‘Every Single Part of It Was Wrong’: CNN Fact-Checker Dismantles Trump’s Oval Office Story

CNN’s Daniel Dale dismantled a story told by President Donald Trump about South Korea on Monday, declaring that “every single part of it was wrong.”

In the Oval Office, Trump told reporters:

South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years. And during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection, ’cause, you know, they essentially weren’t paying. And I asked them to do that, at my request. They weren’t happy about it, but they agreed.

I asked for $10 billion, and, uh, they were very unhappy, but we agreed for a short term there would be $3 billion and next year it would go up, and the next year it would go up — so they start paying for their protection. When the [2020] election was rigged, and I ended up, uh, watching for four years and then coming back, I watched [former President Joe] Biden rescind that $3 billion, for whatever reason.

When I called recently the president of South Korea, who I like — I think he’s very nice actually. But I called him, and I said, “Would you like to give us a little hand?” We don’t need help with Iran, but if you’d like, give us a hand with Iran. He said, “No, thanks.” And I said, “Wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un.”

The president went on to conclude, “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us.”

After declaring on X that “every single part of it was wrong,” Dale joined CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday’s edition of The Lead to break down the president’s claims in greater detail:

Without exaggeration, every single part of the president’s story was wrong. So, Trump said that before he took office the first time, South Korea essentially wasn’t paying anything to share the cost of the U.S. military presence. In fact, under [former President Barack Obama’s] administration, before Trump took office, South Korea was paying more than $800 million per year. Those cost-sharing agreements date back to 1991, so decades.

Now, Trump said that after he took office, he got South Korea to agree to pay $3 billion a year, and then subsequent increases the year after that and the year after that. In fact, he did secure a one-year increase of 8.2%, but that only brought the total to less than $1 billion — nowhere close to $3 billion — and there were no increases agreed to in the two subsequent years.

And then, he told a story about South Korea calling up President Joe Biden and telling him that Trump was probably a bad person, and getting Biden to immediately rescind the $3 billion payment that South Korea supposedly agreed to. Biden did not rescind any Trump-era cost-sharing deal. In fact, there was no cost-sharing deal in place under Biden because negotiations on a new one had stalled amid Trump’s exorbitant demands in 2020. What Biden did do was get South Korea to agree to two increases. So a 13.9% increase in a 2021 deal, an 8.3% increase in a 2024 deal. So just wrongness upon wrongness, upon wrongness, Jake.

To further complicate matters, Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday that he was “not happy” with U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, arguing that they are “not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to the ” unthreatening and respectful” country of North Korea. Trump said that because it was “too late to cancel,” he had instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!