Trump's imaginary numbers, from $1.99 gas to 1,500 percent price cuts

The president likes to cite specific numbers to bolster his claims. They are often wildly improbable — or just impossible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/27/trump-numbers-statistics-false-misleading/

https://archive.ph/vbOog



President Donald Trump made a promise at a reception last week for Republican lawmakers that was as impossible as it was specific: He would drive down drug prices by as much as 1,500 percent — “numbers that are not even thought to be achievable,” he said. A price cannot drop by more than 100 percent, but Trump went on to make several other precise but clearly false numerical claims.

The cost of gasoline had fallen to $1.99 a gallon in five states, he said; according to AAA, it was over $3 in every state. Businesses had invested $16 trillion in America in the past four months, he added; the entire U.S. economy last year was worth less than $30 trillion. Trump even congratulated Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas A. Collins for having an approval rating of 92 percent. In this polarized moment, it is unlikely any U.S. political figure enjoys a figure close to that, and the White House provided no source for the claim.

Trump is hardly the first politician to toss out figures that wilt under scrutiny. But he attaches precise numbers to his claims with unusual frequency, giving the assertions an air of authority and credibility — yet the numbers often end up being incorrect or not even plausible. The bogus statistics are part of Trump’s long history of falsehoods and misleading claims, which numbered more than 30,000 in his first term alone.

“He uses statistics less as a factual statement of, ‘Here is what the best data says,’ and more as rhetorical construct to sell an idea,” said Robert C. Rowland, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas who has studied Trump’s rhetoric. “I think he uses statistics as something to make whatever he is saying look better. He will choose a statistic based on what he thinks he can credibly say, and frankly, there are not strong limits on that.”

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