Fact-checking Trump’s longest ever State of the Union
6 minutes agoJake Horton, Lucy Gilder & Tom EdgingtonBBC Verify
ReutersPresident Donald Trump delivered his longest speech to Congress – lasting one hour 47 minutes – and told US lawmakers that the “country is winning again” as he touted his administration’s achievements.
The US economy and affordability were key themes in the address – which was the longest in decades. Trump also made claims about illegal immigration as well as ending a series of wars around the world.
BBC Verify has looked into them.
‘Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them’
Prices are still rising but the rate of inflation has slowed since Trump took office at the start of last year.
It was 2.4% in the 12 months to January 2026 – down from 3% over President Biden’s final year in office.
Prices rose significantly during Biden’s first two years in office, peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which contributed to inflation across the globe.
Trump reeled off a list of grocery items including beef, claiming the price of it “which was very high, is starting to come down significantly”.
Beef prices did fall slightly last month, but they had increased 15% in the 12 months to January 2026.
He also highlighted egg prices which have fallen by 34% over the past 12 months.
Overall grocery prices increased 2.1% in the 12 months to January 2026.
And some Trump policies have been blamed for adding to inflation – economists at Harvard University have estimated that Trump’s tariffs (import taxes) in 2025 lifted the overall US rate of consumer price inflation (relative to where it would otherwise have been) by around 0.92 percentage points in January.
‘Gasoline… is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places $1.99 a gallon’
As of 24 February, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline – or petrol – in the US is $2.95, according to the Automobile Association (AAA).
The only state we could find anywhere near $2.30 a gallon – on the website – is Oklahoma with an average price of $2.37 a gallon. That is the state with the lowest average price listed by the AAA.
During Trump’s speech, the website GasBuddy said drivers could buy gasoline at below $2 per gallon – at four stations (out of an estimated 150,000) in the US.
‘More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country’
That claim is correct but there is additional context.
More than 158 million people were employed as of January 2026, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – the highest figure on record.
But the population is the biggest on record – at more than 342 million people.
The percentage of people 16 or older employed in the US was 59.8% in January this year, slightly down from 60.1% in January 2025 when Biden left office.
And the unemployment rate is actually slightly up under Trump – from 4.1% in December 2024 (Biden’s last full month in office) to 4.3% in January 2026.
‘In 12 months I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe’
There is no publicly available evidence to support a figure this big.
A White House website tracks “new investment in U.S. manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure” since Trump returned to the White House.
Its latest total – updated overnight – is $9.7tn (£7.2tn), still a big figure but much less than the president claims.
Greg Auclair, a statistician at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told BBC Verify that there has been an uptick in foreign investment in the US over the past year.
But he cautioned that the White House tracker “includes pledges that may not materialise”. He cited the EU trade deal, as an example, which has been put on ice because of Trump’s latest tariff threats.
‘Cheating is rampant in our elections’
Trump returned to this familiar claim as he appealed to lawmakers to pass stricter voter ID requirements to “stop illegal aliens from voting”.
However, there is no evidence of “rampant” voter fraud in US elections. It does happen but the data suggests it is rare.
A total of 1,620 proven electoral fraud cases across the US have been recorded in a database by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The list runs from 1982.
BBC Verify looked into claims of illegal immigrants voting in the build-up to the 2024 US election and, again, studies have suggested cases are rare.
For example, the Brennan Center for Justice – a liberal-leaning think tank – looked at 12 states in the 2016 election. It found that of 23.5 million votes counted, only 30 suspected incidents of non-citizens voting were referred for further investigation.
‘In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States’
If he was referring to migrants released from custody – once they’ve crossed into the US – then this is correct.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release from earlier this month stated that “for the ninth consecutive month, U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into the United States”.
Border Patrol has still been recording several thousand illegal crossings each month under Trump, with the latest figures showing 6,070 apprehensions at the southwest border in January 2026.
But that’s still a significant drop from the same period two years ago under former president Joe Biden, when 124,215 apprehensions were recorded in January 2024.
‘In my first ten months, I ended eight wars’
The White House lists the “wars” as ones between: Israel and Hamas, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia and Serbia and Kosovo.
Although, Trump can claim credit for brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, it is not correct to say he has ended eight wars.
A number of these “wars” had lasted just days, although were the result of long-standing tensions.
But in one case, the “war” between Egypt and Ethiopia was a dispute over the building of a dam and there was no actual fighting to end.
There has also been fighting between Rwanda and the DRC, after the two sides signed a peace agreement in Washington.
India also played down the US role in ending its brief conflict with Pakistan.
