The State of the Union address is an annual, mandatory speech that the President must give to highlight the achievements of the administration as well as give comments on future plans. President Trump made his record long address on the 24th of February with a mighty 1 hour and 48 minutes, breaking his own record. This speech, however, was not received very well.
It’s been criticized for having bold statements and wild statistics, but how bad is it really?
President Trump said “They poured in by the millions and millions from prisons, and mental institutions. There were murderers, 11,888 murderers. They came into our country” (Under Bidens administration). This number is severely misleading. It’s sometimes cited to be 13,000, but the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that the data goes back 40 years or more. Not all of those individuals are free roaming, nor did they enter only under Bidens administration.
President Trump has claimed that the United States has received 80 million barrels of oil from Venezuela. While there’s no way to confirm this since the Energy Information Administration has not released the 2026 oil data yet, this number is the equivalent to just 6 days of U.S. oil production.
He’s stated that he has signed the largest tax cut in “American History”. The Big, Beautiful Bill, which was passed last year, ranks 3rd on tax cuts since 1980 according to PolitiFact.
The near 2-hour long address is loaded with quotes that we can fact check, and there are many articles like this one that grab quotes to provide more information. But to find our answer as to how much of it was true, the sheer volume of articles is very telling.
