Fact Checking Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Speech

Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies delivered a series of speeches at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday, treading over many of the same misleading and false claims they have repeated throughout the 2024 presidential race.
The event, one of Trump’s biggest rallies of the campaign, was characterized by shocking and polarizing comments, with comedian Tony Hinchcliffe branding Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” leading to wide uproar.
Trump, who spoke for just over an hour, was introduced onstage by his wife, former first lady Melania Trump.
Newsweek has looked at some of the major claims that Trump made during his speech to the packed New York audience.
Trump is referring to the American Rescue Plan, a $2 trillion bill designed to help kick-start the economy and help low-income families during the pandemic. While economists say that the plan impacted inflation, it was not the only cause. Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, and the supply chain and oil price increases it sparked, was a global contributor to inflation.
The Trump campaign based this claim on an inflation tracker that shows that on average, Americans have paid $30,000 in cumulative costs since January 2021. However, the analysis does not include increases in wage rises that ameliorate some of these costs. A fact-check of Trump’s claim by The Washington Post earlier this year noted figures from the U.S. Treasury that showed that “as of the end of 2023, the median American worker could afford the same goods and services as they did in 2019, with an additional $1,400 to spend or save per year.”
This appears to be based on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that show from January 2024 to September 2024 there has been a decline of 49,000 employees in manufacturing. However, since January 2021 when Joe Biden took office, there has been a 729,000 increase in the number of manufacturing jobs.
As stated by PolitiFact, Trump’s claim about a $3,000 tax rise is based on a Tax Foundation analysis that assessed what would happen if Harris abolished Trump’s 2017 Tax and Jobs Act, which is due to expire in 2025. The figure was an average with variation across states. However, as reported by Reuters, Harris is planning to extend Trump’s tax cuts, but only for those earning under $400,000.
While federal data shows that migrants with criminal convictions have attempted to enter the United States, Trump’s suggestion that Harris has “imported” criminals or people from across the world is baseless.
Newsweek has previously rated his claim that other countries are sending people from “insane asylums”—an antiquated and misleading term—as false.
Trump suggested that in the last month, nearly every country in the world had invited criminal or undocumented migrants into the U.S. Newsweek has not been able to find data that supports this claim.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced last week that it had removed or returned more than 160,000 individuals from 145 different countries since June.
Newsweek has contacted a Trump media representative for comment.
This claim was part of a video the former president played during his speech.
While 13,099 noncitizens on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) docket have been convicted of homicide, this data spans 40 years and does not cover only the Biden-Harris administration, as Trump’s claim appears to suggest. The figure includes people in jails and prisons, as Newsweek has previously debunked.
Trump claimed that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had not helped with the response to Hurricane Helene, which is not true. The government agency’s support during Hurricane Helene in North Carolina was extensive, including incident management teams, FEMA disaster survivor assessment teams, search and rescue teams, in addition to trailers and a cargo plane full of supplies, Starlink satellite systems, federal ambulances, and generators.
This argument, that money meant for FEMA was used to fund immigration, is also not true, as FEMA has said directly.
“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts,” it said in a statement earlier this month. “Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”
Trump has continued to spread falsehoods about immigration in Springfield, Ohio. A statement by the city, says Clark County—the county seat Springfield sits in—has an immigration population of approximately 12,000-15,000 people.
“Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” the city’s statement reads on its website.
This is not true. Formal declarations of war that confer additional presidential powers are rare and have happened only five times in U.S. history, the most recent being World War II. The others are the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.
Most conflicts the U.S. gets involved in fall under the guise of “authorizations of military force” given from Congress to the president.
Congress authorizations were given to President George W. Bush in 2001 for the War on Terror and the Iraq War in 2003 and to his father George H.W. Bush in 1991 for the Gulf War.
Other presidents have gotten the U.S. involved in foreign conflict such as Barack Obama’s involvement in the Libyan Civil War and Bill Clinton’s involvement in the Bosnian war.
Another one-term president, Jimmy Carter, did not enter into conflicts, disproving Trump’s claim. Carter said one of his greatest achievements was not involving the U.S. in a military conflict, telling The Guardian in 2011, “We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet.”
Trump claimed here that 325,000 undocumented migrant children had been trafficked, gone missing, or died, within the course of the Biden administration. This is not true, as Newsweek recently debunked.
It is based on ICE audit figures combining 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children who had not appeared in court for immigration proceedings with 291,000 children to appear in court.
The data did not show that 325,000 children were dead, missing, slaves or sex slaves. The audit monitored reporting under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Trump again claims that 101,000 people attended his return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of his first assassination attempt in July where supporter and firefighter Corey Comperatore was shot and killed.
Trump’s crowd size claim is false, as Newsweek has recently debunked. Using crowd capacity software, and estimates from the time, the actual number was below 59,000.
This is not true. Harris voiced support for the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020 but was not the original creator.
Harris has faced scrutiny over claims she worked at McDonald’s while studying. Although the Harris campaign has not responded to inquiries seeking details or records about her employment while she was studying, Trump’s claim that she has “lied” about it is not based on evidence.
This isn’t quite right. The National Border Patrol Council endorsed Trump, but it does not represent the views of all Border Patrol staff and agents.
This is a common claim Trump has made that’s not true. As the vice president, Harris was tasked with addressing the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. This is not the same as being in charge of the southern border, as Trump claimed.
This is not true. Around 458 miles of border barriers were built during Trump’s presidency, 81 percent of which replaced existing barriers.
A 2021 government report said 52 miles of primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall were built in locations where no barriers previously existed.