Fact-Checking
What Donald Trump Said in His 2024 Person of the Year Interview With TIME
By Simmone Shah and Leslie
Dickstein
December 11, 2024 7:44 AM EST
For the 2024 Person of the Year issue, former and future
President Donald Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with TIME on Nov. 25 at
his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.
TIME has published the transcript of that conversation. In addition,
below is a review for facts and context of several of Trump’s statements from
the interview.
What Trump Said: “I
was saying it could be 21 million people. They were saying a much lesser
number, but it wasn't a much lesser number. But even if it was, it was
irrelevant, because it was—they were allowing anybody to come into our
country.”
The Facts: Trump was
referring to how the undocumented population has grown under President Biden.
There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United
States.
International and domestic laws require the U.S. to offer asylum to those
who fear persecution in their country of origin; asylum seekers must prove
their life or liberty is at risk, usually through interviews and in immigration
court, and receive a background check. The Department of Homeland Security removed and
returned more than 700,000 people in fiscal year 2024, the highest number for
any fiscal year since 2010. A recent New York Times analysis found
that the immigration surge of the past few years—both those entering legally
and illegally—has been the largest in U.S. history, and that total net
migration during the Biden Administration will likely exceed eight million
people.
What Trump Said: "I
won it in 2016 on the border, and I fixed the border, and it was really fixed,
and they came in, and they just dislodged everything that I did, and it became
far worse than it was in 2016."
“I had the most secure border we've ever had, and I never had to go
to Congress for that.”
The Facts: Trump has often asserted that he
fixed the border during his first term, at times pointing to his expansion of
the border wall. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 450
miles of “new primary and secondary border miles” constructed on the Southwest
border between January 2017 and January 2021. Much of that construction was
built to replace “dilapidated and outdated designs.” About 80 miles of primary
and secondary barriers were built where no previous barrier existed.
Apprehension numbers at the border provide another metric, but there’s
disagreement over whether an effective border strategy should translate to a
high apprehension rate or a low one. ICE arrests increased during Trump’s previous
term, but they did not reach the levels seen under Obama. Southwest border
encounters hit a record high last year, but dropped 77% by August 2024. The
spike in migrants seen early in Biden’s term began in the spring of 2020,
during Trump’s final year, according to Politifact.
Trump also did appeal to Congress for help with border enforcement. In
his first year in office, he addressed the nation about the immigration crisis,
calling on Congress to secure the border, and later asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency
border funding.
What Trump Said: “The
autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at
things that are happening, there's something causing it."
The Facts: Trump made this comment while
discussing vaccines. The false claim that there’s a link between vaccines and
autism traces back to a retracted study from the 1990s. Even though that study
has been widely debunked and refuted, and modern studies continue to
consistently show that shots are safe, the idea that vaccines are linked to
autism persists, without evidence, among some vaccine skeptics.
While it’s true that autism is diagnosed much more frequently now than in
the past, it is not because vaccines are causing the condition. Researchers
have explored possible reasons for that uptick, including rising parental ages and environmental triggers. But much of the increase,
research suggests, stems from changes
to diagnostic criteria, widespread awareness of the condition, and improvements in screening. Detection jumps have been particularly steep among children
of color, girls, and young adults, all of whom have historically been diagnosed
less frequently.
Read more: 'There's Something Causing It.' Trump Draws False Link
Between Vaccines and Autism in TIME Interview
What Trump Said: "Look,
if you look at the 13,000 plus, 13,099 which was issued by border patrol, they
said those people were murderers, and they allowed them into our
country."
The Facts: Trump is
likely referring to a Dept. of Homeland Security letter sent to Representative Tony Gonzalez, a
Texas Republican, in September. The letter states that there were 13,099
noncitizens convicted of homicide on ICE’s “non-detained” docket as of July
2024. That figure includes people who were incarcerated, but not held at that
time by immigration authorities. A DHS spokesperson told CNN that the 13,099 figure “includes many who are
under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law
enforcement partners.” Additionally, she said, “the data goes back decades; it
includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or
more.”
What Trump Said: "It
wasn't my policy. It was Obama's policy. I didn't build the jail cells for
children. He did. If you look at the 2014."
The Facts: Trump was responding to a
question about his border policy in 2017 and 2018 of separating
children from parents or guardians with whom they arrived. The Obama
Administration did hold undocumented migrants in detention
facilities, though it did not systematically separate families. From late 2013 to mid-2014, a surge of unaccompanied
minors from violence-torn Central America arrived in the U.S. After border
detention cells in McAllen, Texas, filled to capacity, border patrol agents
placed immigrant families in “sally port” areas outside of the detention
centers. Amid an outcry over the dismal conditions, the government converted a
nearby empty warehouse into a new holding facility.
What Trump Said: “By
the way, when you talk about separation, we have 325,000 children here during
Democrats. And this was done by Democrats who are right now slaves, sex slaves
or dead, and they were allowed.”
The Facts: There is no evidence that
325,000 immigrant children are slaves, sex slaves, or dead. These numbers
likely refer to an August 2024 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector
General stating that the government failed to “monitor the
location and status of unaccompanied migrant children” after they were released
from government custody. That report covered a period from October 2018 to
September 2023, which includes more than half of Trump’s first term. According
to the report, some 320,000 unaccompanied migrant children did not receive a
notice to appear in immigration court, or they received a notice but did not
make their court appearance. Experts say this doesn’t necessarily mean the
children are “missing” or exploited. Rather, this is likely a bureaucratic
failing. Nevertheless, the report says, children who are unaccounted for
are at higher risk for trafficking,
exploitation, or forced labor.
What Trump Said: “Why
is it that in Portland and in many other places, Minneapolis—Why is it that
nothing happened with them and they actually caused death and destruction at
levels not seen before? So you know, if you take a look at what happened in
Seattle, you had people die, you had a lot of death, and nothing happened, and
these people have been treated really, really badly.”
The Facts: Trump is comparing those jailed
for involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to protesters
who broke laws following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in May
2020.
The Justice Dept. reports that “more than 1,265
defendants have been charged” in the Jan. 6 riot, and "approximately 718
individuals have pleaded guilty to federal charges, many of whom faced or will
face incarceration at sentencing.”
In 2021, the Associated Press reviewed thousands of pages of
court documents in hundreds of federal cases connected to the George Floyd
protests. The investigation found that “dozens of people charged have
been convicted of serious crimes and sent to prison.”
The comparison between how law enforcement handled the Capitol riot and
the Floyd protests is flawed, Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College
Law School told the AP in 2021. “The property damage or
accusations of arson and looting from [the George Floyd protests], those were
serious and they were dealt with seriously, but they weren’t an attack on the
very core constitutional processes that we rely on in a democracy, nor were
they an attack on the United States Congress.”
What Trump Said: “They
don't want to see all of this transgender, which is, it's just taken over. And
then you take a look, and not very many years after the person who, you know,
went through this process is saying, Who did this to me? As
you know, it's a very high percentage.”
The Facts: A 2021 review of 27 studies involving nearly 8,000
transgender teens and adults who underwent any kind of “gender-affirmation
surgeries” found that an average of 1% expressed regret. In October, a study
published in JAMA Pediatrics found that the majority of
transgender youths who received gender-affirming medical care such as puberty
blockers or hormones are satisfied with their care. Of the 220 youths surveyed,
only 4% expressed regret.
What Trump Said: “They
don't want to see their their food prices go up by 57% in a short period of
time. And I think that's why I won.”
The Facts: Polls found
that the economy was the top issue for voters in the election, with many
feeling the impact of higher prices that economists say were largely due to
supply chain disruptions amid the COVID-19 pandemic and global conflicts like
the war in Ukraine. Since President Biden took office in January 2021, grocery
prices have increased by about 20%, according to the USDA’s Consumer Price
Index.
What Trump Said: “I
passed the biggest tax cuts ever, bigger than the Reagan tax cuts.”
The Facts: During his
first term, Trump passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, sweeping tax cuts that
overhauled the federal tax code. That legislation temporarily cut personal
income and estate taxes and permanently reduced the corporate tax rate from 35%
to 21%.
At the time of its passing, and in the years since, Trump has referred to
the TCJA as the biggest tax cuts ever. But it was not the largest tax cut in
American history. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that
Trump’s tax cut was the eighth largest since 1918, as measured by percent
of GDP. However, Trump’s corporate tax cut, which lowered the corporate tax
rate from 35% to 21%, is considered the largest corporate tax
cut in U.S. history—larger than Regan’s corporate tax cut, which reduced the
rate from 46% to 34%.
What Trump Said: “We
had 107,000 when we had the memorial a few weeks later”
The Facts: Trump has
repeatedly claimed that over 100,000 people attended his October rally in
Butler. Pa., which was held after an assassination attempt on him during a July
rally.
Newsweek conducted a fact-check of the claim,
using photos from the site, crowd-mapping software, and expert analysis. They
found that, if every part of the venue was packed in, the site could still only
hold 94,000 people. Photos from the event show tents and seats would have
further limited the crowd size. Experts told the publication that the number of
attendees was likely closer to 30,000, a figure consistent with an estimate
reported by CBS.
What Trump Said: “I
thought it was a wrong poll, because we had an Emerson poll that had us up 18,
you know.”
The Facts: Trump was referring to a poll
just before Election Day that showed Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa. While
Emerson College never had Trump ahead over Harris by 18 points, a Des
Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll from June found Trump ahead of President Joe
Biden by 18 points.
What Trump Said: "When 60 Minutes interviews my opponent—and that's a
news program, that's their most important news program—and she gave a really
horrible answer, that was a bad answer, and they took that answer and replaced
it, and this is her speaking, and they replaced it with another answer from a
half an hour later in the interview that had nothing to do, but it was a much
better answer, that's really dishonest."
The Facts: In October, 60 Minutes issued a statement debunking Trump’s claim that they had
deceitfully edited their interview with Harris. The show says that they gave an
excerpt of their interview to another CBS show, Face the
Nation, which “used a longer section of her answer than that
on 60 Minutes.”
“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie
star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point,” the show said in the
statement. “The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was
more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging
21-minute-long segment.”
What Trump Said: "And
the beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive. Somebody had 129
years in terms of the overall mandate."
The Facts: Trump won both the popular vote
and the Electoral College by a clear margin, but it was not the largest margin
in 129 years. Trump won 312 of the 538 Electoral College votes, more than the
306 Joe Biden won in 2020 and more than George W. Bush’s electoral wins in 2000
and 2004. However, Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in
2012, and Reagan won 525 electoral votes in a true landslide in 1984.
What Trump Said:
"I did interviews with, if I had the time, anybody that would ask, I'd do
interviews."
The Facts: Trump backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes during his campaign, in part over the
show’s fact-checking process. He also said he needed an apology from the show
following his interview in 2020, saying that, during the interview,
correspondent Lesley Stahl said that Hunter Biden's controversial laptop came
from Russia. (Stahl did not say that, according to CBS.)
In the final months of his campaign, Trump prioritized interviews with
podcasts over mainstream media, appearing on podcasts like Theo Vonn’s, “This
Past Weekend” and “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
—With reporting by Eric Cortellessa and Jamie
Ducharme
