@davejorgenson: Fact-checking President Trump’s Wednesday night address. In a 20 minute televised address about the war in Iran, President Donald Trump boasted about “taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes.” Venezuela is a sovereign country that was not “taken” as part of the U.S., even though Trump has said that’s what he wants. But Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has been amenable toward Trump’s efforts to extract Venezuelan resources. The U.S. attack on Caracas and capture of Nicolás Maduro also took about two and a half hours, not minutes. Trump exaggerated the number of protesters killed in Iran before the U.S.-Israeli invasion. Trump put the number at 45,000. But Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based group, put the number closer to 7,000. PBS says that group’s numbers have been accurate in the past. The president also repeated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that families of killed U.S. military members in Iran said to “finish the job.” One of those family members said such an exchange didn’t happen. After the Strait of Hormuz reopens, it could take a while to return to normal despite Trump’s claims that it will “open up naturally.” And Trump has called for regime change despite claiming he never did. And no, we have not “beaten” Iran, but U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed over 1,900 people there since late February. In the interest of fairness, here are some things Trump at least kind of told the truth about or that we can’t disprove: Artemis II could travel further than any manned rocket before it. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer (which is an interesting thing to brag about considering the harm it’s doing to the planet we need to live on). We don’t know if we actually produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The U.S. did pay Iran $1.7 billion under the Obama administration, which reached a deal to pay back money the U.S. has owed Iran since the 1970s with interest. Stock prices did go up in the days before the address, but they did not subsequently “rapidly go up” as Trump predicted they would. Many Americans are seeing large tax refunds this year but not as large as predicted. Caption from our Friday newsletter, written by Chris Vazquez.

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Thursday 02 April 2026 23:11:18 GMT