Trump holds 104-minute White House briefing marking first-year anniversary, fact-checkers find multiple false claims

Trump held a 104-minute speech in the White House press room on Jan. 20, 2026, followed by questions from reporters for another hour and 20 minutes. He started by displaying a stack of photos of people arrested by ICE in Minneapolis, then proceeded to highlight policies from his first year while often digressing into unrelated issues and occasionally repeating remarks. White House press aides distributed a press release titled '365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump's Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity.' Trump had a printed copy in his hands when he stepped up to the microphone.

Trump claimed the U.S. has 'secured a record-breaking $18 trillion in commitments for new investments.' The White House website since mid-November has shown a figure of $9.6 trillion, not $18 trillion. Experts cautioned PolitiFact that some of the $9.6 trillion in pledges may not come to fruition and others are unrealistically large compared to the gross domestic product of the countries involved. This means Trump doubled the already-inflated figure on the White House website.

Trump said gasoline is 'at $1.99 in many states.' In the second week of January 2026, the average price per gallon nationally was $2.78, compared with $3.11 in January 2025. No state has seen its average price fall below $2. The lowest average price in any state in mid-January was $2.34 per gallon in 🛢️Oklahoma. Only four states (🏔️Colorado, Oklahoma, 🤠Texas, and 🦬Wyoming) had at least seven gas stations selling gasoline for less than $2 on Jan. 20, according to Gas Buddy, and a handful of other states had between one and four stations selling gas under $2.

Trump claimed that under President Biden, 'one out of four jobs added was a government job.' This is exaggerated. Over four years, the economy added more than 16 million jobs, of which about 1.8 million were federal, state, or local government positions. That's about 11% of the total, not 25%. Trump inflated the government job percentage by more than double.

On the economy, Trump said, 'Everyone said, oh tariffs will cause inflation. We have no inflation. We have very little inflation.' For Trump's one-year anniversary, fact-checkers looked at a wide range of price data for the past year and found that overall prices are still increasing, although some specific items such as eggs and gasoline have seen price declines. Inflation hasn't disappeared, it has moderated from previous highs.

On immigration, Trump said his administration was prioritizing deporting criminals: 'We're focused on the murderers, the drug dealers.' In his first year, Trump has deported somewhere between 300,000 to 600,000 people. The administration hasn't published detailed deportation data, so it's unclear how many had criminal histories. But about 74% of the nearly 70,000 immigrants in immigration detention have no criminal convictions. This contradicts Trump's claim about prioritizing criminals.

Trump spent more than 189 hours on camera over the past year across 588 public events, according to Factba.se database analysis. That's 2.1% of the year. He spoke 1,974,082 words in public, more than twice the number of published words by Shakespeare. Trump made 6,563 Truth Social posts over the 12-month period, a new post every 80 minutes and 5 seconds on average. These figures don't include his 43 social media posts as of 4 p.m. on Jan. 20 or the 105-minute, 15,648-word news conference that afternoon.

During the briefing, Trump also claimed he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for each war he ended, blamed Norway's government for the Nobel Committee's decisions (though Norway's leader stressed the committee is independent), and discussed foreign policy topics including Greenland, his 'Board of Peace' for Gaza reconstruction, and Venezuela. He took questions from both mainstream media organizations like ABC News and Associated Press, as well as reporters from right-wing organizations who were quick to compliment him.