Fact-checking the Republican midterm convention night 1
By CNN Staff
(CNN) — President Donald Trump made numerous false claims in his Wednesday speech at the Republican midterm convention.
Here is a fact check of some of them:
Investment in the US
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump repeated his false claim that there has been “over $20 trillion” invested in the US during his second term so far.
That figure is fiction, as we noted when he has made the same or similar claims on numerous previous occasions. The White House has never been able to substantiate it.
As Trump said it this time, the White House’s own website claimed there had been “$11.2 trillion” in “major investment announcements” this term, not “over $20 trillion,” and even the White House figure was a major exaggeration of actual investment. A detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges – pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US – and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.
The White House figure includes pledges from US-based companies as well as foreign entities. Federal data shows that new foreign direct investment in the US was about $232 billion in 2025.
When CNN asked the White House in early September for any evidence for the “$20 trillion” figure, spokesperson Kush Desai emailed a reply without any such evidence. Instead, Desai returned to the Trump team’s standard practice of declaring that “President Trump is right” even about Trump claims the team can’t corroborate.
“President Trump is right: business leaders from across the world and across industries are lining up to invest in the United States thanks to the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda,” Desai said.
Trump and elections
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump lied again that he has won three presidential elections, saying, “We won the presidency three times.” He won twice, in 2016 and 2024, and lost once, in 2020.
Migration under Biden and Trump
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump repeated his usual false claim that “25 million” migrants entered the country during the Biden administration. The “25 million” figure is false; even Trump’s previous “21 million” figure was a wild exaggeration. Through December 2024, the last full month of the Biden administration, the federal government had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country. Even adding in the so-called “gotaways” who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was even close to what Trump has said.
Trump also claimed that “zero illegal aliens have entered our country from the southern border in the last 15 months; zero.” This is an exaggeration.
US Customs and Border Protection said in August that the authorities hadn’t released any migrants into the country over the 15 months ending in July after encountering these migrants crossing the border. But it’s clear that some migrants evaded authorities to cross the border illegally during that 15-month period, though it appears the number of “gotaways” was much smaller than it was during the Biden administration. NewsNation reported in May 2026 that “the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement issued to NewsNation that the number of ‘gotaways’ has dropped by 86% in the first half of 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025” – a major decline, but not a decline to zero.
Migrants and murder
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
After denouncing the Biden administration on immigration, Trump claimed that Democrats allowed “11,888 murderers” to enter the country. It’s not true that the Biden administration in particular or Democrats in general allowed in all these murderers; as he has on numerous prior occasions, Trump was inaccurately describing federal data.
The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that the figure it appears Trump is referring to is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences.
You can read more here.
Other GOP speakers
Some of the other speakers at the Wednesday convention also made false or misleading claims. Here is a fact check of some of their remarks:
Scalise’s false claim that Democrats just voted to allow illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise claimed in his convention speech, “Just last week, Democrats voted to allow illegals to vote in our federal elections.”
That’s not true. There was no congressional vote last week on whether to change the law that makes it illegal for non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in federal elections.
Scalise was referring to the House vote last week on a non-binding Republican resolution – not a law – that included five separate statements. The first said the House “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms.” The third “reiterates the notion that American elections are for American citizens only.” The fifth calls for the passage of Trump’s favored elections bill, the SAVE America Act, which contains various provisions opposed by many Democrats.
The vast majority of Democrats voted “no,” but they could have done so for numerous reasons other than wanting undocumented immigrants to be able to vote. Again, nothing in the resolution would have changed voting law.
Some GOP speakers take Democratic quotes out of context
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Some speakers took quotes from Democratic midterm candidates out of context.
On Troy Jackson: Sen. Tim Scott said Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson “said he would’ve run as a communist.” But Jackson wasn’t expressing any support for communism. Rather, he was making a joke while trying to explain in 2017 why he used to be a Republican politician.
Jackson said he had just wanted to get into the state legislature any way he could in order to fix local problems. In what even the conservative New York Post described as a joke, Jackson added, “I would’ve ran as anything, I would’ve ran as a communist.” The Post reported that the comment was greeted with laughs.
On James Talarico: Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico “says he would lay out a welcome mat at our southern border.” Talarico has frequently spoken of laying out a border “welcome mat,” but Barrasso left out the second, more conservative part of Talarico’s favored two-part immigration metaphor; Talarico keeps saying the border should be like a front porch with “a welcome mat out front and a lock on the door.”
Here’s how Talarico explains the comment on his website: “We can both welcome the stranger – refugees, asylum seekers, and folks who want to contribute to our economy and pursue the American dream – and we can keep people out who mean to do us harm.”
Trump didn’t achieve ‘no tax on Social Security’
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby
Several convention speakers, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Reps. Monica De La Cruz and Brandon Gill of Texas, repeated President Donald Trump’s frequent claim that he achieved “no tax on Social Security.” He didn’t.
The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (which phases out for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but as the White House has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits even before the temporary new deduction expires after 2028.
The Social Security Administration said in 2025 that “the bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.”
Fact check: Ossoff voted for the Laken Riley Act
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia is running for Senate against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. In Collins’ speech to the convention, he blasted Ossoff for allegedly declining to help him pass a bill named after Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant in 2024.
“I sat in Jon Ossoff’s office and demanded that he help America remember the name of our shared constituent. But no, he wouldn’t lift a finger to help me. He forgot her name until it was politically convenient,” Collins said.
We can’t be certain what happened between the two behind the scenes. But Collins didn’t make clear in the speech that Ossoff voted for the bill.
In July, Collins falsely claimed Ossoff voted against the bill. Collins didn’t go that far on Wednesday, but he also didn’t explicitly acknowledge Ossoff ended up joining him on the proposal.
This article will be updated with additional items.
CNN’s Deja Oliver and Isa Mudannayake contributed to this report.
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