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US President Donald Trump made multiple false, misleading and exaggerated claims during his address to the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
In his speech, Trump discussed the Iran war, climate change, US investment, military weapons stockpiles and crime in Washington, among other issues.
Fact-checks by the Associated Press, CNN and PolitiFact found that several of his claims were either unsupported by available evidence, substantially exaggerated or lacked important context.
Claim of ending eight wars: Trump said it was his “great honour” to have settled eight wars since taking office.
He listed conflicts or disputes involving Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Gaza, Israel and Iran, and Egypt and Ethiopia.
However, fact-checkers found that the claim significantly overstates what Trump has achieved.
At least two of the situations Trump cited did not involve active wars when he took office. In addition, fighting between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo has not been completely resolved.
Trump also takes credit for ending the Israel-Iran conflict, but the United States and Israel subsequently became involved in another war with Iran. AP said his impact on several of the claimed peace settlements was not as clear-cut as he portrayed it.
Climate change: Trump mocked warnings about artificial intelligence by claiming that the same people now warning about AI once said “we’ll all be dead in 12 years” because of global warming.
He also claimed that “global warming” was renamed “climate change” because the planet was cooling.
There is no scientific basis for the claim that the planet was cooling. “Global warming” and “climate change” remain widely used scientific terms, although they describe related but different concepts.
Trump’s reference to everyone dying within 12 years also misrepresents the widely cited 2018 climate assessment. That report warned that global carbon emissions needed to fall sharply within roughly 12 years to keep warming close to 1.5°C; it did not predict that humanity would become extinct within that period.
$21 trillion investment claim: Trump said his administration had secured commitments for $21 trillion in new investments from around the world. The figure has not been substantiated.
At the time of the speech, the White House cited **$11.2 trillion** in major investment announcements during Trump’s second term — a figure that itself includes a range of commitments and announcements, some of which were made during the Biden administration.
AP described Trump’s $21 trillion figure as exaggerated and highly speculative.
US weapons stockpiles: Trump rejected reports that the war with Iran had depleted US weapons stocks. “We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using,” he said. The precise size of US weapons inventories is classified, making the president’s broader claim difficult to verify directly.
However, recent reports from the Defense Department’s inspector general and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office have identified shortages or pressure on supplies of some munitions.
One Pentagon-related assessment cited strategic inventory shortfalls and bottlenecks in replenishing certain weapons. The Congressional Budget Office also reported a shortage of some missile-defence interceptors and said rebuilding certain inventories could take years. (
Crime in Washington: Trump said crime in Washington, DC, had fallen 87 percent since he returned to office. Available police data do not support that figure.
Washington police had recorded more than 15,000 crimes through Monday, a decline of about **23 percent** compared with the same period in 2024. That is far below the 87 percent reduction claimed by Trump.
CNN also reported that the White House had previously failed to substantiate Trump’s claims that crime in Washington had fallen by 81, 88 or 92 percent.
Other questionable claims: Trump also made claims about US oil reserves, drug seizures, employment and Iran during the speech. Fact-checkers found several of those statements inaccurate or misleading as well.
For example, Trump claimed that the United States and Venezuela together possess more than 60 percent of the world’s oil. PolitiFact noted that, measured by proven reserves, the two countries together account for about 21.9 percent, not more than 60 percent.
Overall, fact-checkers identified multiple false, misleading or substantially exaggerated claims in Trump’s UN speech. Rather than treating every disputed statement as an intentional lie, the available evidence shows that several of his headline claims did not match the underlying data or omitted important context. Source: Al Jazeera.
