CNN Fact-Checker Ridicules ‘Absurd’ Trump Claims as President Jets Off to High-Stakes Putin Meet
CNN correspondent Daniel Dale ridiculed what he called “absurd” claims by President Donald Trump as the president was jetting off to a high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump is set to meet with Putin in Alaska on Friday afternoon in hopes of charting a deal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
On Friday’s edition of CNN News Central, co-anchor Erica Hill invited Dale to go over some “flat-out false” claims Trump has made about the war:
ERICA HILL: Claims that are flat-out false. CNN’s Daniel Dale here now to fact check some of that. So Daniel let’s start first of all with Ukraine
DANIEL DALE: The president has made this claim over and over again that the U.S. Has supposedly provided triple the aid to Ukraine that Europe has. Listen to the latest example from yesterday at the White House.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We spent $350 billion. Now, Europe spent a billion. That’s a lot of money. They spent $100 billion. That’s lot of of money, but we shouldn’t be spending a lot more money than them, and they understand that.
DANIEL DALE: That 350 billion figure and that 100 billion figure is not only not accurate, it’s a reversal of reality.
In reality, it is Europe that has provided more wartime aid to Ukraine than the United States has. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which is a German think tank that has closely tracked the aid quantities, the U.S. had allocated $134 billion in wartime aid to the Ukraine through June.
Europe, collectively, had allocated 195 billion. Now, the gap is even bigger when it comes to aid committed. That is not necessarily actually spent yet.
It was 139 billion through June for the United States and 300 billion through Europe.
Now it’s possible to get different figures using different counting methodologies. For example, a U.S. inspector general finds that Congress had made available 185 billion for Ukraine through March, but even those other figures do not come close to corroborating President Trump’s claim.
So how does the White House try to defend this claim? Well, with some very bad math. I reached out to them for comment on the $350 billion figure, and what they did was cited this Inspector General figure of about $185 billion.
They added in $20 billion in loans the U.S. had made available through a G7 initiative. Okay, fine.
But then they added in things like $93 billion in inflation faced by American households in the wake of the invasion.
Now, I have no idea how inflation, higher costs for American families amounts to aid to Ukraine, but I don’t think they do either. So just fuzzy math there.
And that’s not the only absurd claim that President Trump has made about the war in recent days.
He also claimed at the White House on Monday that Russia would have been in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital in four hours, within four hours of invading if they had only taken the highway.
He said instead a Russian general made a quote unquote brilliant decision to go through farmland instead.
Look, military analysts have repeatedly pointed out, since President Trump began making this claim, that Russia had an invasion plan that prioritized roads and highways.
Tons of Russian tanks and other armored vehicles were using paved ground. Some did get stuck in the mud, but they didn’t fail to make it to Kiev because they forgot about the existence of paved ground.
ERICA HILL: Yeah, yet more reminders that the facts matter. They matter in every instance, but especially as we’re looking at this moment here and ahead of this high stakes summit. Daniel, appreciate it, thank you.
Watch above via CNN News Central.
