![\"President](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/2026-07-25t021020z-935259711-rc2qkmawmzfr-rtrmadp-3-usa-trump-dinner.JPG?c=original&q=w_860,c_fill\")
<\/p>\nPresident Donald Trump\u2019s rambling address at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association annual dinner on Friday was filled with\u00a0far more insults than assertions of fact. Even some of those insults were\u00a0patently inaccurate, but we\u2019ll leave them aside here as jokes or hyperbole. We will address some of the false claims with which Trump littered the speech\u2019s occasional substantive remarks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After joking about announcing a run for a \u201cfourth term,\u201d Trump lied that he has \u201cwon three times\u201d because the 2020 presidential election was a \u201crigged election.\u201d Trump has won twice, in 2016 and 2024, but he lost legitimately to Joe Biden in a free and fair 2020 election. Approaching six years after Trump began claiming that election was rigged, he has never provided anything close to substantiating evidence.<\/p>\n
Trump repeated his usual false claim that \u201cwe have $19.2 trillion being spent in our country.\u201d That figure is fiction, as we\u202fhave repeatedly\u00a0noted.<\/p>\n
At the time Trump said it on Friday, the White House\u2019s\u202fown website\u202fclaimed there had been \u201c$10.7 trillion\u201d in \u201cmajor investment announcements\u201d this term, not that $19.2 trillion is actually being spent, and even the White House figure was a major exaggeration of actual investment. A\u202fdetailed CNN review\u202fin October found the White House was counting\u202ftrillions of dollars in vague investment pledges \u2013 pledges that were about\u202f\u201cbilateral trade\u201d\u202for\u202f\u201ceconomic exchange\u201d\u202frather than investment in the US \u2013 and vague statements that didn\u2019t even rise to the level of pledges.<\/p>\n
The White House figure includes pledges from US-based companies as well as foreign entities. Federal\u202fdata\u202fpublished last month shows that new foreign direct investment in the US was about $232 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n
Trump again overstated the decline in crime that the nation\u2019s capital has experienced since his\u00a0federal takeover\u00a0of law enforcement there last year, describing it as \u201calmost a crime-free city.\u201d It isn\u2019t, as a quick glance at local\u00a0crime data, recent police\u00a0press releases\u00a0and local media reports makes clear. A WUSA9\u00a0article\u00a0just one week prior to the Friday speech was headlined, \u201cFatal shooting marks fifth homicide in D.C. in seven days\u201d; it noted local police had recorded 56 homicides in the capital in 2026. The number was up to\u00a057 homicides\u00a0as of Friday \u2013 down 38% from 2025 through the same date, but far from nothing.<\/p>\n
Similarly, while the capital\u2019s overall crime is indeed down so far this year, police have still recorded more than 11,000 total crimes so far \u2013 a reduction of about 20% from last year, not \u201c88%\u201d as Trump claimed Friday. Even with the recent improvement, experts have\u00a0said\u00a0there\u2019s no basis for Trump\u2019s description of Washington as \u201cone of the safest cities in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early in the speech, which took place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, Trump said, \u201cIt\u2019s great to be back at a place that I know very well \u2013 because I built it. And I\u2019m very proud of it because I built it for $2.9 billion less than the Federal Reserve building.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost of the Fed\u2019s renovation of two buildings in the capital has\u00a0run well over\u00a0its initial budget, but its current projected cost is\u00a0$2.5 billion. It\u2019s possible that number will increase again, so we certainly can\u2019t call Trump\u2019s claim false, but it\u2019s worth noting it isn\u2019t presently known to be in the \u201c$3 to $4 billion\u201d or \u201calmost $4 billion\u201d figures he has\u00a0used\u00a0in previous remarks.<\/p>\n
The Waldorf Astoria building was originally built in the late 1800s as a grand post office. In the 2010s, Trump\u00a0leased\u00a0the building and had it renovated into a luxury hotel in what was reported as a $200 million project. Trump\u00a0sold the lease in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump\u2019s rambling address at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association annual dinner on Friday was filled with\u00a0far more insults than assertions of fact. Even some of those insults were\u00a0patently … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21,22,1,5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aita","category-daily-article","category-reddit-stories","category-story","category-story-daily","category-viral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4395,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions\/4395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}