FactChecking Trump's "60 Minutes" Interview
On Sunday evening, CBS News' “60 Minutes” aired an interview with President Donald Trump, posting a longer hour-plus video online along with the transcript from the full conversation correspondent Norah O'Donnell had with Trump. Several members of our staff fact-checked it.
As we wrote, Trump made false and questionable claims about nuclear weapons testing, inflation and military strikes in the Caribbean Sea. He also repeated numerous misleading claims he has made before on a range of topics — the Insurrection Act, ending wars, federal indictments, the autopen, aid to Ukraine and the 2020 election.
The president justified telling the Pentagon “to start testing” U.S. nuclear weapons by misleadingly saying that “other countries are testing.” Trump said: "We’re the only country that doesn’t test, and … I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test.”
Russia recently tested two nuclear-capable weapons, but that's not equivalent to testing an exploding nuclear bomb. North Korea is the only country to do a nuclear weapon test explosion this century. And the U.S. Energy Department says its National Nuclear Security Administration already periodically tests the “safety, security, reliability, and effectiveness of America’s nuclear warheads” with “subcritical experiments” that don’t require explosive testing.
Inflation came up several times throughout the interview. Trump falsely said that “we don’t have inflation. It’s at 2%.” The Consumer Price Index rose 3% year-over-year in September. And grocery prices have gone up, not down, as Trump said.
He did not inherit “the worst inflation rate” in U.S. history, as he also said. Inflation did rise substantially during the first half of President Joe Biden’s term, but it was never the worst in history — and the annualized inflation rate was below 3% for the six months before Trump returned to the White House.
For more on these and other claims, read our full story, “FactChecking Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ Interview.”
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