By Daniel Dale, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump abandoned his teleprompter in favor of impromptu musings in a speech at a retreat for House Republicans on Tuesday. And those ad-libbed Trump comments were filled with false claims.
Trump littered his meandering address with at least 18 inaccurate statements, most of which have been previously debunked. Here is a fact check of some of his assertions; this is not intended as a comprehensive list of falsehoods.
Crime
Murder in Washington, DC: Trump touted last year’s federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, and he falsely claimed the capital hasn’t had a single murder “in seven months,” though he did note the deadly attack that killed a member of the National Guard in November. In fact, there have been dozens of additional murders in Washington, DC, in the last seven months, as police statistics and Washington Post tracking show – including some in the last two weeks. Local police announced last week that a man was shot dead on December 31, another man died December 28 after being shot days prior, and a third man had been shot dead on December 27.
Where the capital ranks on crime: Trump also falsely claimed, “Washington, DC, is now the safest city in the country.” Crime data expert Jeff Asher told CNN in a text on Tuesday: “That’s obviously not true.” It’s not yet clear where the capital currently ranks compared to every other US city, since crime data takes time to trickle in from around the country, but it is abundantly clear that it’s far from the number-one safest. Asher said: “For example, DC has seen a large drop in shootings over the last two years, including potentially a further drop since mid-August, but there have still been over 100 people shot there in the last 4.5 months.”
The January 6 attack on the Capitol
The Jan. 6 committee and Trump’s speech: On the fifth anniversary of a pro-Trump mob storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump falsely claimed that the House of Representatives select committee that investigated the attack “didn’t report” that, in his speech at a Washington rally prior to the riot, he had urged people to go to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.” In fact, the committee explicitly mentioned the “peacefully and patriotically” comment in its official final report — but correctly noted that this remark was at odds with much of the rest of Trump’s largely combative speech. The report said: “President Trump used the phrase scripted for him by his White House speechwriters, ‘peacefully and patriotically’ once, about 20 minutes into his speech. Then he spent the next 50-or-so minutes amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own Vice President and Republican Members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight.”
Pelosi and Jan. 6: Trump falsely claimed that Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker at the time of the riot, “was offered 10,000 soldiers, National Guard soldiers, whatever you want – ‘No, I don’t want them.’” He added: “Nancy got caught when her d