On January 20, 2026, Donald Trump completed the first year of his second term in office. And by our account — and most would agree — it’s been a chaotic and tumultuous time. The US president has upended the world order and paid little heed to America’s allies.
To mark this moment, Trump held a nearly two-hour-long press briefing to recount his accomplishments. He started the briefing by showing a stack of photos of people who had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, the site of large-scale raids and counter-protests as well as the fatal shooting of an American citizen by an ICE agent.
He then proceeded to highlight policies he’s put in place since taking office in January 2025. He sometimes stuck to the prepared text, but often digressed into related and unrelated issues, occasionally repeating remarks more than once.
The US president also touched on a number of hot-button issues, including his pursuit of Greenland, tensions with Nato allies and his “Board of Peace” in Gaza. When asked how far he’s willing to go to acquire Greenland, the US president said, “You’ll find out.”
Along his meandering and grievance-filled speech, Trump also resorted to making several false claims on topics such as the 2020 election, America’s foreign policy, the economy and energy.
Trump and the American economy
When it comes to the US economy, the US president made several false claims on inflation and unemployment figures.
Trump said: “Everyone said, ‘Oh tariffs will cause inflation. We have no inflation. We have very little inflation.” The US president claimed that prices of “many of the groceries have come way down.”
However, the figures don’t add up. Overall grocery prices have increased by 1.9 per cent, according to the Consumer Price Index figures, and far more grocery products have gotten more expensive than have gotten cheaper.
Trump also said that inflation was at a historic high when he came to power, noting: “We had never had inflation like that. They say 48 years. But whether it’s 48 years or ever, we had the highest inflation, in my opinion, that we’ve ever had.”
But, inflation was three per cent in January 2025, when Trump took office. That is far from the “worst” recorded — inflation was much higher in the 1980s, when it topped 14 per cent. The rate declined slightly to 2.7 per cent in December, the most recent month with available data.
The US president also repeated a false claim that “$18 trillion” is being invested in the US because he was elected, adding, “Now it’s probably more than that.” The $18 trillion figure is fiction. While Trump was speaking, the White House website pegged the investment figure at $9.6 trillion, which many call an exaggeration too, as this figure includes pledges that may not see fruition.
Bizarrely, Trump also claimed that his tariffs brought a decline of 400 to 600 per cent in drug prices. A 100 per cent decline would mean that the product is free.
Trump and immigration
On immigration, Trump said his administration was prioritising deporting criminals. “We’re focused on the murderers, the drug dealers,” he said. In his first year Trump has deported somewhere between 300,000 to 600,000 people.
However, as the Trump administration hasn’t published detailed deportation data, it’s unclear how many of those deported had any criminal history. According to a Politifact report, 74 per cent of the nearly 70,000 immigrants in immigration detention have no criminal convictions.
Moreover, the US president signed off on a series of military strikes against boats and the capture of the ousted president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, on the premise that his government was flooding the United States with deadly drugs. However, Trump has yet to produce substantial evidence to back this claim.
Also, as Jeremy McDermott and Steven Dudley, the co-founders of InSight Crime, a Latin America crime and security think tank, wrote in a recent post that while the military strikes had likely disrupted some drug routes, the campaign had not halted trafficking altogether. “This has not stopped the flow of drugs; it simply forced traffickers to use different routes and modus operandi,” they wrote.
Trump and wars
Through his first year in his second term, Donald Trump has insisted that he’s been a peacemaker, bringing an end to eight wars across the world. On Tuesday, he reiterated this claim, saying that he resolved eight wars around the world. “I saved millions of people. So that to me is the big thing.”
Most analysts believe that the eight wars — from Gaza to India and Pakistan — is an exaggerated figure. For instance, he claims to have mediated in the India and Pakistan conflict that broke out in May last year. However, India has time and again denied Trump’s claims, saying there was no conversation between the US and India on trade in regards to the ceasefire.
Another war that Trump claims to have resolved is one between Egypt and Ethiopia. However, that wasn’t actually a war; it is a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River.
Trump’s list also includes an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting erupted again in December despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in the year.
The Associated Press notes that there is far more work that remains before any declaration of an end to the war in Israel’s war in Gaza and although Trump is credited with ending the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, this can be seen as a temporary respite from an ongoing cold war.
Trump and the elections
During his speech, Trump also repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, saying former President Joe Biden was “a man that didn’t win the election, by the way – it was a rigged election, everybody knows that now. And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly. We caught him. We caught him”.
This is a lie and has been disproven time and time again. In the 2020 US presidential elections, Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. He also won over seven million more popular votes than Trump.
And while Trump has lauded his ‘accomplishments’ in his first year, the American public isn’t all that enthused about his time in power. His approval ratings are hovering around 40 per cent in public polls, with some variance as high as 45 per cent but as low as 39 per cent.
It’s left to be seen what’s in store for America and the world as Trump embarks on his second year in power.
With inputs from agencies
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