Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025 – CNN Politics

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 29. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images/File

Politics,13 min read

Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025

By Daniel Dale, Dec 27, 2025

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 29. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images / File

It was hard to pick only 25. But it was easier than it used to be.

Just like his first presidency, President Donald Trump’s first calendar year back in the White House was an unceasing parade of lies. In 2025, though, the variety of Trump’s false claims shrunk even as he maintained his trademark staggering frequency.

Trump’s lying has always been characterized by dogged repetition. It became especially repetitive in 2025. While he continued to regularly sprinkle in new lies, he relied on a core set of go-to fabrications he deployed virtually no matter the setting and no matter how many times they had been debunked.

Did you hear the one about how Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment? You probably did if you watched even a few Trump speeches or interviews. Same with the one about how consumer prices have fallen this year, the one about how Trump ended seven or eight wars, and the one about how foreign leaders around the world emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send unwanted citizens across the US border as migrants.

Here is our highly subjective list of Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. We chose some because the president repeated them particularly often, some because they were about notably consequential topics, and some because they were especially egregious in their distance from reality.

Inflation, tariffs and the economy

Vehicles line a shipping terminal at the Port of Oakland in California, on April 15. Noah Berger / AP/File

Lie: Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment in 2025

The president who loves big numbers, even if they’re fake, had a fictional figure he cited in speech after speech: a claim that he had secured “$17 trillion” in investment in the US in less than a year back in the White House. It didn’t help Trump’s case that the White House’s own website said at the time that it was actually $8.8 trillion – and even that figure was wildly inflated – but he proceeded to increase his claim to “$18 trillion” even though the website still had it under $10 trillion.

Lie: ‘Every price is down’

Trump lied even about subjects that everyday people could themselves see he was lying about. He claimed in the fall that there was “no inflation,” though there was inflation; that “every price is down,” though prices were up on thousands of products; that grocery prices were “way down,” though they were up; and that beef was the only grocery item that had gotten more expensive, though there were dozens of others. Polls showed most Americans weren’t buying his assertions.

Lie: Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by ‘2,000%, 3,000%’

Trump deployed not only implausible figures but impossible figures. He declared on numerous occasions that his “most favored nation” policy was going to bring down the price of prescription drugs by “500%” or more, sometimes “1,400 to 1,500%” or even “2,000%, 3,000%.” These claims are debunked by math itself – a decline of more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications – but the president kept making them even though he could have simply touted real (less-than-100%) price reductions on some drugs.

Lie: Foreign countries pay the US government’s tariffs

As consumer prices continued to rise, in part because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imported products, Trump clung to his familiar lie that these tariffs are paid by foreign countries, not by people or companies in the US. (The tariff payments to the government are made by US importers, not foreign exporters, and importers often pass on some or all of the added costs to the final consumer.) The president essentially fact-checked himself in November, when he told an interviewer that he would lower Americans’ coffee prices by lowering his tariffs on imported coffee.

Public safety

An anti-ICE protester holds an American flag near the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, on October 18. Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images / File

Lie: Portland was ‘burning down’

The president repeatedly said an American city was “burning down” or “burning to the ground” even though it was absolutely not burning down or burning to the ground. Sporadic clashes between protesters and law enforcement outside one Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland did not mean a 145-square-mile city was ablaze – as Portland residents, officials and media outlets kept noting as he kept lying.

Lie: Washington, DC had no murders for six months

The president continued his long-established pattern of choosing dramatic untruths over facts that would have been useful to him if he had just stated them accurately. Instead of correctly noting that crime in Washington, DC, declined after his federal takeover of law enforcement there in August, he falsely claimed three times in a November speech that the capital hadn’t had a single murder “in six months.” Washington actually had more than 50 homicides over the six months prior to the speech, police statistics and Washington Post tracking show.

Lie: ‘I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water’

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025 | CNN Politics

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As the Senate "vote-a-rama" on "President" Trump's "big, beautiful bill" gets underway, CNN senior reporter #DanielDale #factchecks Trump's claims about what the sweeping domestic policy bill contains. #CNN#Newsyoutu.be/2dfD_NS6eTo?...

'Wildly, categorically inaccur...
'Wildly, categorically inaccurate': CNN fact check of Trump's claims about 'big, beautiful bill'

YouTube

All these years later, and Daniel Dale is still fact checking Trump, who lies often enough to make fact-checking him a full time job.

> Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims at Cabinet meeting

"Trump repeated his false claim that the European Union 'was formed in order to screw the United States'..

"'The President’s claims are preposterous,' said Desmond Dinan, a public policy professor at George Mason University who is an expert in the history of European integration... 'The European Communities (forerunner of the EU) were formed in the 1950s as part of a joint US-Western European plan to stabilize and secure Western Europe and promote prosperity, by means of trade liberalization and economic growth, throughout the shared transatlantic space.'"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/politics/fact-check-trump-cabinet-meeting/index.html

#lies #disinformation #DanielDale

Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims at Cabinet meeting

President Donald Trump made numerous false claims in remarks at the first Cabinet meeting of his new administration. The falsehoods spanned a wide variety of topics, including aid to Ukraine, trade with the European Union, the history of the EU, inflation, mail-in voting, drug overdose deaths, and where the US stands in international education rankings.

CNN

Aaaaand the days of fact checking every-blooming-thing come roaring back. Trump's miasma of misinformation is just so draining.

The last time Trump actually heard a crime statistic was thirty years ago.

Fact check: Trump, repeating old lies on ‘Meet the Press,’ falsely claims US is the only country with birthright citizenship | CNN Politics @CNNPolitics
#DanielDale #TrumpLies #MeetThePress #uspol
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/12/08/politics/fact-check-trump-meet-the-press

Fact check: Trump, repeating old lies on ‘Meet the Press,’ falsely claims US is the only country with birthright citizenship

President-elect Donald Trump repeated numerous false claims during an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” – including his old lie that the US is the world’s only country with birthright citizenship.

CNN
Film Review: Y2K (2024): New Rachel Zegler Starrer From A24 is Almost a Complete Wipe-Out | FilmBook

Y2K Review. Y2K (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Kyle Mooney, written by Evan Winter and Kyle Mooney and starring Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian

FilmBook

203) I feel sorry for #DanielDale of CNN he frequently writes and reports on l #Trump’s tormented grasp on reality.

Given the velocity of #BigOrange’s lies and falsehood, Mr Dale’s task is ultimately impossible. Here’s his take on yesterday’s #Ashville speech

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/politics/fact-check-insulin-trump-biden-harris/index.html

#NC #DonaldTrump #Election2024 #USPol #USPolitics #Politics

Fact check: Trump falsely accuses Harris and Biden of lying about $35 insulin

Former President Donald Trump delivered a Wednesday speech that was laden with false claims he has made before. One of them was about insulin prices for seniors.

CNN
@therobburgessshow Since #CNN employs a crack fact-checker, #DanielDale, they could employ him in an actually useful way. They choose not to.
@Wikisteff @MoiraEve. It was a shanda. For some reason, when I read that #DanielDale would be fact checking, I thought it would be in real time. Silly me.
@gemelliz @Snowshadow @CanadianCrone Where’s #DanielDale when we need him? #MakeCanadaGreatAgainPierre lies:
The Chinese Coverup is a 3-yr-old story that wouldn’t have been possible without #Con commitment to China, Harper’s FIPA. The secrecy shrouding the Foreign Investment Promotion & Protection Agreement with China makes it hard for experts, let alone Cdns, to figure out. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/fipa-agreement-with-china-what-s-really-in-it-for-canada-1.2770159
'Unequal Treaties': So much secrecy around Canada's investment deal with China | CBC News

If the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) is such an important step forward for Canada’s relationship with China, why has it been shrouded in secrecy and why has there been no attempt to answer questions with anything much beyond breezy assurances that it is a good thing, writes Patrick Brown.

CBC