Fact check: Was Trump truthful in his inauguration day speeches? 

President Donald Trump took his second oath of office on January 20 as the 47th president of the United States, offering an agenda heavily foreshadowed by his campaign promises.

Speaking from inside the US Capitol Rotunda because of the subfreezing temperatures, Trump said, “The golden age of America begins right now.”

He promised to crack down on undocumented immigration, increase domestic oil drilling, impose tariffs, rescind federal electric vehicle goals, declare that there are only two genders assigned at birth, rename Alaska’s Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley and end diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“All of this will change starting today,” he said, “and it will change very quickly.”

Appearing in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall shortly after his inaugural address, Trump jabbed at familiar rivals, including the “unselect committee of political thugs” — a reference to the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol and received last-minute preemptive pardons from President Joe Biden. Trump chastised two members of that committee, calling former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney a “crying lunatic” and saying former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger was “always crying.”

Here are our fact checks of Trump’s claims during his inaugural speech followed by claims during his subsequent remarks at Emancipation Hall.

Do tariffs ‘enrich’ the country levying them?

Arguing for his plan to enact tariffs, Trump said, “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

However, most economists disagree that tariffs will “enrich” Americans, and real-world examples of tariffs working that way are rare. Consumers in tariff-levying countries often suffer in these deals because prices rise, they said.

“Tariffs artificially raise the cost of doing business, which depresses overall economic production in the form of lower gross domestic product, artificially higher prices and fewer goods sold,” Boise State University political scientist Ross Burkhart, who studies trade policy, told PolitiFact in August. “For the consumer, this means a reduction in purchasing power.”

Tariffs also mean that producers pay more as prices rise for materials used to make products domestically. US producers can expect retaliatory tariffs, which can also raise prices for US consumers. Also, a decline in international competition hurts consumers by letting the remaining producers raise prices.

Trump misled when he said, “With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate.”

No “Green New Deal” is in effect. Senator Edward Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both Democrats, introduced a 2019 resolution that offered a broad vision for responding to climate change, but it never became law. After Biden became president, Congress passed legislation, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, that advanced some climate policy goals. Trump cannot undo laws by executive order.

In 2024, Biden’s administration, building on a target set in its first year, issued a rule that 56 percent of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the US to be electric or hybrids by 2032.

Was there ‘record inflation’ under Biden?

Trump said, “Next, I will direct all members of my Cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.”

The highest year-over-year inflation rate on Biden’s watch was about 9 percent in summer 2022. That was the highest in about 40 years.

Are countries sending migrants from prisons, mental institutions?

Trump repeated the campaign claim that people “from prisons and mental institutions … illegally entered our country from all over the world”.

However, there is no evidence that countries are emptying their prisons, or that mental institutions are sending people to illegally migrate to the US.

Immigration officials arrested about 108,000 noncitizens with criminal convictions (whether in the US or abroad) from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry; not everyone was let in.

Does China control the Panama Canal?

Trump, who repeated his goal of taking back control of the Panama Canal, misled about the canal’s operations.

“And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal,” Trump said.

That’s false.

The Republic of Panama has owned and administered the Panama Canal since December 31, 1999, when Panama took over its full operation.

The Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous government entity governed by an 11-member board of directors, manages the waterway.

China does have influence in the canal. The Panama Ports Company — a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports — manages the Balboa and Cristobal ports that serve as the entry and exit ways to the canal. However, ultimate authority over the ports and canal is maintained by the Panama Canal Authority, a part of the Panamanian government.

How many people died building the Panama Canal?

Trump claimed that US “lost 38,000 lives” during its construction.

That is higher than the official death toll. It’s possible that Trump added up numbers from efforts over decades to build the canal, including by the French starting in 1881.

“Over the span of more than three decades, at least 25,000 workers died in the construction of the Panama Canal,” author Christopher Klein wrote in a 2023 History.com article.

We found similar numbers posted in other articles about the death toll recorded by the US and the death toll for the French.

Did apple prices double under Biden?

In his second speech of the day, at Emancipation Hall, Trump, among other things, claimed apple prices had doubled under Biden.

“How many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost,” Trump said. “I’d say it and I hit it hard.”

Even at their peak in prices, apples did not cost twice what they did when Biden took office in January 2021.

Apple prices today are almost the same as they were at the beginning and the end of Biden’s tenure, producer price index data shows. (This statistic is an index pegged to 100, not a measurement in dollars and cents.)

During Biden’s presidency, apple prices did rise, along with the prices of many groceries and other consumer products. But even at their short-lived peak, in February 2023, apple prices were about 1.4 times higher than when Biden took office, not twice as much.

Did Biden pardon 33 murderers?

Alluding to former President Biden, Trump said that “they pardoned” 33 murderers.

Two days before Christmas 2024, Biden said he was commuting – not pardoning – the sentences of 37 of the 40 people who faced federal death sentences for such crimes as killing police officers and military service members, killing people in bank robberies or killing guards or prisoners in federal prisons.

By commuting their sentences, they will spend life in prison rather than face the death penalty. Commutation is not the same as a pardon. A commutation of a sentence reduces the sentence but does not erase the conviction. A pardon is the president’s forgiveness.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a December 23, 2024, statement. But he added, “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

Biden’s action adhered to a moratorium on federal death sentences that his administration announced in 2021.