President Donald Trump’s nearly two-hour speech Wednesday night was packed with claims, and CNN’s Daniel Dale spent Thursday morning sorting out which ones held up.
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The 80-year-old president told the crowd at the Republican midterm convention that “we got eggs down lower than during my administration, and food prices, and almost every other item, are rapidly going down.”
However, Dale said the egg claim checks out, but nothing else does. “The part about prices and almost every other item rapidly going down is absolutely false,” Dale said. “I call this a very important lie.”
He pointed to Consumer Price Index data showing a 3.4 percent recent inflation rate, with far more products getting more expensive than cheaper. Since Trump took office, overall food prices have risen 4.3 percent and grocery prices 3.4 percent, both still climbing.
Dale said that’s exactly why Trump keeps citing eggs specifically: “They are not the norm here.”
Trump also went after North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper (D), blaming him for releasing the man charged with murdering Iryna Zarutska, telling the crowd, “Roy Cooper was the governor [who] released this animal into North Carolina society.”
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Dale said that’s not accurate.
Citing PolitiFact and Charlotte Observer reporting, he said Carlos Brown Jr. was released in September 2020 after completing his sentence for a separate crime, months before a February 2021 settlement over prison conditions that freed other offenders early.
Brown appeared on a list tied to that settlement only because its terms let the state retroactively count people already released, Dale said, “not because he was released early… by then-Governor Cooper himself.”
Finally, Trump closed his speech declaring, “Every single promise I made to you as a candidate, I’ve delivered on every single one.”
Dale called that “a high bar, and it’s obviously not true,” noting Trump’s unmet pledges to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, to quickly tame inflation, and, dating to 2016, to make Mexico pay for a border wall.
Dale acknowledged Trump has fulfilled a number of his campaign promises over the years, but he has broken plenty of others too, making the president’s claim of a perfect record simply untrue.
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– YouTube youtu.be
