President Donald Trump told a story on Monday about how he “made a correct prediction” about the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum while he was visiting his golf course in Scotland “the day before the vote.”
“You remember?” he asked reporters.
They couldn’t have remembered. It didn’t happen.
Trump actually visited Scotland the day after the Brexit referendum, not the day before it. And while he did say about three months prior that he thought the UK would end up leaving the European Union, he made no public predictions in an interview the day before the vote – saying he personally favored Brexit but also that “I don’t think anybody should listen to me because I haven’t really focused on it very much.”
Trump’s imaginary story about these events nine years ago might be considered trivial compared to his lies about pressing topics like inflation and the war in Ukraine. But it’s part of a pattern – a long line of similarly fabricated tales from the president about his own history and world history.
And the pattern has a purpose. Trump’s stories serve to exaggerate his foresight about and knowledge of domestic and foreign affairs, embellish his biography and record in office, and diminish his political opponents.
The stories tend to be colorful even though they’re fake. Trump’s historical fiction is sprinkled with vivid details and make-believe quotes, all the better to make it seem authentic and get it to stick in the minds of voters.
A White House official, responding to CNN’s questions on condition of anonymity, noted that Trump correctly predicted Brexit and then said, “He was in Scotland before the vote.” The official didn’t acknowledge that, contrary to what Trump claimed Monday and has claimed for years, he wasn’t there the day before the Brexit vote and didn’t make a prediction that day.
Here is a fact check of eight other examples of false Trump stories about the past from the last two months alone:
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His false claim that he issued a “don’t go in” warning against the 2003 invasion of Iraq
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His false story about a supposed conversation with his late uncle about the Unabomber
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His false story about a supposed conversation with his late uncle about the Unabomber
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His false claim that he was the person who deployed the National Guard during civil unrest in Minneapolis in 2020
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His false claim that he signed a law in 2020 to impose automatic 10-year prison sentences on people who damage monuments
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His false claim that he was being sarcastic when he repeatedly promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to office
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His false claim that the European Union was formed to take advantage of the US
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His false claim that tariffs were imposed merely after the Great Depression, not during it
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His false claim that South Korea convinced former president Joe Biden to allow it to stop making any payments to share the cost of the US military presence there
Trump’s own past
Trump and the war in Iraq
Trump, touting his foreign policy acumen, has been falsely claiming for years that he publicly warned the US not to invade Iraq in 2003. He did it again in comments to reporters in June: “I said it loud and clear – but I was a civilian, but I guess I got a lot of publicity – but I was very much opposed to the Iraq war. And I actually did say, ‘Don’t go in, don’t go in, don’t go in.’ But I said, ‘If you’re going to go in, keep the oil.’ But they didn’t do that.”
Very firm quotes. Except Trump didn’t utter them.
There is no record of Trump issuing any such public warnings before the 2003 invasion. When radio host Howard Stern asked Trump in September 2002 whether he is “for invading Iraq,” Trump said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” Trump did not express a firm opinion about the war in a Fox interview in January 2003, saying that “either you attack or don’t attack” and that then-President George W. Bush “has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps.”
Trump started publicly expressing critical thoughts about the war shortly after it began in 2003, then emerged as an explicit opponent in 2004. He did get considerable publicity for this commentary – but it was post-invasion criticism, not the pre-invasion criticism he keeps saying it was.
Asked about this false claim, the White House official responded, “He said that he was against it.” In fact, though, Trump went further than simply claiming to have been against the invasion; he said he made specific pre-invasion public comments he didn’t make.
Trump’s uncle and the Unabomber
Trump has repeatedly invoked his late uncle John Trump, a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as evidence of his own intelligence and good “genes.” At an event on energy and innovation earlier this month, he said he needed to “brag” about his uncle’s smarts, then made up a story that vividly but wrongly linked his uncle with the late “Unabomber” terrorist Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski.
“Kaczynski was one of his students,” Trump said, then went on to talk about having asked his uncle about what Kaczynski was like. “‘I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John?’ Dr. John Trump. I said, ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said, ‘Seriously, good.’ He said, ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’”
This supposed exchange could not have happened. Aside from the fact that MIT says it has no information suggesting Kaczynski ever attended MIT (he went to nearby Harvard), the president’s uncle died in 1985, more than a decade before Kaczynski was publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Given that Kaczynski had lived for years as a recluse in the wilderness, there is no apparent reason that Donald Trump would have been asking anyone about Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier.
The White House didn’t attempt to defend this story even on condition of anonymity.
Trump and civil unrest in Minneapolis
Trump, attacking a prominent Democratic opponent, told members of the military in a speech at Fort Bragg in June that “I’ll never forget” what happened with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020: “That city was burning down, Minneapolis – it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground – and he wouldn’t call the Guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the Guard, and I saved it.”
Whatever Trump claims to recall, this is not what happened. In reality, Walz, not Trump, was the person who deployed the Minnesota National Guard, more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. While Walz was criticized by many Republicans and some Democrats for not sending in the Guard faster, it is indisputable that Walz, not Trump, was the person who eventually did it.
The White House official said Walz activated the Guard “only” after Trump urged him to. That’s an implicit concession that Trump was wrong when he said he was the one who activated the Guard – and the official’s statement is wrong too. Walz activated the Guard before he spoke with Trump on the matter and before Trump’s public statement.
Trump and damage to monuments
Trump told another dramatic but fake story about his response to 2020 protests during a speech in Iowa early this month.
Trump said that, while protesters were marching toward the Jefferson Memorial trying to rip down a statue of Thomas Jefferson, “we signed a law” – “an old bill from 1909” – that “said if you so much as touch a monument or a statue, you go to jail for a 10-year period. No anything.” He claimed that he held a news conference in the middle of the march saying anyone who touches a monument “immediately goes to jail for a 10-year period,” and then “that march broke up so quickly.”
“Do you remember that night? It was crazy,” Trump asked during his story.
Nobody could possibly remember that night because it didn’t occur. Trump did not sign any “law” on penalties for damage to monuments, he did not do anything to impose rapid or automatic 10-year jail sentences on people who damage monuments, and the policy he did announce in June 2020 did not suddenly break up an active march to the Jefferson Memorial.
What really happened: Trump announced that he had issued an executive order that directed the attorney general to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of people who damaged government-owned monuments and to prosecute offenders “to the fullest extent” allowed under existing federal law, which provided for a maximum – not immediate or mandatory – sentence of 10 years in prison. It’s not clear what impact, if any, this announcement had on the protests that followed Floyd’s murder.
Trump and Russia’s war on Ukraine
When a reporter reminded Trump at a press conference in June that Trump had previously promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in “24 hours” but had later said he had been speaking sarcastically, Trump said, “Of course it was sarcastic.”
It was plainly not sarcastic. When Trump claimed in April that he had made the promise “in jest,” CNN found 53 examples in which he had pledged on the campaign trail, in an entirely serious tone, manner and context, that he would end the war either within 24 hours of his return to the White House or even sooner than that, as president-elect.
When CNN asked the White House about this false claim, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly responded on the record with a comment that did not directly address its accuracy. “Russia and Ukraine are having direct talks for the first time in years because of President Trump’s leadership,” Kelly said.
US and world history
The formation of the EU
Trump occasionally offers lessons on world history to bolster his contemporary arguments. But those lessons have sometimes been bogus. In June, for example, he said while discussing his trade negotiations with the European Union: “The European Union was formed in order to take advantage of the United States on trade. That was why they were formed.”
Experts on the history of the EU have previously told CNN that this Trump claim is “preposterous” and “could not be more wrong or inaccurate,” noting US presidents consistently supported European integration efforts that were intended to stabilize the continent and promote prosperity.
Tariffs and the Great Depression
Trump has made tariffs one of his signature policy tools. During a Cabinet meeting early this month, he defended them with a wildly distorted history of their role in the Great Depression – wrongly claiming tariffs were revived “after the Depression,” not during it.
Trump said: “There was no income tax system … in 1913 that came back, and lived well for a while, and then you had the Great Depression. And then later they brought – they tried to bring back their tariffs. But the whole thing was, you know – this was after the Depression. It was one of the great misconceptions as people like to say. ‘Oh, but it was during the’ – no. The country had a Great Depression, and then after the Depression, after – long after it started – they brought back tariffs to see if they could save it. But it took them really 25 years, wouldn’t you say, about 25 years to get out of the Great Depression. A lot of people don’t understand that.”
Thoroughly wrong.
The US imposed major tariffs near the beginning of the Great Depression, via the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930; they are widely thought to have contributed to deepening the Depression, which began in 1929 and is generally thought to have run until 1939. And while economic history can always be debated, there’s no reasonable basis for the claim that it took 25 years to “get out of” the Great Depression; World War II, from 1939 to 1945, served as a massive boon to the US economy.
Biden and South Korea’s military cost-sharing
At the same Cabinet meeting, Trump repeated a false story about how South Korea supposedly persuaded Biden to let it completely abandon the payments it had been making to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying, “And you know what Biden did? They probably went to him and they said, ‘Listen, Trump treated us terribly and we shouldn’t be paying anything,’ and he cut it down to nothing.”
In fact, Biden’s administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea twice agreed to pay more than it did during Trump’s first term.
The White House official claimed that “President Trump is right” because Biden negotiated “bad” deals that secured “much lower” payments than Trump would have. But that defense contradicts Trump’s own false claim that Biden agreed to allow no payments at all.