Checking Donald Trump’s speech before Congress

In his address to Congress, which took more than an hour and a half, President Donald Trump made a number of US state claims under his predecessor Joe Biden and achieve his first weeks.

He returned to the key topics of companies, including illegal immigration, rising prices and what he called “horrific waste” in state expenses.

The BBC Verify considered the facts behind some of its key requirements.

Trump said he inherited an “economic disaster” from Biden.

This is misleading. The US economy is growing at an annual rate of 2.3% in the last quarter of 2024 in accordance with the previous administration. It increased by 2.8% in 2024 as a whole According to official statistics, the United States.

A Estimates of the International Monetary Fund What the growth rate in the US in 2024 was faster than any other nation in the G7.

Greating the prices, Trump added that “we have suffered the worst inflation over 48 years, but maybe even in the history of our country.”

In June 2022, Biden’s inflation reached a maximum of 9.1% – the highest level since 1981 – so it is not quite the case, according to Trump.

The peak of 2022 was in the context of high inflation in the rest of the world as a result of the COVID pandemic and global energy shock. As long as Trump has entered the post, the inflation rate decreased to 3%.

In a number of other points in US history, inflation was also much higher than 9%, Including the 1940s and the 1920s.

Trump continued to blame Biden for the cost of the eggs, saying that “allowed the price of eggs to get out of control.”

Prices are high, but it was associated with the flash of bird flu in the US.

Egg prices rose near Biden in 2023, and in January ten eggs were more than $ 5, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports. This is 53% above the average for just 2024.

USDA said the bird’s flash has led to the US farmers to kill millions of chickens by creating egg deficiency and announced a $ 1 billion plan (£ 780 million) to help fight this issue.

The outbreak began in February 2022, and last year the Biden administration allocated more than $ 800 million to solve it.

Recently, the Trump administration fired a number of USDA officials who worked on the government’s reaction to bird flu as part of the cost of government efficiency (DOGE). They’re now It is reported to be trying to remake some of them.

Trump praised the Government Effective Department Elon Musk (DOGE) and claimed that the Advisory Body had found “hundreds of billions of fraud” in the expenses of the Federal Government.

There was no evidence for this figure.

On your official site, Dodge states that he saved approximately $ 105 billionFrom detection of fraud, cancellation of contracts and grants, stop rental rental, asset sale, workforce reduction, software changes and regulatory savings.

However, this indicator cannot be independently tested, as it still published only “receipts” on the contract, grant and cancellation of real estate rent on the site. They amounted to about $ 18.6 billion. We asked for evidence of the remaining $ 86 billion in the White House.

The US media also emphasized some account errors. For example, DOGE initially transferred its largest savings of $ 8 billion from the cancellation of the immigration agency contract – it later corrected it up to $ 8 million.

Speaking about his actions to combat illegal immigration, Trump said “as a result of illegal border crossings last month were the lowest recorded.”

That’s true.

In February 2025, there were 8 326 meetings on the south -western border with Mexico by the US border patrols.

This is the lowest level with the monthly records that began in 2000.

For comparison, in February last year there were about 140,000 US border patrol meetings at Biden. The numbers fell to the rest of the year Up to 96,000 at the end of 2024.

Continuing with illegal migration, Trump has claimed: “21 million people have emerged in the United States in the last four years.”

No evidence for such a high figure.

Meetings with migrants at the borders – a measure of illegal migration – reached 10 million in Biden, but that does not mean that there are many people left in the United States.

It is impossible to find out exactly how many illegal immigrants came to the US, as many have evaded law enforcement, but several estimates have doubled the number of Trump stated.

Report Posted by the Internal Security Office Last year, the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States was estimated as of January 2022 by 11 million.

This is stated about a fifth of them to arrive in 2010 or later, but most arrived so far, some back in the 1980s.

To the aid of the United States to Ukraine, Trump claimed: “We spent, perhaps $ 350 billion … And they (Europe) spent $ 100 billion. What a difference.”

The BBC Verify is unable to find any evidence of Trump’s $ 350 billion claim, and some figures believe Europe has spent more when all assistance in Ukraine.

The US, by some breakdown, is the largest single of Ukraine’s donor. But Europe coupled spent more money than the US, According to the analytical tank of the Kiel Institute.

It expects that from January 24, 2022 to the end of 2024, Europe spent $ 138.7 billion on Ukraine, and the US spent $ 119.7 billion.

The US Department of Defense has a higher figure of $ 182.8 billion – given the wider US military activity in Europe – but it is still much less than Trump’s figure.

We asked the White House where it came from.

BBC Verify is considering other claims from Trump’s speech.

Additional report by Shajan Sardarizade and Anthony Ruben.