Donald Trump’s UN address was packed with claims that are misleading, false or exaggerated. He said the US has more munitions than it could ever use, despite reports of depleting stocks. He claimed the US and Venezuela hold 60% of the world’s oil, despite the numbers not adding up, and he said he had ended the war in Gaza despite ongoing Israeli strikes and deaths since last year's ceasefire. Vedika Bahl fact-checks the speech in Truth or Fake.
Claim: “We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using, and we’re building them at levels that we have never done before.”
Trump dismissed suggestions that US weapons stocks are running low, calling those who make such claims “cowards and traitors”.He insisted the US has “more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using” and is producing them at unprecedented levels. That claim is misleading.
Published analyses and reporting point to significant pressure on US weapons inventories as the Iran war continues. A May analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that replenishing some of the most heavily used weapons, including Tomahawk missiles and Patriot and THAAD interceptors, could take years.
In July, NBC News, citing senior US officials, reported that US forces were allowing some Iranian attacks through their defences in an effort to preserve dwindling interceptor stocks.
And last month, a US defence and NATO official told the Associated Press that US military stocks in Europe faced a “beyond critical” shortage, largely because of the Iran war.
Claim: “When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60 percent of the oil in the world.”
Trump also made a striking claim about US and Venezuelan oil, saying that combined, the two countries have “more than 60%” of global oil share. But the numbers do not add up.
Based on proven reserves - oil considered recoverable under current economic and operating conditions - the US and Venezuela together account for roughly 21.9% of the global total.
Based on current production, the combined figure is around 23.2%.
Both figures are far below the 60% Trump cited. Venezuela’s damaged oil infrastructure also means that significantly increasing production would take time.
Claim: “A few weeks later, we ended the war in Gaza, saving untold thousands of lives.”
Trump also claimed he had “ended the war in Gaza, saving untold thousands of lives.”
While Trump played a role in brokering the ceasefire announced last October, the claim that the war has ended is disputed by events on the ground.
Israeli military operations and strikes have continued in Gaza, with near-daily reports of further deaths since the ceasefire. Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza also claim that over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire.
Meanwhile, the implementation of the US-backed peace plan remains uncertain. The Board of Peace proposed a $2.45 billion reconstruction blueprint Wednesday, but its implementation is uncertain, almost a year on from the ceasefire.
Claim: “The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming...These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all.”
Trump also dismissed warnings about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence as a “hoax”.
He argued that the people now warning about AI are the same people who previously made predictions about the dangers of climate change.
But concerns about AI risks are not limited to climate activists or critics of the technology, more recently the warnings have come directly from within the AI industry.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for the industry to slow down its development of increasingly powerful AI systems, which was backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Researchers at Anthropic have separately warned that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.
Trump’s suggestion that warnings about AI are simply coming from anti-AI voices leaves out the fact that the loudest warnings of late are coming from within the sector.
