During his State of the Union address, President Trump gave some stories that have not been backed by facts and/or outright lies.
Firstly, Trump claimed that the economy has been on recovery since he came to power.
He said, “In just over 2 years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom. We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs, something which almost everyone said was impossible to do, but the fact is, we are just getting started.”
“Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades, and growing for blue-collar workers, who I promise to fight for. They are growing faster than anyone else. Nearly 5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps,” he added.
However, as reported by Financial Times, the recovery was already underway when Mr Trump came into office, having started in 2009 following the financial crash. Growth has been strong under Mr Trump, but the economy has not seen unprecedented rates of growth.
Trump also made an inaccurate connection between El Paso’s previously high crime rates and the construction of a border wall.
“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,” he claimed.
But according to CNN, violent crime fell long before the wall was built in El Paso.
BREAKING: El Paso Sheriff Richard Wiles RIPS Trump's LIES About El Paso in State of the union
HE SAID THIS
"El Paso was a safe city long before a wall was built. Pres. Trump continues to give a false narrative."
— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) February 6, 2019
The president also falsely claimed that the US spent more than $7 trillion in the Middle East for conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is an outright lie, bearing in mind that Afghanistan is not even part of the Middle East.
In addition, Trump said, “I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally. This is opposite to what’s been the administration’s stance on legal immigration.
For instance, some of his administration officials have been seen to change a number of aspects of the legal immigration system, from family-based immigration to the diversity visa lottery.