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Throughout October, President Donald Trump has traveled across the country, holding campaign rallies supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms. He has several more rallies scheduled<\/a> before Election Day on Nov. 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his remarks, which tend to last more than an hour, he has mostly boasted about his and Republican policies, while attacking some Democrats running for office and others who are not. Along the way, the president has made a number of false, misleading or exaggerated claims, many of which will be familiar to our readers.<\/p>\n Here are more than a dozen of his rally claims that we flagged, including statements about the economy, crime and immigration. He repeated nearly all of these claims during multiple campaign stops.<\/p>\n Inflation:<\/strong> In Syracuse on Oct. 9, Trump falsely claimed<\/a> that he \u201cinherited the worst inflation in American history,\u201d then added, \u201cNow we have it down to 1.8%.\u201d The worst inflation occurred after World War I, when the 12-month increase in prices was 23.7%<\/a> from June 1919 to June 1920. The annualized inflation rate during the Biden administration peaked <\/a>at 9.1% in June 2022, and was down to 3.0% when Trump took office in January 2025. It was most recently up to 3.7% for the 12 months ending in September. <\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how Trump calculated 1.8% inflation. He said it referred to \u201ccore inflation,\u201d and in other<\/a> instances<\/a> used 1.7% and said this was over three months. That\u2019s also wrong. Core inflation, which refers<\/a> to the rise in prices excluding food and energy items, was 2.6%<\/a> for the 12 months ending in September. That is down from the 3.3% annual core inflation rate Trump inherited, but the annual rate hasn\u2019t been 1.7% or lower since 2021.<\/p>\n Oil prices:<\/strong> While talking about the Iran war during his Syracuse rally, Trump said: \u201cAs soon as the war is over, oil is tumbling down like you\u2019ve never seen. It\u2019s already coming way down. We control the strait. Oil is coming down.\u201d The price of crude oil is not \u201cway down.\u201d West Texas Intermediate crude, which is the U.S. oil benchmark, was $98.73 a barrel on Oct. 9, and was up to $105.25 as of Oct. 26, according to<\/a> Energy Information Administration data. The price was $66.96 a barrel on Feb. 27, the day before the war with Iran began. Meanwhile, the price of Brent crude, the international oil standard, was $130.03 on Oct. 9, up from $71.32 just before the war. It was $128.12 as of Oct. 26. It\u2019s unknown how fast oil prices will fall when the war ends. Analysts told us<\/a> in May that it could take many months before the price of gasoline, which is influenced by oil prices, is back to the pre-war national average of $2.94 per gallon.<\/p>\n Poverty: <\/strong>Trump said<\/a> in San Antonio on Oct. 7: \u201cThe poverty rate has just reached its lowest level, so the best poverty numbers, lowest level in American history. Think of that. African American poverty, Hispanic American poverty, and Native American poverty rates are all at their lowest levels ever recorded.\u201d Trump is right about the official poverty rate, but an alternative measure isn\u2019t at its lowest level. <\/p>\n The official U.S. poverty rate was 10.2% in 2025, the lowest on record, according to<\/a> estimates the Census Bureau released in September. The official poverty rates for Hispanics and Native Americans also reached record lows last year. The lowest rate for African Americans was 17.1% in 2022 (see Table 3).<\/p>\n But 2025 was not a record year based on the supplemental poverty measure<\/a>, which factors in government assistance programs that help low-income households, such as food and housing assistance, and accounts for geography and additional expenses not covered in the official poverty measure. By that measure, 13.1% of the U.S. population was living in poverty in 2025, which was higher than the low of 7.7% in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the pre-pandemic low of 11.7% in 2019. Poverty for African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans was also lower in previous years using the SPM (see Table 8).<\/p>\n More people working.<\/strong> \u201cMore Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country,\u201d Trump said<\/a> in Port Huron, Michigan, on Oct. 25. This has been a staple<\/a> of Trump\u2019s speeches for more than a year, and, while accurate, there\u2019s less to it than it may appear. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>, there were 159,044,000 people working in the U.S. in September. That\u2019s more than ever before. But the U.S. also has its largest population<\/a> now. The employment-to-population<\/a> ratio, which was 59.2% in September, is down from 60.1% when Trump took office for his second term in January 2025.<\/p>\n Economic growth:<\/strong> In Youngstown, Ohio, on Oct. 12, Trump said<\/a>, \u201cOur first term was phenomenal. You know, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We\u2019re blowing it away now.\u201d But neither of Trump\u2019s terms were the \u201cgreatest\u201d in terms of growth of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product, the measure favored by economists. During Trump\u2019s first term, annual real GDP growth peaked at 3% in 2018, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis<\/a>. Since he has been back in office, real GDP growth was just 2.3% in 2025 and was also less than 3% in the first and second quarters<\/a> of 2026. Dating back to the Reagan administration, real economic growth has exceeded<\/a> 3% annually 16 times.<\/p>\n Investing in America: <\/strong>In Clarksville, Tennessee, on Oct. 10, Trump exaggerated when he said<\/a>, \u201cWe have $21 trillion being invested in our country, more than at any time, for any country anywhere in the world.\u201d Trump has never provided a full accounting for this inflated claim. The White House website only claims<\/a> $11.2 trillion \u201cin new investment in America, and counting,\u201d as of Oct. 22. As we\u2019ve<\/a> written<\/a>, much of that \u201cinvestment\u201d is based on announcements from companies and countries that experts told us are speculative and may never happen. And many of the announcements are routine expansion plans and have nothing to do with Trump\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n Factories<\/strong>. In San Antonio, the president said<\/a>, \u201cWe have more factories being built right now than at any time in the history of our country,\u201d a claim he has made repeatedly. There\u2019s not one source of information showing how many factories have been under construction at any given time over U.S. history. But U.S. Census Bureau data on manufacturing construction spending contradict Trump\u2019s claim. Spending to build or rehabilitate manufacturing sites has declined since late 2024. The quarterly<\/a> and monthly<\/a> figures continue to show this trend since we wrote<\/a> about the issue in February. The decline is expected to continue in 2027, according to a biannual survey<\/a> conducted by the American Institute of Architects.<\/p>\n Medicare checks.<\/strong> Trump claimed<\/a> in Syracuse that his administration \u201chas also located billions and billions of dollars that were supposed to be spent on improving Medicare, but they never spent it. So instead, they wanted to hide it.\u201d He added that more than 20 million seniors would \u201creceive a check for a minimum of $100 each because I found all that money.\u201d But that money was never hidden. Trump is referring to a fund Congress created in 2008 to pay for improvements to Medicare. The size of the fund has varied<\/a> over the years as Congress has added to it or taken money out, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has never spent<\/a> any of it. CMS says<\/a> the payments to beneficiaries are $90 each, not \u201ca minimum of $100,\u201d as Trump said. Those payments will deplete most of the roughly $2 billion that had been in the fund, according to<\/a> the health policy research organization KFF.<\/p>\n $5,000 checks: <\/strong>In Park City, Kansas, on Oct. 19, Trump said<\/a>, \u201cIf Republicans win the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000.\u201d He said this would be possible because \u201cwe\u2019re taking in massive amounts of money through tariffs and many other record-setting economic things.\u201d Paying that much to the more than 245 million<\/a> U.S. citizens 18 and older would cost around $1.2 trillion. Tariff revenue has increased<\/a> under Trump, but is still less than $200 billion a year. \u201cIt would take 6+ years of tariffs to fund one year of these checks,\u201d Marc Goldwein<\/a>, senior vice president and senior policy director at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told us<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tax cuts.<\/strong> In Greenville, North Carolina, on Oct. 20, Trump boasted<\/a> that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that he signed on July 4, 2025, \u201cgave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.\u201d As we have written, the law did not eliminate all taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security. The exclusion<\/a> on tips, for example, is limited to qualified tips up to $25,000 and begins to phase out<\/a> when modified adjusted gross income exceeds $150,000 for a single filer. The overtime exclusion also<\/a> hits income limits. And the Social Security provision<\/a> \u2014 actually a tax deduction of $6,000 for those age 65 and older whether they get Social Security benefits or not \u2014 phases out for those earning $75,000 or $150,000 for couples filing jointly. Moreover, all three provisions expire<\/a> after 2028<\/a>.<\/p>\n He misleadingly added that \u201cevery single Dumocrat in Congress\u201d voted against all three provisions. As we have written<\/a>, however, while no Democrat voted for the OBBBA, many said they supported the tax cuts on tips, overtime and for seniors \u2014 and would work to make them permanent \u2014 but opposed the larger bill for other reasons \u2014 chiefly that overall tax cuts were skewed to the wealthy, and that the legislation cut funding to Medicaid and reduced spending on federal food benefits.<\/p>\n Prescription drug prices.<\/strong> Also in North Carolina, Trump said<\/a>, \u201cAnd under my most favored nation agreement on drug prices, we went from paying the highest drug prices anywhere in the world just a few months ago \u2026 to the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world \u2014 with price differences of 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, 600 and even 700 percent.\u201d Setting aside the mathematical ridiculousness of drug prices dropping by 300% to 700% (in which drug companies would be paying customers instead of the other way around), the claim about Americans paying the lowest drug prices in the world is exaggerated. As we<\/a> have written<\/a>, Trump\u2019s efforts may have lowered prices for some consumers buying certain drugs. But there isn\u2019t evidence the deals so far have led to broad decreases in drug prices, and experts told us there\u2019s no guarantee of substantial savings for Americans in general in the future.<\/p>\n Violent crime:<\/strong> In San Antonio, Trump said, \u201cTogether we achieved the largest drop in violent crime ever recorded, despite the people coming in that we didn\u2019t want.\u201d Then he added, \u201cAnd remember, we got most of those hardcore criminals out.\u201d As we\u2019ve written<\/a>, FBI data show<\/a> the 2024-to-2025 decreases in both the violent crime rate (9.7%) and the murder rate (18.5%) were the largest one-year declines going back to 1936. That\u2019s not all due to Trump, as violent crime has been falling for the past several years since a spike during the 2020 pandemic. Also, in a September report<\/a> written by the University of Wisconsin\u2019s Michael T. Light for the Council on Criminal Justice, Light said it was difficult to link a decline in homicide to immigration enforcement, since homicide began decreasing before the 2025 surge in enforcement, which \u201cdisproportionately targeted nonviolent immigrants.\u201d Light said that \u201chomicides declined across states regardless of their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n Drug smuggling:<\/strong> In Sioux City, Iowa, on Oct. 22, Trump made<\/a> the unsupported claim that \u201cwe brought the flow of deadly drugs coming in by ocean \u2026 down by 97%.\u201d As we wrote<\/a> in June, it\u2019s not possible to know if his claim is accurate because there is no comprehensive data on all drugs trafficked to the U.S., including the amount not seized by officers. Administration officials told other<\/a> fact-checkers<\/a> that the president\u2019s claim is based on seizure data comparing the amount of drugs seized by CBP\u2019s Air and Marine Operations in July 2025 to November 2025. That\u2019s cherry-picking. The amount of seized drugs is used by some as a proxy for how much enters the country in total. But using July \u2014 which saw a huge one-month spike in drugs seized \u2014 as a starting point made the change in drug seizures during Trump\u2019s second term look like a much larger decline.<\/p>\n Illegal immigration:<\/strong> When criticizing the Biden administration in his Youngstown remarks, Trump said: \u201cThey allowed 25 million people to pour across our borders from all over the world. They came from prisons. They were drug dealers. They were rapists. They were murderers, 11,888 murderers, half of whom committed more than one murder. And they poured in here totally unchecked, totally unvetted.\u201d<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve written<\/a>, Trump\u2019s inflated 25 million figure is more than double the number of people caught crossing the border illegally (7.3 million, which includes repeat offenders), people who showed up at legal entry ports without authorization (1.2 million), and people estimated to have evaded capture (2 million) under the Biden administration. And after those initial encounters, 2.9 million were removed by CBP, and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or given parole or other classifications.<\/p>\n Also, immigration experts told us<\/a> there\u2019s no evidence that other countries released large numbers of inmates and then sent them to illegally immigrate to the U.S., as Trump has repeatedly claimed since 2024 without substantiating it. As for 11,888 murderers, that refers to the number of noncitizens in the U.S. \u2014 including those with legal status \u2014 who had been convicted of murder but were not in ICE custody as of September 2024. DHS previously told us<\/a> that the \u201cvast majority\u201d entered and had their custody status determined prior to the Biden administration and that many were in prison.<\/p>\n Zero admissions.<\/strong> In Perry, Georgia, on Oct. 24, Trump said<\/a>, \u201cIn the past 17 months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States.\u201d What Trump likely means, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection highlighted<\/a> in an Oct. 16 press release<\/a>, is that there have been no releases at the southern border, meaning no one caught crossing the border illegally was temporarily released into the U.S., for example, to apply for asylum. On his first day in office, Trump\u00a0enacted<\/a>\u00a0a policy effectively barring asylum applications. It does not mean that no migrants are attempting to cross the border illegally, or that none of them are successful in doing so. Over the last 17 months, about 5,000 to 10,000 migrants have been apprehended<\/a> attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. every month by Border Patrol agents (far fewer than were apprehended each month under President Joe Biden). As we have written<\/a>, while CBP does not regularly report on the number of so-called gotaways, immigrants who are detected via electronic surveillance crossing the border but evade apprehension, CBP has acknowledged thousands have occurred.<\/p>\n Climate change.<\/strong> Trump wrongly suggested that climate change isn\u2019t real and that the world is getting cooler, as he has<\/a> before<\/a>. In Youngstown, he referred to a 2018 climate report and said that \u201cwe had a lot of cooling and the ice is now bigger than it\u2019s ever been, for some reason. It grew a lot.\u201d He went on to falsely claim that \u201cthe word \u2018warming\u2019 didn\u2019t work\u201d so the term \u201cclimate change\u201d is now used instead. Global average temperatures have been rising for decades<\/a>, with all 10 of the warmest years on record occurring since 2015. It\u2019s unclear which ice Trump is referencing, but Arctic sea ice<\/a> and ice sheets<\/a> such as Greenland and Antarctica have all been losing ice over time, as data collected by NASA show.<\/p>\n Ending wars:<\/strong> In Michigan, Trump claimed<\/a>, \u201cI settled eight wars. No other president settled a war.\u201d We\u2019ve written<\/a> before<\/a> that experts in international relations have credited Trump with playing a key role in ending fighting in four conflicts. Trump also counts some international disagreements that weren\u2019t wars, as well as some battles that haven\u2019t officially ended. In addition, it\u2019s not accurate that no other U.S. president helped end a war. As CNN has noted<\/a>, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton each helped broker peace agreements between nations at war.<\/p>\n 2020 election: <\/strong>When talking about the 2020 presidential election in Iowa, Trump falsely claimed: \u201cThey cheated us on the second one because we won it three times. \u2026 They cheated. They rigged the election.\u201d Trump has never proved<\/a> his baseless allegation that Democrats cheated to win in 2020. Biden received more than 81.2 million popular votes<\/a> to Trump\u2019s 74.2 million, and Biden won 306 electoral votes<\/a> to Trump\u2019s 232. In referring to Republicans\u2019 SAVE America Act<\/a>, Trump went on to say that Democrats \u201cvoted against voter ID because they want to cheat\u201d and \u201cvoted against proof of citizenship because they want to cheat.\u201d But opposing the legislation doesn\u2019t mean that Democrats want to cheat during elections. Some Democratic lawmakers have opposed<\/a> the voter registration and identification bill, which includes several other provisions, because they say it could make it much harder for millions of citizens to vote.<\/p>\n Clarification, Oct. 28: In our item about violent crime, we clarified that a September report we cited was written for the Council on Criminal Justice by the University of Wisconsin\u2019s Michael T. Light.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through\u00a0our \u201cDonate\u201d page<\/a>. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n The post FactChecking Claims from Trump\u2019s Midterm Rallies<\/a> appeared first on FactCheck.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Throughout October, President Donald Trump has traveled across the country, holding campaign rallies supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms. He has several more rallies scheduled before Election Day on Nov. 3.\u00a0 In his remarks, which tend to last more than an hour, he has mostly boasted about his and Republican policies, while attacking some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":72507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-factcheck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaspora.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.factcheck.org\/UploadedFiles\/MW-BUG-2026.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nEconomy<\/h2>\n
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Benefits<\/h2>\n
Crime<\/h2>\n
Immigration<\/h2>\n
Other Claims<\/h2>\n
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