Break It Down!

Yesterday, on orders from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, over 800 generals and admirals assembled at the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia. In the age of the frequent use of “secured communications,” pulling flag officers from across the globe for a meeting in a single location is a rare and unorthodox move. But unorthodox is not a new space for Mr. Hegseth, nor for the man at whose pleasure he serves, Donald Trump.

Hegseth gave an interesting speech, as he served as the warm-up act for Trump, who as always was the star of the show. To be sure, Petey took his fair share of shots at some of his favorite targets: women in the military, men with facial hair, women in combat, rules of engagement for war, and the ability of the inspector general’s office to conduct investigations (not coincidentally, like the one currently being executed on Mr. Hegseth). But, let there be no doubt, the star of the show, ad that’s really what it was after all, a big show, was Donald Trump.

It has long been said that Trump veers from the truth so often, trying to hold him accountable for his false and misleading statements is pointless. His supporters have their own variation of that theme. They routinely excuse, rationalize, or deny his errant statements. They say he was joking, he didn’t mean it, they assert he was misunderstood, and my personal favorite, “I haven’t seen the video.” Well, I have time today. Here are a few instances Mr. Trump and his comments opted for what one of his previous advisors, Kellyanne Conway, once referred to as alternative facts. As usual, there were too many to easily count, but here are ten I curated for your entertainment:

• Trump bragged we have the strongest military in the world, and claimed, “You never heard Biden say that. You’ve never heard him say anything about that. The truth is, Biden repeatedly said the U.S. has the world’s strongest military. For example, in a 2023 speech about democracy, Biden said: “Our U.S. military – and this is not hyperbole; I’ve said it for the last two years – is the strongest military in the history of the world. Not just the strongest in the world – in the history of the world.”

Biden also made that point in the last week of his presidency, when he told a Defense Department audience, “You are simply the greatest fighting force in the history of the world – in the history of the world. That’s a fact. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”

• Trump made the false claim that Biden said he thought he could get rid of Space Force, the military branch created during Trump’s first term, before backing down. “When Biden came into office, he wanted to terminate it – he said, ‘And this thing called Space Force, so we can get rid of that.’ And he got hammered by the people in this room for even suggesting it.” Biden never said anything like that.

In the first month of the Biden Administration, there was a controversy of a snarky remark by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to a question about whether Biden had made any decision on keeping Space Force. But even Psaki didn’t come close to saying, “we can get rid of that.” And she said the next day that Space Force has “the full support of the Biden administration and “we are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force.” 

• Trump touted the fact he got members of the NATO military alliance to pledge to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense (by 2035), then falsely said, “It used to be 1%, then we got it up to 2% in my last term, and they did not like it.” Trump was not responsible for getting NATO to set its previous 2% target; the 2% target was agreed upon by NATO defense ministers in 2006 (I might add, when Trump was a registered Democrat), and then reaffirmed in NATO documents in 2014, the year before Trump launched his presidential campaign. Moreover, if Trump meant he was the one who got the members to meet their commitment, that’s not true either. In 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term, only nine members were meeting the 2% target. There are 32 members of NATO.
• Trump reiterated his oft repeated false claim that Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine. That figure isn’t close to accurate. A German think tank that has closely tracked wartime aid to Ukraine says the U.S. allocated about $135 billion to Ukraine and has committed about $5 billion more through June. The U.S. Government inspector general overseeing the federal Ukraine response says the U.S. had disbursed about $94 billion as of the end of June 2025, and had appropriated about $93 billion more, including money that was spent in the U.S. and in broader Europe rather than Ukraine itself. That’s about 53% of Trump’s claim, and it includes money spent under Trump.
• Trump restated his false claim that he has “settled seven” wars. He cited a war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda as one example, saying “I got that one done,” and mentioned “Kosovo and Serbia” as another.

Those two examples show precisely why Trump has not settled seven wars. For starters, Trump hasn’t ended the conflict involving the Democratic of Congo and Rwanda. The peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration and signed by the DRC and Rwanda in June did not involve the rebel coalition, allegedly backed by Rwanda, that has seized territory in the eastern DRC. The scores of militia groups that have fought for three decades in one of the most protracted and complex conflicts in the world are still engaged in deadly fighting.

Moreover, while Trump claims to have prevented the eruption of a new war between Serbia and Kosovo – providing few details about what he was talking about – these countries weren’t in an actual war either during Trump’s current term, or during his first term.

Another dispute on Trump’s list of seven wars he supposedly settled, between Egypt and Ethiopia was also not a war, in either of Trump’s terms. They have a long-running (note: still unresolved) dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River, but this is also not a war.

• Trump repeated his frequently stated false claim that, under Biden, “the Congo and Venezuela opened their prisons to somehow get prisoners to travel to the U.S. as migrants.

“They opened up prisons in the Congo. They came into our country, totally unmatched, unvetted, unchecked, and from all over. Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country.” Referencing unspecified countries, he said, “They would take their worse people (like the escalator claim in 2015), and they’re people from prisons, in jail, and they put them in a caravan, and they’d walk up.”

Mr. Trump has never provided any proof for these claims, which his own presidential campaign and White House have been unable to corroborate. Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and neighboring Republic of Congo say there is no evidence of these claims. There is also no evidence Venezuela has done such a thing. 

• Trump repeated the false claim that “25 million” migrants entered the country under Biden. The “25 million” figure is fiction, as was his previous “21 million” claim. Both numbers are wild exaggerations. As of December 2024, the last full month under Biden, the federal government recorded under 11 million nationwide encounters with migrants during the Biden administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country. Even adding the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was anywhere near Trump’s claim.
• Trump repeated the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged,” claiming that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine “if the election weren’t rigged.” The Russia hypothetical aside, Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
• Trump repeated his usual spurious figure about U.S. drug deaths, saying, “We lost 300,000 people (deaths) to drugs last year.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported earlier this month that there were 80,856 reported overdose deaths in the U.S. in the 12 months ending December 2024. Experts have noted that even if there is an undercount, there is no reasonable way to get to Trump’s 300K number.
• Speaking about the City of Portland, Trump said, “Your place is burning down. Unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II.” It is not certain what tapes Trump is referring to, but the city is not burning down. While there have been some unruly protests near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the city this year – and protesters were arrested in June for allegedly starting a fire there – the broader city has been functioning as usual, and even the situation around the ICE building is generally calmer than it was in June.

As an aside, welcome to the latest Governmental Shutdown. It’s sure to dominate the news cycle at least for the remainder of this week, since the GOP House members have left Washington until Monday. Meanwhile the GOP spin machine is working overtime to lay the shutdown at the feet of Democrats, even though the GOP controls the Oval, the House, and the Senate. The last shutdown, also under Donald Trump, lasted 35 days. It was the longest on record. You’ll hear much more about it sooner rather than later.

I simply cannot move on without sharing my favorite quote about government shutdowns:

“A shutdown falls on the president’s lack of leadership. I mean problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the president is weak.” —Donald J. Trump, Circa 2013

I co-sign that statement. The internet is undefeated!

Meanwhile, back to today’s post. If it establishes anything, it’s that factcheckers probably need a raise, and increased benefits…”Trump Truth: As Oxymoronic As Alternative Facts!”

I’m done; holla back!

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For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/politics/fact-check-trump-military-speech

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-hegseth-military-leaders-meeting/

Trump Truth: As Oxymoronic As Alternative Facts