Trump’s NATO Summit Remarks Face Scrutiny Over Multiple Inaccuracies
Fact check – During a press conference held Wednesday at the NATO summit in Ankara, President Donald Trump presented yet another collection of statements that do not align with established facts. Several of his comments echoed claims he had previously made and subsequently debunked during his meeting with Turkey’s president on the preceding day. This analysis examines some of the most notable assertions from his Wednesday address.
Investment Figures Under Review
One of Trump’s recurring assertions involves the amount of capital invested in the United States during his current presidency. He stated that “we have $19.2 trillion” invested domestically within a single year of his term. This number lacks factual foundation, as our reporting has documented on multiple occasions when he repeated this same claim.
At the moment Trump made his statement on Wednesday, the White House website itself reported a different figure entirely. According to their own records, there had been “$10.6 trillion” in “major investment announcements” throughout this administration, not the $19.2 trillion Trump cited. Even this White House number represented a significant overstatement of genuine investment activity.
A comprehensive CNN investigation conducted in October revealed that the White House methodology counted trillions of dollars in imprecise investment commitments. Many of these commitments concerned “bilateral trade” or general “economic exchange” rather than direct investment within American borders. Additionally, some of these statements did not even qualify as formal pledges.
The White House calculation encompasses commitments from both domestic corporations and international organizations. However, official federal statistics released last month indicate that new foreign direct investment in the United States totaled approximately $232 billion in 2025—far below the inflated figures being promoted.
Manufacturing Construction Trends
Trump also made bold claims about industrial development, stating: “We have the largest number of plants being built for the most money ever in the history of our country – car plants, AI plants, and all other plants, pharmaceutical plants.”
Government data tells a different story. Spending on manufacturing construction has experienced a steady decline throughout Trump’s second term, following a temporary increase that characterized much of Joe Biden’s presidency. That earlier surge had already diminished by the conclusion of Biden’s term.
Official charts clearly illustrate the downward trajectory in 2025 and 2026. The seasonally adjusted annual rate for manufacturing construction spending reached approximately $174.8 billion in May 2026. This represents a decrease of roughly 28 percent compared to May 2024, the final May under Biden’s administration. The same decline of 28 percent occurred when comparing to December 2024, which marked Biden’s last complete month in office.
Furthermore, the May 2026 figure showed a 26 percent reduction from February 2025—Trump’s first full month as president—and a 22 percent drop from May 2025.
Election and Immigration Claims
Trump revisited his claims regarding the 2020 presidential election, declaring: “I’ve been right about everything, and I have been for a long time. It’s how I got to be president three times. It’s how I won three elections.”
He continued to assert that he “won” the 2020 contest despite characterizing it as a “rigged election.” In reality, Trump has served as president on two separate occasions and has legitimately won two elections. The 2020 race was lost fairly to Biden.
Regarding Venezuela, Trump repeated his assertion about former leader Nicolás Maduro, claiming that Maduro “had people pour into the country from prisons; they opened up their prisons, they allowed them to come in.” Despite numerous requests for documentation from CNN and other news organizations, Trump and his advisors have never substantiated this claim. While Venezuela did experience substantial emigration during the Maduro period due to economic difficulties, violence, and political instability, experts have found no proof that prisons were emptied for migration purposes.
Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, stated in June 2024: “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons or mental health institutions to send them outside the country, in other words, to the US or any other country.”
Similarly, Helen Fair, a global prisons expert at Birkbeck, University of London, told CNN in 2024 that she had “seen absolutely no evidence” that any nation had emptied prisons to relocate prisoners to the United States.
Finally, Trump reiterated his claim about immigration levels, stating there were “25 million people, I think more than that, under Biden” crossing the border. This figure is inaccurate; even his earlier “21 million” estimate was considerably exaggerated. Federal records through December 2024 showed fewer than 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden administration, with millions being quickly expelled. Even accounting for approximately 2.2 million “gotaways” estimated by House Republicans, the total falls well short of Trump’s claims.
