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2024 election

Fact-Checking Donald Trump’s Latest TIME Interview: What the Numbers Show

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TIME’s October 1, 2026 fact-check disputes or qualifies several claims President Donald Trump made in an interview recorded at the White House on September 28. The clearest corrections concern his 2024 vote share, Iran’s reported inflation, the scale of immigration encounters, and what different poverty and audience figures measure. The interview covered many subjects; TIME checked selected statements, not every assertion.

What did Trump mean by “86% popular vote”?

Trump said he had won “86% popular vote.” TIME reports that he won the popular vote, but received 49.8% of it, compared with Kamala Harris’s 48.3%. The 86 figure refers instead to his 86-vote Electoral College margin: 312 electoral votes to Harris’s 226.

TIME also says Trump did not win every county in the seven swing states, although he carried counties in metro areas around Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. Popular-vote share, Electoral College votes, and county wins are different measures.

Was Iran’s inflation around 300%?

Trump described Iran’s inflation as “300% or something like that.” TIME reports that Iran’s Central Bank put inflation at 83.8% at the end of September 2026, slightly below the prior month. TIME also describes intense pressure on food prices and the currency: its reporting gives an exchange rate of 2.5 million rials to the U.S. dollar, compared with 1.2 million at the end of 2025.

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Did Trump predict the Iran war would last four to six weeks?

TIME’s account says Trump stated in early March that the operation would last four to five weeks. In the interview, when asked why people expected a four-to-six-week war, he responded, “I think the press fed it to them.” He also said, “I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further.” The transcript thus records both his earlier estimate, as described by TIME, and his later explanation that he chose to continue.

How much oil was passing through the Strait of Hormuz?

Trump said more barrels had passed through the Strait “than at any time in the history of the Strait.” TIME cites prewar flows of about 20 million barrels a day. It reports that Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Fox News on September 26 that one recent day exceeded 20 million barrels, while the running average was almost 13 million barrels a day. TIME also cites Oil & Gas Mideast for flows around 13 million barrels a day, about 77% of the prewar level.

A reported single day above 20 million barrels is not the same as a sustained average at or above that level; the figures TIME cites distinguish the two.

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How many people died in Iran’s protests?

Trump alleged that Iranian authorities killed 75,000 protesters. TIME says protests began in late December 2025 and reached their deadliest peak on January 8–9. The available figures it describes vary by source and method:

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  • 3,117 deaths: the figure reported by Iranian state media.
  • Tens of thousands: estimates from human-rights organizations, as summarized by TIME.
  • As many as 30,000 on January 8–9 alone: a report by TIME that two senior Iranian Health Ministry officials gave that estimate.

TIME characterizes the true toll as likely lower than Trump’s 75,000. These are not equivalent counts, and the evidence described does not establish a single definitive total.

Was Trump’s approval in Israel 99%?

TIME says it found no poll showing 99% approval. It reports two different survey measures: a 2026 Pew Research Center survey found 66% had confidence in Trump, while a Jewish People Policy Institute survey found 73% considered him a better-than-average U.S. president for Israel’s interests.

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The latter result also varied sharply by political outlook: TIME reports a positive view among 92% of the Israeli right and 34% of the left. Confidence and an assessment of a president’s performance for Israel’s interests are distinct questions, not interchangeable approval ratings.

Does the evidence support the claim that Biden “allowed 25 million people” into the country?

TIME says Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data do not support the 25 million figure. CBP recorded 10.8 million encounters between the start of fiscal year 2021 and late 2024, according to TIME. An encounter is a border event, not necessarily a distinct person who entered and stayed; repeat encounters can occur.

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Separately, TIME cites Pew Research Center’s estimate of 14 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2023. That is an estimate of a population, not a count of border encounters. Unauthorized-population estimates are not definitive, and neither measure can be treated as a direct count of 25 million people who entered and remained.

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Was the 2025 poverty rate the lowest ever?

TIME reports that the 2025 official poverty rate was 10.2%, the lowest since Census Bureau tracking began in 1959. The supplemental poverty measure was 13.1%; it accounts for resources such as food assistance and housing subsidies as well as basic needs. Its historical low was 7.7% in 2021.

The two measures answer different questions and should not be conflated. TIME also notes that the Census report relies on a survey conducted in March 2025, three months into Trump’s presidency; that timing does not support attributing the full annual figure solely to his administration.

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Was inflation the “greatest” in history?

TIME cites a 2% Federal Reserve inflation target and compares inflation at 2.5% in January 2020, 1.4% in December 2020, a peak of 8% in 2022, 13.5% in 1980, and 2.9% by the end of Joe Biden’s term. Those comparisons do not support describing inflation as the greatest in history. The figures here are TIME’s reported comparison; they are not a new calculation of the underlying data.

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Were the United States building more and larger auto plants than ever?

TIME’s assessment is that automakers appear largely to be adapting existing facilities, rather than building more and larger auto plants than ever.

  • General Motors planned to convert internal-combustion plants in Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio, and Kansas to electric-vehicle production.
  • Hyundai announced a $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana to supply two existing U.S. auto plants. The announced facility is a steel plant, not an auto assembly plant.
  • Nissan set a target of making 80% of the vehicles it sells in the United States domestically by 2030, while having no plans for a new plant.

Did the GOP convention speech get 107 million views?

TIME reports Nielsen data showing Trump’s approximately two-hour convention speech on September 9 averaged 2.5 million viewers on Fox News, the only major cable network to carry it in full. NBC said the Patriots–Seahawks kickoff game averaged 25.1 million viewers. These are reported audience measurements; they do not substantiate the claim that the convention received 107 million views against 25 million for the NFL opening game. An average audience for a televised speech is also not interchangeable with an undefined total “views” count.

Were more manufacturing jobs coming online than ever?

TIME reports manufacturing employment reached a historic peak of 19.6 million in 1979. It says 16,000 manufacturing jobs were added in August 2026, bringing the total to 12.6 million—below that peak. The reported monthly gain does not establish that more manufacturing jobs were coming online than at any time in U.S. history.

What this fact-check does—and does not—cover

TIME published the interview transcript and its fact-check on October 1, two days after the September 28 White House interview conducted by senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs. The conversation ranged across the Iran war, the press, immigration, the economy, manufacturing, poverty, AI, the Federal Reserve, and other topics. TIME examined selected statements rather than verifying every claim in the interview. The figures and characterizations above are attributed to TIME’s fact-check and cited reporting; they should not be read as an independent audit of every underlying dataset.

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