CNN —
President Donald Trump keeps lying not only about the 2020 election he lost but the 2024 election he won.
In a Saturday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump correctly noted that he earned 77 million votes in 2024 — then falsely said his vote total was “actually much more than that,” since unspecified people “cheated like hell.”
There’s no basis for this claim. Trump’s official vote total is his actual vote total, and there is no evidence of unsuccessful cheating by vote counters or by his Democratic foes.
Trump made the claim less than two weeks after he baselessly cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the vote total of his 2024 opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who received more than 75 million votes.
Trump made various other false claims at CPAC, most of which have been debunked before. Here is a fact check of some of them.
Biden and hostages in Gaza: Trump touted the Hamas release of six hostages from Gaza on Saturday, saying, “We got six more back.” But he then falsely claimed, “Biden got none back, by the way, just so you understand: none, zero.”
Leaving aside the question of whether Trump or former President Joe Biden deserves more credit for the current ceasefire-for-hostages deal, which was secured under the Biden administration in partnership with representatives for the incoming Trump administration, it’s a fact that 105 hostages were released by Hamas during a brief 2023 truce brokered in part by the Biden administration about a year before Trump’s election victory.
Trump’s poll numbers: Trump repeated a false claim he made on Friday, saying his “poll numbers” are the highest “that any Republican president has ever had.” He didn’t specify what numbers he was referring to, but his approval rating has been in the 40s and 50s in major recent polls, not even close to the best of all time for a Republican president. George W. Bush hit 92% shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; George H.W. Bush hit 89% at the end of the Gulf War in 1991; and the peaks for Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower ranged from the high 60s to the high 70s, according to data collected by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.
US aid to Ukraine vs. European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated a false claim he made earlier in the week and many times prior, saying that Europe has given Ukraine just $100 billion in aid while the United States has given Ukraine $350 billion. He claimed this disparity happened “because we had a stupid, incompetent president and administration.”
In fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine, the European Union and individual European countries had collectively committed far more total wartime military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine through December (about $258 billion) than the US had committed (about $124 billion). Europe had also allocated more military, financial and humanitarian aid (about $138 billion) than the US had allocated (about $119 billion).
The US did have a slim lead in one particular category, military aid allocated, providing about $67 billion to about $65 billion for Europe. But even that was nowhere close to the giant gulf Trump described.
The prevalence of autism 15 years ago: Trump again grossly exaggerated the increase over the past two decades in the prevalence of autism among children — correctly saying it is now 1 in 36 but falsely saying that, 15 years ago, it was in the “vicinity” of 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 20,000. In fact, public statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the known prevalence in 2010 was 1 in 68 children, not even close to Trump’s figures.
Panama Canal deaths: Trump repeated his false claim that “38,000 people died, from our country, building the Panama Canal.” That figure, too, is not even close to accurate, experts on the canal’s construction say. While the century-old records are imprecise, they show about 5,600 people died during the canal’s American construction phase between 1903 and 1914 — and “of those, the vast majority were Afro-Caribbeans,” such as workers from Barbados and Jamaica, said Julie Greene, a history professor at the University of Maryland and author of the book “The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal.” The late historian David McCullough, author of another book on the building of the canal, found that “the number of white Americans who died was about 350.”
Iran and terror groups: Trump repeated his false claim that when he was president the first time, Iran provided no funding to terror groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, saying “they had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah, they had no money to give, everybody knows that.” Iran’s funding for terror groups did decline in the second half of that presidency, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in 2024. In fact, Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.
The US trade deficit with China: Trump repeated his false claim that the US trade deficit with China was over $1 trillion last year under Biden. The last available full-year figure for the goods and services deficit with China, for 2023, was about $252 billion — lower than in any year of Trump’s presidency. While the 2024 goods and services deficit scheduled to be revealed in March might end up slightly higher than the 2023 figure, goods-only trade data shows it will be nowhere close to $1 trillion.
Harris’ border role: Trump repeated his false claim that Harris was the Biden administration’s “border czar.” She wasn’t; the Biden White House always emphasized the label was inaccurate and that Harris was never in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the US.
Biden and electric vehicles: Trump repeated his false claim that Biden imposed a mandate “where everybody has to have an electric car.” Biden did make a legislative and regulatory push to get automakers to reduce emissions and adopt electric vehicles, but there was never a mandate requiring American consumers to have electric cars; the tailpipe rules for automakers that were unveiled by the Biden administration in 2024 aimed to have electric vehicles make up 35% to 56% new vehicles sold in 2032.
Tariffs and wealth: Promoting the idea of tariffs on foreign imports, Trump repeated his false claim that the “richest” period for the US was a high-tariff era from 1870 to 1913. The US is far richer today than it was back then; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher.