Fact check: What were the most frequent topics of Trump's false claims during his last term?

1. The recurring drumbeat: Election fraud claims dominated the airwaves

Across the fact‑checking compilations, claims that the 2024 election was “stolen” or rigged appear as the dominant and most persistent theme, repeated in dozens of instances and forming the backbone of other falsehoods. The Washington Post tracker counted a dramatic rise in false or misleading statements over Trump’s presidency, with the highest daily rates in his final year, and many of those later statements focused on election integrity and mail‑in voting irregularities ^{[1] [4]}. Independent summaries of Trump’s second presidency also catalog the same pattern: election‑fraud narratives were central, with repeated assertions about illegal mail‑in voting and mass theft of votes that lack credible evidence ^{[2] [5]}. Fact checks published in late 2025 continue to treat election integrity as a top category of false claims, underlining that repetition and volume made these claims a pervasive theme ^[3].

2. Border alarms and immigrant numbers: Exaggeration became a political weapon

A second major cluster of falsehoods involved immigration and border crossings, where numbers and policy claims were routinely inflated or mischaracterized. Fact‑checks in 2025 highlight repeated overstatements about the number of people entering the U.S., threats of mass deportations, and references to a nonexistent birthright‑citizenship ban—each claim presented as factual despite contrary data from border agencies and independent analysts ^{[3] [2]}. Media analyses from October 2025 noted multiple instances where Trump gave higher figures for crossings and misattributed policies to the Biden administration, creating a consistent narrative of a border “crisis” that fact‑checkers found unsupported ^[3]. These repeated misstatements functioned politically to frame immigration as an existential threat, even as official metrics and experts painted a more complex picture ^[5].

3. Crime and city chaos: Portland and the “burning” cities storyline

Public‑safety claims formed another recognizable theme, with exaggerations about crime rates and dramatic depictions of cities like Portland “burning down.” Multiple fact checks in October 2025 debunked statements asserting widespread arson or collapse in urban areas, pointing instead to localized incidents and stable or declining crime trends in many metropolitan areas ^{[6] [5]}. The pattern shows a rhetorical amplification of isolated events into narratives of nationwide lawlessness, often paired with claims about DC or other cities having zero crime or being under siege—statements inconsistent with police reports and public‑safety datasets ^[2]. These falsehoods served to justify hardline policy prescriptions while obscuring the actual local context and data trends.

4. Health misinformation: Vaccines, abortion drugs and persistent falsehoods

Health and medical claims were a persistent category, especially misinformation about COVID‑19 vaccines, alleged links to autism, and the safety or legality of abortion drugs. Fact‑checking repositories catalog numerous repeated false assertions across 2024–2025 that contradict public‑health findings and regulatory statements ^{[5] [2]}. Coverage of Trump’s public statements to troops and audiences included problematic health claims alongside other fabrications, and fact‑checkers in 2025 flagged these as both frequent and potentially harmful due to public‑health consequences ^{[3] [5]}. The repetition of health falsehoods mirrors the broader pattern: topics of high public salience were targeted repeatedly, magnifying misinformation effects even when individual claims were reliably debunked.

5. Economics and foreign‑policy boasts: Big numbers, bigger distortions

Economic and foreign‑policy claims rounded out the frequent topics; these included inflated investment figures, exaggerated job‑creation claims, and invented diplomatic achievements or threats. Analysts documented assertions of improbable investments like “$17 trillion,” dramatic tariff outcomes, and overstated cuts to drug prices—claims inconsistent with economic data and government accounting ^[5]. On foreign policy and military matters, statements about ending wars, invoking the Insurrection Act, or overstating threats from other nations were fact‑checked repeatedly in 2025, revealing a mix of historical inaccuracies and policy misrepresentations ^{[7] [5]}. The consistency across sources shows a tactical use of big, attention‑grabbing numbers and claims to shape perceptions, even when those claims were easily quantified and disproven.

6. What the pattern means: Frequency, sources, and media timelines

Comparing the sources shows agreement on topics and rising frequency: The Washington Post count through January 2021 documented a huge volume of falsehoods with acceleration into later years, and coverage from 2024–2025 confirms topic concentration on elections, immigration, crime, health, and economics ^{[1] [2]}. CNN fact checks from October 2025 examined specific claims about the Insurrection Act, troop speeches, and urban unrest, illustrating how individual narratives fit the larger pattern ^{[7] [3] [6]}. Across timelines and outlets, the evidence is consistent: Trump’s last term featured repeated false claims clustered in a few high‑impact topics, with fact‑checkers and trackers from 2021 through 2025 documenting both escalation in frequency and strategic reuse of the same thematic claims ^{[4] [5]}.