In his extensive interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, which aired on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump discussed nearly every significant proposal he has put forth for his second term, including mass deportations, addressing inflation, and enacting new tariffs.
In his first network interview after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump provided the most lucid glimpse of his post-election governance plans to far.
However, Trump occasionally strayed from the truth, making inflated, deceptive, or inaccurate assertions, just as he did during his first term and during the campaign. Here are a few of the more notable examples.
Crime, border security and family separation
Trump blamed migrants for the significant increase in crime in the United States.
“Look,” he replied, “our country is a mess.” Our crime rate is the highest. He went on to say that a large portion of that is migrant crime.
According to the most recent data available, there is no indication that there is a surge in crime in the United States caused by migrants, and overall crime is declining.
According to an FBI analysis released in September, property crime decreased by 2.4% and violent crime decreased by roughly 3% between 2022 and 2023.The biggest one-year fall in 20 years was recorded by the most serious crimes, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, which fell an estimated 11.6%.
In addition to discussing immigration, Trump asserted that during the previous three years, 13,099 killers had been released into the nation.
Welker pointed out in the interview that Trump is lying about the numbers. According to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 13,000 foreign nationals who have been convicted of homicide in the United States or elsewhere are not in immigration detention facilities, but they entered the country during the past 40 years or more.
Since the individuals are listed on the non-detained docket of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency is aware of them and has open immigration cases involving them. However, they are not in detention facilities because ICE cannot locate them, they are spending time in prison for their offenses, or they are not given priority for detention.
Additionally, Trump reiterated his untrue assertion that gangs have taken over an Aurora, Colorado, apartment complex.
Given that Venezuelan gangs are the worst in the world, we’re likely going to have the worst group with MS-13. According to Trump, they are violent and vicious individuals. Additionally, you have witnessed their actions in Colorado and other locations. They are practically occupying residential buildings and doing so with no consequences. They are indifferent.
During the discussion, Welker noted that local police officers had denied the allegation.
When questioned about his divisive practice of separating families who entered the country illegally, Trump implied that the government of President Barack Obama had followed suit.
Trump added, “You had it with Obama, too.” He constructed the prisons for the kids, as you are also aware.
As Welker noted in the interview and as NBC Newsfact-checked in 2018, Obama had no policy of family separation. A significant increase in unaccompanied youngsters crossing the border without their parents under his presidency led to the construction of detention facilities in the United States, which Trump later deployed as part of his zero tolerance family separation policy.
Trump also claimed that after threatening the presidents of Canada and Mexico with extra tariffs in a post-election conversation, migrant crossings at the southern border had virtually stopped.
Ten minutes after that phone call, we saw that there was a trickle of people crossing the southern border, which is connected to Mexico. Trump stated it was only a trickle. I did call the border, in fact. You see, I do make a lot of border calls, unlike my opponent. “How’s the border looking today?” I asked. “No one is here,” they said. They were incredulous. These large crowds were stopped by the military. We refer to them as caravans, you know. However, they mainly discontinued their caravans of migrants.
Here, Trump is exaggerating. Since President Joe Biden restricted refuge for those who crossed the border illegally in the summer, there have been few crossings of the southern border. Since Trump threatened to impose tariffs, no new data has been released, thus there is no proof that border conditions have altered significantly in the past two weeks.
According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer quoted by The Associated Press, over 46,000 migrants crossed the border in November. That number represents a months-long pattern of low crossings in the south and marks a new low for Biden’s administration.
Few migrants ever reach the U.S. border because Mexican officials frequently disband caravans, which are sizable groups of migrants traveling north.
Additionally, Trump pledged to revoke the 14th Amendment’s promise of citizenship for children born in the United States.
Trump declared, “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.” You know, we’re the only nation with it.
That is untrue: Birthright citizenship is recognized in over 30 other nations.
The Jan. 6 riot
Regarding the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump made a number of untrue and deceptive statements.
I witnessed folks who were convicted even though they didn’t enter the building. And the police were telling you to come in. Enter now. The police are saying, “Come on in, everybody, come on in,” you know. You have a lot of cameras, you know, and they had personnel. They are opposed to the tapes being made public. Trump stated that they do not wish to make the tape public.
No police officers are known to have urged demonstrators to enter the Capitol. Additionally, House Speaker Mike Johnson promised last year to release over 40,000 hours of security footage to the public.
It’s true that some demonstrators who chose not to enter the Capitol on January 6th were found guilty. That applied to major offenses like assaulting a police officer.
Trump also claimed that the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack deleted and destroyed a whole year and a half of testimony.
According to Trump, the unselect committee heard testimony for a year and a half. All of the evidence they discovered was erased and destroyed.
Democrats dispute this, Welker noted in the interview.
“Private and sensitive information was sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for review to ensure that certain information wasn’t released improperly,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, who chaired the committee, in a 2023 letter to Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who initially made this claim.
According to Thompson, those agencies, and another House committee, continue to have access to the files and information the Republicans have argued was deleted, since the House committee didn t archive them pending White House and DHS review.
You know why? Trump went on. Because Nancy Pelosi was guilty. Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 troops. You wouldn t have had a J6 because other people were guilty.
The Jan. 6 committeefound no evidenceto support the claim that he had offered Pelosi, who was speaker of the House at the time, troops. The committee did find that Trump had discussed using 10,000 National Guard members to protect his supporters.
And Pelosi did not have the authority to direct their movements. After rioting began, Pelosi and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellrequested military assistance.
Tariffs, jobs and inflation
Trump misconstrued the potential economic realities of tariffs, the taxes charged to importers on goods coming into the U.S. from abroad. They are a central part of his economic policy.
According tomosteconomists, corporationstypically pass these import taxes on to consumers, leaving Americans to pick up the tab if they want to buy foreign goods. Trump enactednearly $80 billionin new tariffs during his first term.
I don t believe that tariffs are paid for by consumers, he told Welker when pressed on that fact. He also argued they cost Americans nothing.
But American consumers paid hundreds of dollars each year in higher costs as a result of the tariffs Trump enacted in his first administration, according toone analysisfrom the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
He went on to claim that histariff on washing machinescoming in from China and South Korea, which started at 20% and rose to 50%, helped companies that made them, including Whirlpool, which has a major plant in Ohio.
We saved thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. They were all going out of business because they were dumping washing machines, Trump said of the imports of washing machines from Asia. When I put the tariffs on, they became successful businesses.
It s true that Trump s tariffs on washing machines provided a jobs boost in the U.S., but not to the degree he claimed. And he left out some context about the costs associated with the tariffs.
The International Trade Commission, a federal government agency, said in a2020 reportthat Trump s tariffs had contributed to 1,800 new jobs in the washing machine industry, including 200 at Whirlpool. The rest of the jobs came from foreign producers opening plants in the U.S.
Each new job, however, cost consumers$815,000, according to the ITC, because washers started costing more asAmerican manufacturers hiked their pricesto match their foreign competitors . (Whirlpool disputed the figure, which was calculated by economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago, arguing it was less than $22,000 per job.)
Trump also said that when Biden took office, they didn t have inflation for a year and a half. He added, Then they created inflation with energy and with spending too much.
Inflation measured by the cost of services and goods started going up in the summer of 2020, when Trump was in office, before sharply rising after he left office, according to theConsumer Price Index. It peaked 18 months later, in June of 2022.
Covid relief spending which began under Trump but accelerated under Biden played a role in fueling inflation, but economists believe supply chain issues during the pandemic, production costs and changing demand are also to blame.
Vaccines
Trump has pickedRobert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to be his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In the interview, Trump said he d be open to eliminating childhood vaccines if they re dangerous for the children.
When you look at what s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something s wrong, Trump said. If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, 1 out of 100,000 and now it s close to 1 out of 100.
In 2000, 1 in 150 children had been diagnosed with autism by age 8,compared to 1 in 36today. But as Welker noted in the interview,researchers saythat is in large part due to increased screening and a greater awareness of the complex disorder. Scientists have also linked genetic factors to autism.
Trump said he wasn t sure vaccines were leading to higher rates of autism, but was open to more investigation.
Hey, look, I m not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. But when you talk about autism, because it was brought up, and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it s pretty scary, Trump said.
There isno evidenceof a link between vaccines and autism, as hundreds of studies have found childhood vaccinesto be safe.
The 2024 election
As for his victory last month over Harris, Trump made exaggerated claims about his success with young votersin response to a question about TikTok.
I won youth by 30%. All Republicans lose youth. I don t know why. Maybe it s changing. And last time, we were down 30% with youth. This time, we re up 35% with youth, Trump said during the interview.
Trump picked up a larger proportion of voters under 30 than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008,according to NBC News exit polling, but he didn t win them. Among voters ages 18-29, Harris won 54% to Trump s 43%, theexit poll shows.
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