Fact-Checking Trump’s Talk With Elon Musk on X

Fact-checking Donald Trump’s claims about immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden and more.

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A photo showing former President Donald Trump’s Spaces event on X with Elon Musk on Monday. Spaces is a feature in the X app that allows users to have live audio conversations with other users.

Former President Donald J. Trump repeated a number of inaccurate claims that have become campaign staples in a conversation on Monday night with the billionaire Elon Musk on X, his social media platform.

After describing at length the attempted assassination against him at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, Mr. Trump ran through familiar complaints about immigration — echoed by Mr. Musk — and attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.

Here’s a fact check:

He inaccurately claimed that a chart he showed at the Pennsylvania rally, which he has repeatedly credited with saving his life, showed that “my last week, we had the best illegal immigration numbers.” (The chart was highly misleading, and unauthorized border crossings were not the lowest when he left office.)
He misleadingly described Ms. Harris as “the border czar.” (She was responsible for addressing the root causes of migration in Central America, not border security.)
He said that 20 million people had illegally crossed the southern border under President Biden. (The number is overstated.)
He claimed, with no evidence, that other countries take unauthorized immigrants “out of jails, prisons” and “bring them to the United States.” (Prison populations are increasing across the world.)
He claimed that crime in Venezuela had declined 72 percent because of an exodus of criminals into the United States. (The decrease is overstated, and there is no evidence that Venezuela had “gotten rid” of criminals.)
He asserted that Mr. Biden “shut down Keystone XL pipeline, which is our pipeline that would have employed 48,000 people.” (Mr. Biden did rescind a permit for the pipeline, which had a projected employment of 35 permanent jobs.)
He falsely described climate change as “where the ocean is going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.” (Under a worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise by as much as 10 meters by 2300, or nearly 33 feet, more than 3,100 times what Mr. Trump said.)
He exaggerated grocery price inflation as high as “50, 60, even 100 percent in some cases.” (The index that tracks grocery prices is up by about 20 percent since early 2021.)
He falsely claimed that inflation was the “worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years.” (Inflation reached 8 percent in 2022, the highest since 1981.)
He falsely claimed that bacon now cost “four or five times more than it did a few years ago.” (The average price of sliced bacon was $5.83 per pound in January 2021 and $6.83 per pound in June 2024.)
He falsely claimed that the 2017 tax cut was the “largest” in history. (At least half a dozen others are bigger.)
He claimed, with no evidence, that the Biden administration orchestrated the criminal cases against him because it “went after their political opponent.” (At least two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning the Justice Department has no connection to the cases. Two others are overseen by a special counsel, specifically to avoid the perception of politicization.)

Linda Qiu is a reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade. More about Linda Qiu

See more on: U.S. Politics, Elon Musk, Donald Trump