FACT FOCUS: A look at claims around Trump’s initiatives as he prepares to address Congress
FACT FOCUS: A look at claims around Trump’s initiatives as he prepares to address Congress
President Donald Trump will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night to highlight changes he has made since taking office six weeks ago. Among the areas he may cover are negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war, cutbacks to the U.S. Agency for International Development, scrutiny of Social Security recipients and border security crackdowns. But some of the Republican president’s recent statements on these topics, among others, have been false and misleading.
Here’s a look at the facts:
Russia-Ukraine war
Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting on Friday for being “disrespectful.” He then abruptly called off the signing of a minerals deal that he said would have moved Ukraine closer to ending its war with Russia. The relationship between Trump and Zelenskyy has changed significantly since Feb. 19, when Trump made a number of false statements about Zelenskky, including calling him “a dictator.”
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Trump, speaking at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Feb .18, suggested Ukraine started the war.
THE FACTS: Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to justify by falsely saying it was needed to protect Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO. The move followed Putin’s 2014 illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and armed aggression in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that grew into a long-running conflict that left thousands of people dead.
That conflict simmered until 2022, when Putin ordered what he called military exercises along Ukraine’s borders. He told the world that the roughly 150,000 soldiers he had amassed would not be used to invade Ukraine. But in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched widespread airstrikes and soldiers began pouring over the border.
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Vice President JD Vance, speaking during a meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, suggested that Zelenskyy has not said thank you to the U.S. for its support.
THE FACTS: This is false. Zelenskyy has publicly thanked the U.S. numerous times since 2022.
After Trump and Vance accused Zelenskyy of doing otherwise at their meeting Friday, the Ukrainian president posted on X: “Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people.”
Zelenskyy also recently thanked Trump in a Feb. 12 video, saying that he is “grateful to the president for his genuine interest in our shared opportunities.”
Government cuts
USAID has been one of the biggest targets of a broad campaign by Trump and his adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to slash the size of the federal government. Workers cleared their desks at USAID’s now-closed Washington headquarters on Thursday.
Also in the crosshairs: the Social Security Administration, which is preparing for significant workforce reductions.
Both agencies have faced false claims about their spending from the Trump administration amid these changes.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking to reporters Feb. 7: USAID spent $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, “in Serbia’s workplaces; $70,000 for the production of a DEI musical in Ireland; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.”
THE FACTS: Only the grant to a Serbian organization called Grupa Izadji was awarded by USAID. Its stated aim is to “to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.”
The rest were awarded by the State Department’s Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In 2022, it granted $70,884 to an Irish company for “a live musical event to promote the U.S. and Irish shared values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.” A grant for $25,000 was awarded in 2021 to a university in Colombia “to raise awareness and increase the transgender representation” through the production of an opera, with an additional $22,020 coming from non-federal funding. And $32,000 awarded in 2022 to a Peruvian organization funded “a tailored-made comic, featuring an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues.”
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Trump and Musk claimed online and during press briefings that tens of millions of dead people over age 100 are receiving Social Security payments.
THE FACTS: It is true that improper payments have been made, including some to dead people. But the numbers thrown out by Musk and the White House are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data.
Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which doesn’t use a specific format for dates. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization WIRED first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.
Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these people were receiving benefits.
The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.
A July 2023 Social Security OIG report states that “almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.” And, as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.
Israel-Hamas war
Trump has vowed to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” and to empty Gaza permanently of its more than 2 million Palestinians, despite the fact that Palestinians have roundly rejected the idea of leaving. He has also made baseless claims on multiple occasions about U.S. assistance in the conflict.
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Trump, during a bill signing ceremony Jan. 29, claimed that his administration had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
THE FACTS: Trump appeared to be referring to a grant or grants that USAID awarded to the International Medical Corps to provide medical and trauma services in Gaza.
But according to the IMC, “No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.”
The IMC said that it has received $68,078,508 from USAID to support its operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023. It said the resources were used to operate two large field hospitals currently located in central Gaza — one in Deir Al Balah and one in Al Zawaida — offering a combined capacity of more than 250 beds, including 20 in the emergency room and 170 in the surgical department. These facilities have provided around-the-clock medical care to about 33,000 civilians per month.
USAID’s financial year 2023 report on contraceptive and condom shipments, the most recent data available, notes that only one Middle Eastern country, Jordan, received a small shipment of injectables and oral contraceptives valued at $45,680 for government programs only. This was USAID’s first shipment to the Middle East since financial year 2019.
USAID reports from the first three-quarters of 2024 show the only family planning programs funded by the agency in the Middle East were in Jordan and Yemen.
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Associated Press writers Justin Spike in Budapest and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this story.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
By MELISSA GOLDIN
Associated Press
