Donald Trump told so many lies during his Meet the Press interview that aired Sunday that NBC released a lengthy fact check chronicling his numerous mistruths. He claimed that bacon prices have increased five fold (they have not), that the 2020 election was “rigged” (there is no evidence of this), and that “15 million” undocumented immigrants are “flooding” the U.S. (that figure is a massive overestimate).
During the course of the interview, Trump used the word “rigged” in reference to the election nineteen times. The election, of course, was not rigged. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency that Trump himself created — the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.”
“The election was rigged,” Trump told Welker. “There’s no question about that. There’s so much proof on it. Even if you go to the more modern-day proof with the — they call it Twitter Files, FBI and Twitter, or you take a look at the Amazon stuff or the Google stuff, or you take a look at 2000 Mules, you take a look at all of the ballot stuffing that’s on tape, you take a look at the fact that the legislatures didn’t approve a lot of the things that were done in the elections, and they had to approve. And we could go on forever. We could go on forever. But, but no. I want somebody that’s going to be strong, respected, tough, and fair.”
Picking one lie out of the torrent Trump unleashed, Welker told the former president, “The ballot stuffing — that’s something that’s been debunked… You know Republican officials and top law enforcement officials, they have told you that that’s debunked.”
As for Trump’s claim that the documentary, 2000 Mules, produced by right-wing figure Dinesh D’Souza is a smoking gun for election rigging, the allegations in the film have been repeatedly debunked.
Trump also lied about the price of bacon, claiming, “Things are not going right now very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times. Food is up horribly — worse than energy.”
This is a gross exaggeration. Yes, bacon prices are up, as is the cost of most food due to rising inflation. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of bacon per pound in U.S. cities has risen by 12 percent since Trump left office. The price of bacon did briefly increase by 30 percent at one point during 2022, but it has since gone down, and it never came close to doubling in price, let alone by a multiple of five. Trump did not lie, though, about food costs rising faster than energy costs. Since last August, energy prices are down, whereas food prices have risen by 4.3 percent.
Trump also claimed that some people being prosecuted for crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection “never even went into the [Capitol] building, and they’re being given sentences of many years.”
This statement completely ignores that some of these individuals who did not enter the Capitol are leaders like Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, both of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Rhodes, along with other Oath Keepers, had a stashed caches of weapons in various hotels outside Washington. Tarrio, on the other hand, was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 because he was arrested days before the attack on an unrelated charge and was ordered to leave the city, but he still directed his allies on the ground from Baltimore. Others who did not enter the Capitol have been prosecuted for violent crimes committed on Jan. 6 that occurred just outside or near the Capitol building.
When the conversation turned to immigration, Trump alleged that “there were “millions of illegal immigrants coming into our country, flooding our cities, flooding the countryside.”
“I think the number is going to be 15 million people by the time you end this, by the end of this year,” he said. “I think the real number is going to be 15 million people.”
If the 15 million figure were true, it would mean that in a single year the U.S. will have more than doubled the total number of undocumented immigrants — 11.4 million — estimated to be in the entire country. According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the agency apprehended or denied entry to 2.7 million people in fiscal year 2022, and so far in 2023, that number is 2.5 million — a far cry from Trump’s alleged 15 million. It’s also worth noting that since President Joe Biden implemented new asylum restrictions this past spring, undocumented border crossings have sharply decreased.
But, if we know anything about Donald Trump, it’s that he never lets the truth get in the way of a whopping lie.
