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President Donald Trump tried to hit the reset button with Americans on Wednesday night by reminding them of the Biden administration and arguing his own policies have driven down prices and made America great.
It was a factually challenged address that reads like a screed. It may appeal to Trump’s MAGA base, but it isn’t likely to convince moderate and independent voters who are worried about the economy.
CNN’s Fact Check team took a run through the speech, but I went line by line because much of what he said was not fact checkable and it’s important to try to follow his train of thought.
The speech, which was relatively short and read mostly from a teleprompter, is below, along with context.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good evening, America.
Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it. When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans.
(Many of Trump’s comments began with a remark about how horrible things were under former President Joe Biden. These statements about inflation are factually inaccurate. Inflation in January of 2025 was about the same as it is today. It’s absolutely true that Americans then and now are struggling to afford things.)
TRUMP: This happened during a Democrat administration, and it’s when we first began hearing the word “affordability.” Our border was open, and because of this, our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people, many who came from prisons and jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums.
(The border was never “open,” and the drop in border crossings began during Biden’s term when he finally used executive authority to cut down on crossings. But it’s certainly true that border crossings have dropped even more dramatically under Trump. Undocumented immigrants are not an army in any literal sense of the word. The claim about prisons and mental institutions has been oft repeated by Trump and repeatedly fact checked. There’s no evidence for it.)
TRUMP: They were drug dealers, gang members and even 11,888 murderers, more than 50 percent of whom killed more than one person. This is what the Biden administration allowed to happen to our country, and it can never be allowed to happen again.
(He used the oddly specific number of 11,888 murderers, which is down from the roughly 13,000 figure he used to use. Both are wrong and actually refer to immigrants over a 40-year period, including during his first term, as CNN has previously fact checked.)
We had men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, crime at record levels, with “law enforcement” and words such as that just absolutely forbidden. We had the worst trade deals ever made, and our country was laughed at from all over the world.
(“Transgender for everybody”? Really? Many of the trade deals in place, including with Canada and Mexico, were made by Trump during his first term.)
TRUMP: But they’re not laughing anymore. Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history. There has never been anything like it. And I think most would agree.
(Trump’s approval rating is underwater, and under 40% in some polls, so most people probably don’t agree. Internationally, while Trump has delivered some trade agreements, most of the deals he promised have not yet materialized.)
TRUMP: I was elected in a landslide, winning the popular vote and all seven swing states and everything else with a mandate to take on a sick and corrupt system that ex— it really just took the wealth from people and crushed the dreams of the American people.
(Trump’s win was real. It was not a landslide. Ronald Reagan winning every state but Minnesota was a landslide.)
TRUMP: For the last four years, the United States was ruled by politicians who fought only for insiders, illegal aliens, career criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists, and, above all, foreign nations, which took advantage of us at levels never seen before.
They flooded your cities and towns with illegal aliens. They decimated your hard-earned savings. They indoctrinated your children with hate for America. Really, I mean, they just released a level of violent felons that we had never seen to prey on innocent. They caused war. They caused mayhem. They caused a horrible situation all over the globe.
(Objectively, this is a very dim view of Democrats, who represent about half the country. They would likely disagree with everything he said.)
TRUMP: But now you have a president who fights for the law-abiding, hardworking people of our country, the ones who make this nation run, who make this nation work. And after just one year, we have achieved more than anyone could have imagined.
Starting on Day 1, I took immediate action to stop the invasion of our southern border. For the past seven months, zero illegal aliens have been allowed into our country, a feat which everyone said was absolutely impossible.
Do you remember when Joe Biden said that he needed Congress to pass legislation to help close the border? He was always blaming Congress and everyone else. As it turned out, we didn’t need legislation. We just needed a new president.
(Trump has certainly pushed resources to the southern border and illegal border crossings have dropped precipitously. Biden argued Congress should pass a border law for him to execute, which is the model put forward in the Constitution. Trump has done much more with executive authority, testing the Constitution in multiple ways.)
TRUMP: We inherited the worst border anywhere in the world, and we quickly turned it into the strongest border in the history of our country.
In other words, in a few short months, we went from worst to best. We’re deporting criminals, restoring safety to our most dangerous cities. Just take a look at Washington, DC. It’s at levels of safety that we have never seen before.
(The administration is deporting a lot more than criminals. There are countless stories of families who have lived law-abiding lives in the US for years or decades being separated. DC residents generally oppose Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to the city.)
TRUMP: And they decimated the bloodthirsty foreign drug cartels.
(Not sure who “they” is in this sentence, but it could refer to his extrajudicial use of the military to fire on drug boats. A lot of people thought, with the US Navy flooding the Caribbean in a seeming march to war, that Trump would talk about Venezuela in this speech. He did not.)
TRUMP: We did that all by ourselves with our people, and we’re so proud of it, because they were poisoning and destroying our population. Drugs brought in by ocean and by sea are now down 94 percent.
(Most fentanyl does not come into the US by sea, according to previous CNN reports.)
TRUMP: We have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools, and control over those schools is back now in the hands of our great and loving states, where education belongs.
(Trump has promised to end the Department of Education, although its mission has never been to dictate local school curricula. The Trump administration is actually also trying to dictate local policies by tying federal money to ending diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly where it relates to the trans community.)
TRUMP: After rebuilding the United States military in my first term, and with the addition we are adding right now, we have the most powerful military anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close. I have restored American strength, settled eight wars in 10 months, destroyed the Iran nuclear threat, and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years peace to the Middle East, and secured the release of the hostages, both living and dead.
(US bombers targeted nuclear sites and Israel targeted Iranian scientists earlier this year. Iran says the facilities were damaged, but its nuclear program, which it says is for energy, remains intact. The peace after 3,000 years claim is hyperbole, but Trump should get credit if peace in Gaza holds. However, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains horrendous.)
TRUMP: Here at home, we’re bringing our economy back from the brink of ruin. The last administration and their allies in Congress looted our treasury for trillions of dollars, driving up prices and everything at levels never seen before. I am bringing those high prices down, and bringing them down very fast.
Let’s look at the facts. Under the Biden administration, car prices rose 22 percent, and, in many states, 30 percent or more. Gasoline rose 30 to 50 percent. Hotel rates rose 37 percent. Airfares rose 31 percent. Now, under our leadership, they are all coming down, and coming down fast.
Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring. But we are solving that too. The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33 percent compared to the Biden last year. The price of eggs is down 82 percent since March, and everything else is falling rapidly. And it’s not done yet. But, boy, are we making progress. Nobody can believe what’s going on.
(This is all fuzzy math. Refer back to CNN’s fact check, which notes the cost of eggs and turkey are down, but other groceries are up.)
TRUMP: Here are just some of the efforts that we have under way that you will see in your wallets and bank accounts in the new year. After years of record-setting, falling incomes, our policies are boosting take-home pay at a historic pace. Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000. Under Trump, the typical factory worker has seen a wage increase of $1,300. For construction workers, it’s $1,800.
For miners — we’re bringing back clean, beautiful coal — it’s $3,300. And for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation. Remember that. The wages, just look at it. Wages are going up much faster than inflation. How big is that?
(Wages are rising faster than inflation. But just barely, as CNN’s David Goldman has written, not enough to make Americans feel the difference, since wage growth is actually slowing down.)
TRUMP: Very importantly, there are more people working today than at any time in American history. And 100 percent of all jobs created since I took office have been in the private sector. Think of that; 100 percent of all jobs have been in the private sector, rather than government, which is the only way to make a country powerful and great.
This historic trend will continue. Already, I have secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States, which means jobs, wage increases, growth, factory openings and far greater national security.
(The $18 trillion figure is false, according to CNN’s fact check. Trump did lay off many government workers, although those cuts are the subject of several lawsuits. But the unemployment rate has also risen to a four-year high of 4.6%, according to recent data.)
TRUMP: Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs, my favorite word, tariffs, which, for many decades, have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore. Companies know that, if they build in America, there are no tariffs. And that’s why they’re coming home to the USA in record numbers.
They’re building factories and plants at levels we haven’t seen. AI, automobiles, we’re doing what nobody thought was even possible, not even remotely possible.
(If the tariffs work, the benefits have not yet been entirely realized to the extent of Trump’s claims. The Supreme Court is also weighing whether Trump exceeded his authority by imposing across-the-board tariffs, something the Constitution says should be done by Congress.)
TRUMP: One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail, totally failed. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. And that’s said by every single leader that I have spoken to over the last five months.
(Who are these leaders?)
TRUMP: Next year, you will also see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history that were really accomplished through our great big beautiful bill, perhaps the most sweeping legislation ever passed in Congress. We wrapped 12 different bills up into one beautiful bill.
That includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. Under these cuts, many families will be saving between $11,000 and $20,000 a year. And next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time.
(One issue for Trump is that much of the tax cut bill is an extension of tax cuts he signed into law on a temporary basis during his first term. Many Americans might not feel the difference. However, many lower-income Americans might lose their Medicaid coverage as a result of the law. SNAP benefits are expected to shrink. And the national debt will grow. The bill adds $3.4 trillion in deficit spending over 10 years. Read more about how the bill will affect you.)
TRUMP: Because of tariffs, along with the just-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” tonight, I am also proud to announce that more than 1,450,000 — think of this — 1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call “warrior dividend” before Christmas, a warrior dividend.
In honor of our nation’s founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that. And the checks are already on the way. Nobody understood that one until about 30 minutes ago. We made a lot more money than anybody thought because of tariffs, and the bill helped us along.
(Nice gesture! But the money — $2.6 billion — Trump said is coming from tariffs was previously appropriated by Congress. Also, people who are seeing their health insurance costs spike because Trump opposed extending Obamacare subsidies might have preferred Trump to also deliver on that.)
TRUMP: Nobody deserves it more than our military. And I say, congratulations to everybody. And, by the way, we now have record enlistment in our military. And, last year, we had among the worst recruitment numbers in our military’s history. What a difference a year makes.
(Army recruitment met its goals in 2025, but it also met its goals in 2024. Military branches have been working on improving recruitment for years.)
TRUMP: In addition, I’m doing what no politician of either party has ever done: standing up to the special interests to dramatically reduce the price of prescription drugs. I negotiated directly with the drug companies and foreign nations, which were taking advantage of our country for many decades, to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400, 500, and even 600 percent.
In other words, your drug costs will be plummeting downward, and I used the threat of tariffs to get foreign countries who would never have done it to pay the cost of this giant dollar reduction. They stopped ripping us off, and it began as of four days ago.
There has never been anything like this in the history of our country. Drugs have only gone up, but now they will be going down by numbers never conceived possible. It’s called most favored nation, and no president has ever had the courage or ability to get this done until now.
The first of these unprecedented price reductions will be available starting in January through a new Web site, TrumpRx.gov. And these big price cuts will greatly reduce the cost of health care.
(Dropping prices 600%? Would the drug companies pay you? Read more about Trump’s most favored nation efforts and the website he’s naming after himself. Separately, Democrats passed a law during the Biden administration that for the first time allowed Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices. That program continues under the Trump administration and will save the US billions of dollars.)
TRUMP: I’m also taking on the gigantic health insurance companies that have gotten rich on billions of dollars of money that should go directly to the people. The money should go to the people, that’s you, so they can buy their own health insurance, which will give far better benefits at much lower costs. It will be far better health insurance.
The current “Unaffordable Care Act” was created to make insurance companies rich. It was bad health care at much too high a cost, and you see that now in the steep increase in premiums being demanded by the Democrats, and they are demanding those increases, and it’s their fault. It is not the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault.
(Interesting that Trump is no longer calling it “Obamacare,” but rather “The Unaffordable Care Act.”)
TRUMP: It’s the “Unaffordable Care Act,” and everybody knew it. Again, I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care. You will get much better health care at a much lower price. The only losers will be insurance companies that have gotten rich in the Democrat Party, which is totally controlled by those same insurance companies.
They will not be happy, but that’s OK with me, because you, the people, are finally going to be getting great health care at a lower cost.
(This would be an interesting change in the US system, where large groups of people, not individuals, get the best rates on health care. It would be nice to see Republicans and Democrats work together to pass something to fix the system.)
TRUMP: Another major focus is the cost of energy. For years, the radical left Democrats exploited the green-energy scam as an excuse to funnel many billions of dollars into their own massive slush funds, as their energy restrictions drastically drove up prices, and they drove them up at record levels.
Electricity costs surged 30 to 100 percent under Biden, and the typical family lost $5,000 to $10,000 in higher energy costs. Think of that, $5,000 to $10,000 you lost. On day one, I declared a national energy emergency. Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country. In some states, it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon.
(The retreat from climate change efforts is a massive whiplash in US policy that will affect car and energy companies and everything in between. It’s not clear what Trump means by slush funds. On prices, the average price of gas nationwide has fallen from just over $3 when he took office to just under $2.90 today. But the average price of electricity has risen on Trump’s watch.)
TRUMP: And within the next 12 months, we will have opened 1,600 new electrical generating plants, a record, and it’s a record that won’t be beaten by practically — I would say by anybody, or certainly not very soon. Prices on electricity and everything else will fall dramatically.
The Democrat inflation disaster, again, the worst in the history of our country, also robbed millions of Americans of homeownership and indeed the American dream. The yearly cost of a typical new mortgage increased by $15,000 under Democrat rule. In 11 months, we have already gotten that annual cost down by $3,000, and it’s coming down a lot lower.
Wait until you see. The numbers are going to be shocking. And I will soon announce our next chairman of the Federal Reserve, someone who believes in lower interest rates by a lot, and mortgage payments will be coming down even further.
(Trump can’t really take credit for a dip in mortgage rates, which have fallen incrementally during his time in office and remain over 6%. The Fed has cut rates in recent months, and mortgages have followed, indirectly. That’s not because the Fed is satisfied with the rate of inflation but because it is concerned about the job market. If anything, the Fed may have cut rates more if Trump hadn’t put tariffs in place. Read more.)
TRUMP: Early the new year — and you will see this — in the new year, I will announce some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history. A major factor in driving up housing costs was the colossal border invasion. We have never been invaded. This is the worst thing that — frankly, in my opinion, the worst thing that the Biden administration did to our country is the invasion at the border.
The last administration and their allies in Congress brought in millions and millions of migrants and gave them taxpayer-funded housing while your rent and housing costs skyrocketed. Over 60 percent of growth in the rental market came from foreign migrants.
(It will be interesting to read Trump’s plan. Perhaps it will borrow on zoning changes like those embraced in New York City and Austin. One issue for housing is a lack of skilled workers, which his immigration crackdown cannot have helped.)
TRUMP: At the same time, illegal aliens stole American jobs and flooded emergency rooms, getting free health care and education paid for by you, the American taxpayer. They also increased the cost of law enforcement by numbers so high that they are not even to be mentioned.
For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration, as migrants go back home, leaving more housing and more jobs for Americans. In the year before my election, all net creation of jobs was going to foreign migrants. Since I took office, 100 percent of all net job creation has gone to American-born citizens, 100 percent.
(The Trump administration is paying people to self-deport. At the same time, the US needs more workers. Even Trump admits some of them will have to be immigrants. It’s also worth noting that undocumented immigrants frequently pay into safety net systems like Medicare without being eligible to get benefits.)
TRUMP: In the end, government either serves the productive, patriotic, hardworking American citizen, or it serves those who break the laws, cheat the system, and seek power and profit at the expense of our nation.
Look at Minnesota, where Somalians have taken over the economics of the state and have stolen billions and billions of dollars from Minnesota and indeed from the United States of America. And we’re going to put an end to it.
(This is a complicated story. Trump likes to simplify it to blame Somali immigrants in general. He called them all “garbage.”)
TRUMP: For so long as — before my election, the vast majority of good and decent Americans were forced to watch as corrupt politicians plundered the halls of power, exploited our taxpayers, and pillaged every system that makes civilized society function, but not anymore, and you see that every day, not anymore.
We’re putting America first, and we are making America great again, very simple. We are making America great again.
(Let’s count the ways the Trump family is openly trying to benefit financially from the Trump administration.)
TRUMP: Tonight, after 11 months, our border is secure, inflation has stopped, wages are up, prices are down, our nation is strong, America is respected, and our country is back stronger than ever before.
We’re poised for an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen. Soon, we will host the World Cup and the Olympics, both of which I got, but, most importantly, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There could be no more fitting tribute to this epic milestone than to complete the comeback of America that began just one year ago.
(Happy 250th birthday, America!! Hopefully you’re lucky enough to afford a ticket to a World Cup match.)
TRUMP: When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny, and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again, like we have never been respected before.
To each and every one of you, have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. God bless you all.
