Fact check: Trump won’t stop telling a lie that there were no terror attacks during his presidency

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — During his presidency, Donald Trump talked repeatedly about the terrorist attacks that occurred in the United States on his watch.

He sometimes denounced these attacks in vivid detail. In his 2018 State of the Union address, he spoke of “two terrorist attacks in New York” in “recent weeks.” He visited Pittsburgh and El Paso after terror attacks there. He invited survivors of a California attack to the White House.

Now, though, he keeps saying he presided over no terror attacks at all.

Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump has lied that there were zero terror attacks during his presidency. He delivered a slightly vaguer version of the claim in his campaign announcement speech in 2022, made the claim explicit by 2023, repeated it at the CNN presidential debate in June, and said it again at a campaign rally on Monday.

“We didn’t have one terror attack during my administration,” he said at the rally in Pennsylvania.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. There were numerous terror attacks during his presidency, including high-profile jihadist attacks in his hometown of New York City. Terror attacks under Trump killed dozens of people.

An Islamic extremist murdered eight people in an October 2017 terrorist attack in New York City, which the extremist carried out in support of the terror group ISIS. Trump spoke repeatedly as president about the horrors of this attack, calling the perpetrator an “animal” and lamenting how surviving victims suffered severe injuries.

In December 2017, another ISIS supporter set off a bomb in the New York City subway system, injuring people nearby. Trump issued a written statement denouncing this attack, noting it was “the second terror attack in New York in the last two months.”

Trump’s Justice Department found that a 2019 attack by an extremist member of Saudi Arabia’s military, which killed three US servicemembers and injured others at a military base in Florida, “was motivated by jihadist ideology” and was carried out by a longtime “associate” of al Qaeda. Trump commented on this attack the day it happened.

Other terror attacks under Trump

There were a variety of other terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency. Here are just some of them.

In 2018, a White nationalist carried out the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the US, murdering 11 people and wounding six others in a shooting attack at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; Trump visited the synagogue in the aftermath. A 2019 terror attack on a California synagogue by another White nationalist left one dead and three injured; Trump publicly addressed this attack and then honored survivors at the White House.

A White nationalist pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, along with other charges, for killing a Black man in New York City in 2017 to try to start a race war. The perpetrator himself called the murder a “terrorist attack.”

Also in 2017, an anti-Republican extremist attacked Republican lawmakers and others who were practicing in Virginia for the annual charity congressional baseball game, shooting then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three others. The chief state prosecutor for the area described the attack as “an act of terrorism.”

Trump’s Justice Department described a White nationalist’s 2019 shooting massacre at a Walmart in Texas, which killed 23 people and injured 22 more, as “an act of domestic terrorism.” The killer was targeting Latinos.

And Trump’s Justice Department said it was a “domestic terrorist attack” when one of Trump’s supporters mailed improvised explosive devices to CNN, prominent Democratic officials and others in 2018.

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