CNN did a nice fact check. 100 lies in 100 days. Here are just the first few on inflation and the economy:
Inflation
1. Falsely claimed in April that grocery prices “are down” and “WAY DOWN.” Grocery prices had continued to increase since he took office – and the jump from February to March, about 0.49%, was the biggest one-month increase since October 2022.
2. Falsely claimed in April that “the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94% since we took office.” The consumer price of eggs hit a record high in March, and while they might well have fallen in April, the decline certainly wasn’t 93% or 94%; wholesale egg prices had fallen roughly 52% since the week Trump took office.
3. Falsely claimed April 17 that gas prices had fallen to $1.98 per gallon in two states the day prior. In fact, no state’s average gas price was below $2.70 per gallon the day prior, according to data from AAA – and of the tens of thousands of individual stations tracked by the firm GasBuddy, not a single one was selling for under $2.19 per gallon that day.
4. Falsely claimed there was “no inflation” during his first presidency. Inflation was relatively low, but it existed; prices rose about 8% from the beginning of Trump’s term to the end. And year-over-year inflation was 1.4% in the month he left office, January 2021.
5. Falsely claimed President Joe Biden’s administration had the highest inflation “in the history of our country.” Trump could have fairly said the year-over-year US inflation rate hit a 40-year high under Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. Trump’s claim was also wrong if he was claiming there was record cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency. It was about 21%, compared to about 49% during President Jimmy Carter’s term.
6. Falsely claimed the price of bacon “quadrupled” during Biden’s presidency. Federal statistics show the average price of a pound of sliced bacon in December 2024, Biden’s last full month in office, was up about 19% since January 2021, the month Biden was inaugurated; the average price in January 2025, Biden’s last partial month in office, was up about 21% since January 2021. Neither was close to the 300% increase Trump claimed.
7. Falsely claimed the price of apples doubled during Biden’s presidency. Federal statistics show the price of apples increased by about 7% between the month Biden was sworn in as president and December 2024; it was about an 8% increase between January 2021 and January 2025. Neither was close to the 100% increase Trump claimed.
Trade, the economy, taxes
8. Falsely claimed that, before he came back to office, “We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade.” The total US deficit in goods and services trade in 2024 was about $918 billion; if you count only goods trade and ignore the services trade at which the US excels, it was about $1.2 trillion, still far shy of Trump’s figure. (And economists widely reject Trump’s notion that a trade deficit, the difference between the value of US imports and exports in a given year, is a loss.)
9. Falsely claimed in early April that the US was already taking in $2 billion, $3 billion, or even $3.5 billion per day in tariff revenue. The actual figure was in the hundreds of millions at most, not $2 billion, and it’s important to note that US importers, not foreign exporters, pay the tariff revenue.
10. Falsely claimed the US has a “$350 billion” trade deficit with Mexico. Federal statistics show the 2024 deficit with Mexico in goods and services trade was about $179 billion; it was about $182 billion in goods trade alone.
11. Falsely claimed, after an interviewer reminded him that not a single tariff deal with another country had been announced yet, “I’ve made 200 deals.” He simply had not done so, and his supposed explanation for this assertion – “The deal is a deal that I choose…We are a department store, and we set the price” – did not substantiate it.
12. Falsely claimed, while touting the supposed benefits of tariffs, that Honda “just announced” it is building “a really big plant in Indiana.” Honda subsequently told CNN: “Honda did not announce plans for a new plant in the U.S. at this time.” Reuters, citing anonymous sources, had reported that Honda was planning to build its next-generation Civic hybrid in Indiana rather than Mexico as originally planned, but the report did not say Honda was building a new factory.
13. Falsely claimed “the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been” from 1789 to 1913, when tariffs made up a higher percentage of federal revenue, and that 1870 to 1913, before the reintroduction of the federal income tax, was “the richest period in the history of the United States, relatively speaking.” Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “proportionately the wealthiest” or “the richest…relatively speaking,” but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then.
14. Falsely claimed he signed “the largest tax cut in history” during his first presidency. Expert analyses have found his 2017 tax cut law was not the largest in US history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
He is a pathological liar. But he’s now fully delusional. Just wait until he spews the “you can believe me or you can believe your eyes on the tariffs as the chickens really start to come home to roost over the next few months. The good news is that the people seem to be able to see it.
Read the rest. The sheer volume of lies is always astonishing but now it’s completely off the charts.