WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is, at once, demanding billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury for a border wall and insisting the wall won't really cost America anything.
As he's done before, Trump said Wednesday that Mexico is footing the bill thanks to a revised trade agreement. That's not true. If the wall is to be built, the money will come from Washington's coffers and be approved by Congress. There is no mechanism in the trade agreement or anywhere else for Mexico to pay back the U.S. or for the money to be refunded to the Treasury.
Trump also vastly overstated the number of people who are thought to be in the country illegally, retroactively declared that his defense chief who resigned was pushed out, and raised what appear to be thin hopes for cheaper drug prices.
A look at some of his statements Wednesday on Twitter and at a Cabinet meeting:
IMMIGRATION
TRUMP, on the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally: "I used to hear 11 million all the time. It would always stay right at 11. I said, 'Does it ever increase or go down?' 'No, it's 11.' Nobody knows. It's probably 30, 35 million people. They would flow in, mostly from the southern border, they'd come in and nobody would talk about it, nobody would do anything about it." — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: It's nowhere close to 30 million to 35 million, according to his own Homeland Security secretary as well as independent estimates.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally in 2016, the most recent data available. Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration issue have similar estimates.
At a House hearing in December, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the number was "somewhere" between 11 million and 22 million, significantly lower than Trump's claim of 35 million.
According to Pew, the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally had reached a height of 12.2 million in 2007, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population, before declining in part because of a weakening U.S. economy.
TRUMP: "The coyotes are using children to gain access into this country. They're using these children. They're not with families. They're using the children. They're taking the children. And then they dispose of the children after they're done. This has been going on for years. This isn't unique to us. But we want to stop it." — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: This does happen, though it's not as common as Trump suggests by talking about it so often.
He is referring to adults who come with children they falsely claim to be theirs, so that they won't be detained under a no-child-separation policy.
But such cases of fraud are rare. According to the Homeland Security Department, about 500 immigrants were found to be not a "legitimate family unit" and thus separated upon detention from April 19 to Sept. 30 of last year. That's a small fraction of the 107,000 families apprehended in the last budget year, which ended Sept. 30.
DRUG PRICES
TRUMP: "I think you're going to see a tremendous reduction in drug prices." — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: Prices continue to rise. Administration policies announced last year and currently being completed don't seem to have shifted that trend.
Figures on U.S. prescription drug price changes compiled by health data company Elsevier show that from Dec. 20 through Jan. 2, there were 1,179 product price changes. Of those, 30 were price cuts and the remaining 1,149 were price increases, with 328 of them between 9 percent and 10 percent. All but one of the rest were by lower percentages. Elsevier spokesman Chris Capot said more companies will be announcing price increases this month.