The King's Speech

On Tuesday, March 4th President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress.  I do not begrudge our President the opportunity to take a victory lap; particularly on the heels of six busy weeks of cabinet hearings, executive orders, reductions in force, court hearings, spending freezes, tariffs followed by pauses, starts and follow-up pauses of the the latter.

The speech was exceedingly long however; meaning the volume of dubious claims or lies was target-rich.  Nothing new under the sun; nevertheless, worthy of truthful daylight.  Consequently, from time to time one of more of the King's gems will be featured here.

Enjoy. 

“We have had $1.7 trillion of new investment in America in just the past few weeks.”

This is a spurious figure, and Trump frequently takes false credit.  Most of this claim comes from statements by Apple ($500 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($600 billion). But Apple has a practice of making this sort of announcement after the installation of a new president.  In 2018, Apple announced it would contribute $350 billion to the US economy over five years; it made a similar commitment in 2021 during the Biden administration. The most recent announcement mostly overlaps with the latter 2021 announcement.

As for Saudi Arabia, who knows.  Word is that this was floated in a phone call between Trump and the Saudi leader.  In 2017, Trump claimed Saudi Arabia had struck $350 billion in deals.  Yet, after further inspection and analysis we learned that the "deal" was a haphazard collection of magical wishful thinking, fuzzy math and double counting.  In the end almost all of the investment occurred in Saudi Arabia - no the United States.

The president also talked-up a $100 billion investment in AI data centers; truthfully, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman had launched the Stargate deal almost a year before Trump was inaugurated.  

Finally, a $100 billion investment announced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was originated by former president Biden and included funds from the Chips and Science Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that passed in 2022.

So yeah, wink wink, tall tales and don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain.