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Donald Trump closed out the Republican National Convention with a powerful speech that lasted more than 92 minutes. His lengthy address covered a myriad of topics, including the recent assassination attempt. However, the former US president’s speech was littered with half-truths and some lies. We fact-check it read more
 "The lies Trump told in his Republican National Convention speech")
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump is joined on stage by wife Melania and other relatives after he finished giving his acceptance speech on Day 4 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Reuters
The famous adage is ‘saving the best for last’. And at the Republican National Convention, that’s exactly what happened as Donald Trump closed out the emotionally charged event in a speech that is now being termed as the longest acceptance speech in history, breaking his own previous record.
According to data, Trump, with a bandaged ear — a reminder of the shooting he faced earlier — spoke for over 92 minutes, starting with an emotional account of the assassination attempt against him last week. He then urged the country to heal “discord and division”.
But amid this lengthy speech that the 78-year-old delivered amid chants of ‘fight, fight, fight’, he also made some false claims.
Here is a fact check of some of the things he said – and why they weren’t true.
Groceries, gasoline and inflation
Amid his speech, Donald Trump said that the country has had the worst inflation ever under the Biden administration.
This claim is false and misleading. Biden was in office when inflation rose to a record high of 9.1 per cent — the highest since 1981. But, inflation has also come down in the past two years.
He also said that under the current Biden administration, grocery prices in the country have risen by 57 per cent. This is once again factually incorrect. As per the US Department of Agriculture, the all-food Consumer Price Index rose by 25 per cent between 2019 and 2023. This increase, as per officials, was largely driven by shifting consumption patterns and supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, some food items saw greater inflation. For instance, egg prices were up 70 per cent annually in January 2023. But that was owing to the deadly avian flu, which led farmers to cull their chicken stock and destroy many eggs.
The former president has also exaggerated the price of gasoline in the country. He said that “gas prices are up 60 per cent. Factually, the average price of a regular gallon of gasoline is currently $3.51— that’s a 47 per cent rise from when Biden was inaugurated.
So, even though it’s high, it’s not as high as Trump has claimed.
Amid his speech, he also made the claim that during his presidency, the US had ‘no’ inflation. This is once again incorrect. The Consumer Price Index increased around eight per cent during Trump’s four years in office. In January 2021, it increased 1.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
Also read: Key takeaways from Trump’s GOP nomination acceptance speech on final day of RNC
Tax and tax cuts
Addressing the convention on the final night, Donald Trump reiterated his claim that Biden wants to hike Americans’ taxes fourfold. “This is the only administration that said, ‘We’re gonna raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now’,” Trump said on Thursday.
However, this claim is false. Biden has not proposed quadrupling Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so. As per the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Centre: “Biden’s plan would raise average after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households, and lower after-tax incomes significantly for the highest-income taxpayers.”
On the issue of taxes, Donald Trump also praised his government for signing off on the largest tax cuts ever. “We gave you the largest tax cut,” said the former US president.
But what’s the truth? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act does not rank as the largest, but the eighth-largest since 1918. As per The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-profit, the Trump tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.
Democrats and the elections
Trump even referred to the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden in his speech. Speaking to the raucous crowd, the former president said: “And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again, the election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. You’re never going to let it happen again.”
Trump has continuously disparaged the 2020 election results, but his claims are false. His remark that Democrats engaged in widespread voter fraud is dishonest. There’s a significant amount of evidence that shows Biden won the presidency that year. And no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud has been uncovered. Recounts, reviews and lawsuits have ultimately shown Biden’s win was legitimate.
Even the Trump Administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post-election November 2020 statement: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history”, reported CNN.
Immigration and that ‘big wall’
As Donald Trump recounted the harrowing assassination attempt, he mentioned a chart of illegal border crossings from fiscal year 2012 to 2024. A red arrow on the chart claims to show when “Trump leaves office. Lowest illegal immigration in recorded history.” However, this low point coincides with COVID when most nations imposed lockdowns. And when Trump left office nine months later, illegal immigration encounters were on the rise.
He also said that “under my presidency, we had the most secure border.” This is mostly false. Illegal immigration at the US southern border dropped in 2017, Trump’s first year in office. But it began to rise after that and dropped amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
US crime rate
Donald Trump also referred to the law and order of the United States, speaking about crime rates in the country. He said, “Our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.”
Official data suggests otherwise. FBI statistics reveal that violent crime has dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.
Many cities have also reported a dip in homicides from 2023 to now. The number of murders fell by nearly 20 per cent in the first three months of 2024 in 204 cities analysed by criminal justice consulting firm AH Datalytics.
Other false claims at RNC
But it’s not just Donald Trump who has made some incorrect statements at the RNC. Earlier when his son, Eric Trump, came out on stage, he too made some misleading remarks. He said that the reason his father, Donald Trump, ran for office the first time was because he “could no longer tolerate an inept administration that handed $150 billion to Iran.”
This claim about Obama handing money to Iran is false and refers to the 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Even Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director and secretary of state in the Trump administration, added to the misinformation. Speaking on the fourth day of the RNC, he said that no Chinese spy balloons flew over the US when Trump was in office. However, it has been revealed that there were some balloons that flew over the US during the Trump presidency, but weren’t detected until the Biden administration.
Earlier, on Day 3, when Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, took to the stage, he too made some false statements. He claimed that Trump “created the greatest economy in history for workers.” Wage growth didn’t set records under Trump. Adjusted for inflation, wages began rising during the Obama years and kept increasing under Trump. But these were modest compared with the two per cent a year increase seen in the 1960s.
There have been multiple false claims made throughout the four days of the RNC. But for Republicans and their supporters, these four nights have been a massive success.
With inputs from agencies
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English (US) ·