Fact-Checking Trump’s First Post-Election News Conference

President-elect Donald J. Trump, in his first news conference since the election, again displayed his penchant for exaggeration.

During more than an hour of questions on Monday, Mr. Trump made a number of new claims — false, misleading or overstated — about a range of topics, in addition to repeating a number of familiar inaccuracies.

Here’s a fact-check of his remarks.

What Was Said

“We’re, you know, having a 41-year record for optimism from small businesses.”

This is exaggerated. In its most recent survey, the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center said its small-business optimism rose by 8 points, to 101.7, from October to November. Earlier in the news conference, Mr. Trump correctly noted that this was the largest one-month increase since the organization began releasing monthly surveys in 1986. But the index was higher most recently in June 2021, at 102.5; the highest ever recorded in the survey was 108.6 in August 2018.

What Was Said

“We’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it’ll have no impact. Actually, it’ll make life better but it’ll have no impact on people. It’s not like — we will never cut Social Security, things like that. It’s just waste, fraud and abuse.”

This lacks evidence. Of the federal governments’ $6.9 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, about $4.2 billion was mandatory spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare and about $892 billion was in interest payments. Only $1.8 trillion was in “discretionary” spending and about $954 million of that was in military spending. So to reach the $2 trillion in cuts, the Trump administration would need to eliminate all discretionary spending — which would include spending on Mr. Trump’s policy priorities of mass deportations and enhancing border security, protecting farmers and providing more military funding — and then some. Cutting all discretionary spending would, without a doubt, have an impact on people.