--- title: How Trump Misled on Grocery and Electricity Prices in U.N. Speech description: Trump got easily provable facts wrong in a scripted speech to the United Nations. The White House did not respond to a request to back up his claims canonical: https://time.com/7320280/donald-trump-grocery-prices-electricity-bills/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-09-24T20:50:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T08:11:25.684Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump's U.N. Speech Laid Bare How Numb We All Are to His False Claims og:description: Trump got easily provable facts wrong in his scripted speech to the United Nations. The White House did not respond to a request to back up his claims og:url: https://time.com/7320280/donald-trump-grocery-prices-electricity-bills/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd833118d2069343/6998ca0b66d4e385b3cbcddf/GettyImages-2236943201.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: World Leaders Gather For The 80th Session Of The United Nations General Assembly og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump's U.N. Speech Laid Bare How Numb We All Are to His False Claims twitter:description: Trump got easily provable facts wrong in his scripted speech to the United Nations. The White House did not respond to a request to back up his claims twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd833118d2069343/6998ca0b66d4e385b3cbcddf/GettyImages-2236943201.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump's U.N. Speech Laid Bare How Numb We've All Gotten to His Firehose of False Claims > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=4b3609ba-5984-40e6-a2ea-51f4bff5035f&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Trump Argues Recognition of Palestinian Statehood Encourages ‘Continued Conflict’ During U.N. General Assembly Speech [Watch (HLS stream): Trump Argues Recognition of Palestinian Statehood Encourages ‘Continued Conflict’ During U.N. General Assembly Speech](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yeitXml6.m3u8) (5:40)  _Published 2025-09-23. President Donald Trump took aim at the decision from several countries to recognize Palestinian statehood, arguing that it serves as a "reward" to Hamas during his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, September 23, 2025._  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 24, 2025 8:50 PM UTC President Donald Trump took aim at the decision from several countries to recognize Palestinian statehood, arguing that it serves as a "reward" to Hamas during his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, September 23, 2025.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 24, 2025 8:50 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ In the last leg of the 2012 presidential campaign, the political world seemed to be subsumed by Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s caught-on-tape [observation](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/09/18/161333783/romneys-wrong-and-right-about-the-47-percent) that roughly 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes. The private remark reinforced a sense, even among conservatives, that the wealthy businessman was an out-of-touch elitist who was ready to write-off about half the country as indifferent to his economic agenda. In short, it [confirmed](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/47-percent-republicans-220650) the worst caricature of the former Massachusetts Governor and future Senator from Utah. But here’s the rub: Romney was [factually accurate](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/09/18/161333783/romneys-wrong-and-right-about-the-47-percent) about the statistic, even if his extrapolation that those millions of Americans view themselves as victims deserving of government hand-outs was dubious. Fast forward to this week when President Donald Trump addressed world leaders at the United Nations on Tuesday and straight-up got provable facts wrong. He said “inflation has been defeated.” Nope. He said “grocery prices are down.” Nuh-uh. He said “our \[electricity\] bills are coming way down.” Absolutely not. Objectively, none of this is true. Inflation has been [worsening](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCNS), hitting 2.9% last month compared to a year earlier. Grocery prices are [up](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF11) 2.7% in the same window. And electricity has [jumped](https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/business/power-prices-trump-inflation) 6.2% [Looking](https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/23/trump-un-general-assembly-speech/) back to when Trump took office in January—after campaigning on promising to quickly lower inflation and the cost of living—inflation has held steady, groceries are up 1%, and electricity is up 4.9%. When asked on Wednesday if the President had any facts to back up the claims in his U.N. speech, the White House did not immediately respond. Yet there stood Trump, blending his campaign rally showmanship with fact-free observations and petty asides as the presidents, prime ministers, and top diplomats of dozens of nations sat in mostly silence. He claimed he ended seven wars, some between countries that [insist](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo.amp) they were [not at war](https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/world/seven-unendable-wars-trump-intl). He claimed he has the highest poll numbers ever; public polling says otherwise. He claimed $17 trillion in foreign investments had come into the United States, a massive haul that was almost double the claim the White House made just one day earlier when the number was at $9 trillion (and even that figure is suspect). Those listening to the nearly hour-long speech also heard that Trump signed the largest tax cut in history and that hundreds of thousands of migrant children died or went missing under Biden, just a few of the debunked claims that Trump has been telling on a loop and repeated on Tuesday. Sometimes facts actually don’t matter in politics. Former President Joe Biden presided over an economic turnaround that did not ring true to millions of Americans. Trump preached about an America in decline despite reams of evidence to the contrary. Feelings sometimes have more sway than facts. And much like Biden before him, Trump is finding it difficult to talk his way past the country’s funk. Despite his cocky description of winning and winning and winning, Americans are less happy now than when Trump came back to power; Gallup had 34% of Americans saying they were satisfied with the nation’s direction, while the research firm [published](https://news.gallup.com/poll/695519/mood-subdued-crime-unity-concerns-rise.aspx) numbers this week that put the number back to 29%. Most of that drop off is because of Republicans souring on Trump, down from 76% last month to 68% now. And Trump’s approval rating has gone from 47% in January to 40% now. Put simply: Fewer Americans are buying the image of the nation that Trump is selling. All politicians have elastic relationships with absolute truths. Neither party escapes the occasional smudge here, a rounding there. But as journalist Ryan Lizza [observed](https://www.telos.news/p/how-the-media-sanewashes-trump) over on his Substack right after Trump spoke: “His utterances sail freely between oceans of hyperbole, bullsh-t, and lies. When he occasionally arrives in a harbor of truth, it is merely by accident.” Ryan invoked a [framing](https://newrepublic.com/article/185530/media-criticism-trump-sanewashing-problem) published by _The New Republic_ last year that is a perfect descriptor for the type of gaslighting that unfolds as observers try to grapple with Trump’s glaring indifference to the truth: “sanewashing.” It’s no secret that most Americans have a dim view of politicians, but Presidents historically have been a breed apart. Back in 1991—when President George H.W. Bush was in charge and Saddam Hussein was on the run—Gallup found 72% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of faith in the presidency. In 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the presidency—occupied by George W. Bush—had a 58% marker on that question. These days, that same metric stands at 30%. Just a year ago, every flub President Joe Biden made ricocheted as evidence of a man on the decline, a leader who should know better, a pol trying to pull a fast one on the nation. When Trump mangles knowable facts, it gets little more than a shrug. When he does it with world leaders as a captive audience, it merits just a shake of a head. Now contrast that to the backlash from Romney’s “47%” comment, a moment Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, called “the epitome of low during the course of the campaign.” The fallout translated into a full 2-point swing away from Romney; the drop was particularly pronounced among white men and young voters. One flub from Romney moved that campaign from a two-point race to almost five points behind Barack Obama. The nation has come a very long way from punishing a politician for being insensitive—but at least partly correct—on the underlying facts during a closed-door event to becoming numb to one who can’t bother to get the facts right while broadcasting a scripted address to a global audience hanging on his every word in real time. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript What is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential. I've always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now. All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. My administration has negotiated one historic trade deal after another, including with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and many, many others. Likewise, in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unending wars. They said they were unmendable. You're never going to get them solved. Some were going for 31 years, two of them 31. Think of it 31 years. One was 36 years. One was 28 years. I ended seven wars and in all cases they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand. Kosovo and Serbia. The Congo and Rwanda. A vicious, violent war. That was. Pakistan and India. Israel and Iran. Egypt and Ethiopia. And Armenia and Azerbaijan. It included all of them. No president or prime minister. And for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months. It's never happened before. There's never been anything like that. Very honored to have done it. It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the First lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen. But she's in great shape. We're both in good shape. We both stood. And then a teleprompter. That didn't work. This is. These are the two things I got from the United Nations. A bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. I didn't think of it at the time because I was too busy working to save millions of lives. That is the saving and stopping of these wars. But later I realized that the United Nations wasn't there for us. They weren't there. I thought of it really after the fact. Not during not during these negotiations, which were not easy. Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements, but for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with the mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and inglorious wars. With Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity demolished, I immediately brokered an end to the 12 day war, as it's called, between Israel and Iran, with both sides agreeing to fight. fight no longer. As everyone knows, I have also been deeply engaged in seeking a ceasefire in Gaza. Have to get that done, have to get it done. Unfortunately, Hamas has repeatedly rejected reasonable offers to make peace. We can't forget October 7th, can we? Now, as if to encourage continued conflict. Some of this body is seeking to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists for their atrocities. This would be a reward for these horrible atrocities. Europe is in serious trouble. They've been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody's ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe. Nobody is ever. And nobody's doing anything to change it, to get them out. It's not sustainable. And because they choose to be politically correct, they're doing just absolutely nothing about it. And I have to say, I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it's been so changed, so changed. Climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I'm really good at predicting things. You know, they actually said during the campaign that a hat, the best selling hat. Trump was right about everything. And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7320280/donald-trump-grocery-prices-electricity-bills/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7320280/donald-trump-grocery-prices-electricity-bills/"},"headline":"Trump's U.N. Speech Laid Bare How Numb We've All Gotten to His Firehose of False Claims","datePublished":"2025-09-24T20:50:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T08:11:25.684Z","description":"The White House did not respond to a request for data to back up Trump's claims.","url":"https://time.com/7320280/donald-trump-grocery-prices-electricity-bills/","keywords":["The D.C. 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