CNN Fact Checker Calmly Addresses Trump’s Latest Lies: Debunked by Math Itself
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump “spouted a bunch of falsehoods” about inflation, tariffs, consumer prices and the cost of prescription drugs in the United States during his speech at the Detroit Economic Club, says CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, who naturally brought some receipts.
“Inflation has not ‘stopped,’” Dale wrote Tuesday on CNN. “Consumer prices went up during this presidential term, not ‘down’. Food prices are rising, not starting to fall ‘rapidly’. American businesses and consumers, not China, pay American tariffs on Chinese imports.”
He continued: “It is impossible to reduce prescription drug prices by ‘thousands’ of percentage points, as this would mean Americans would be paid to purchase their medications. President Donald Trump made numerous false claims about inflation.”
Trump spoke for more than an hour on Tuesday, claiming once again, without any real basis, that consumer goods prices have “gone down” during his administration, that grocery costs are “rapidly” following suit, and that “inflation has stopped” in its tracks.
Dale, who regularly fact-checks Trump for CNN, added: “He also delivered a ton of falsehoods on broader economic issues and on a variety of other topics he abandoned his teleprompter to discuss, including the election and immigration.”
Dale began by addressing Trump’s claim that inflation was “defeated,” citing a Consumer Price Index report released several hours before his speech that showed average consumer prices were 2.7% higher in December than a year ago.
Trump stated elsewhere in his speech that “there is almost no inflation” right now.
Dale noted that the Consumer Price Index report also showed that grocery prices rose from November to December at the fastest monthly rate (0.7%) in more than three years, with prices 2.4% higher in December than during the same month in 2024.
“Meanwhile, grocery prices are starting to drop rapidly,” Trump said.
While the president also claimed that overall “prices are down” and said Democrats “caused” the affordability problem, which he has often dismissed due to concerns from his own base, Dale noted that average consumer prices were 2.2% higher in December than in January 2024.
“They’re going to go down thousands of percent,” Trump said of prescription drug costs, claiming his administration is “standing up to special interests” by cutting the costs of various drugs “by 300, 400, 500, even 600% and more.”
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“These claims are refuted by mathematics itself,” joked Dale, who addressed this topic before.
He explained that “if the president magically got drug companies to reduce the prices of all their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut, while a decrease of more than 100 percentage points would mean that Americans get They pay them to acquire their medications.”
Dale pointed out on Tuesday that this, of course, “is not happening.”
Trump also reiterated that the cost of his high international tariffs on all U.S. imports is borne by other countries, not American importers and consumers, and falsely added that “China is one of our biggest taxpayers right now.”
As for the subjects, Dale said he “abandoned his teleprompter” when Trump claimed he “won” Michigan during the 2020 election, which former President Joe Biden did, and blamed his predecessor for “letting in 25 million people” as immigrants during his term.