘his,’ but they are not.”
That doesn’t imply Trump dedicated a prison offense; the Presidential Information Act shouldn’t be a prison statute, and Trump was charged in 2023 for allegedly violating different legal guidelines. (A choose appointed by Trump dismissed the case in 2024, declaring that the appointment of the particular counsel who introduced the costs violated the Structure.) However Trump was, once more, wrongly describing what the act says.
The 2020 election
Trump uttered his common lie that the 2020 election “was rigged and stolen,” saying at different moments of the interview that “this was a rigged election” and that “one thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” Trump legitimately misplaced a free and honest election to Biden. Trump additionally falsely claimed, “And it’s been caught … and you see the same information that everybody else does. And it’s coming out now in spades.” Trump didn’t clarify what he was speaking about, however no election-rigging or widespread fraud has “been caught.”
