Facts in Biden’s State of the Union address
Facing a challenging path to reelection amid low favorability ratings and public wariness over the economy, President Joe Biden used his 2024 State of the Union address to take a fighting posture. He repeatedly drew contrasts with his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, and occasionally sparred with GOP lawmakers in the audience.
“This is a moment to speak the truth, to bury lies,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who believed falsehoods that the 2020 election had been stolen. “Here’s the simple truth: You can’t love your country only when you win.”
Biden didn’t say Trump’s name in his remarks, but he frequently invoked Trump’s record and proposals, usually referring to him as “my predecessor.”
Some Republicans called out Biden from the floor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., challenged Biden over the killing of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. An immigrant in the country illegally has been charged in Riley’s death.
Another Republican lawmaker, Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden, yelled, “Lies!” in response to Biden’s criticism of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
In forceful terms, Biden framed himself as a protector and defender of Americans and their prosperity, touting pocketbook policies to ease student loan burdens and lower prescription drug prices.
Biden repeated calls for Republicans in Congress to approve aid to Ukraine, which is fighting an invasion by Russia. He also walked a fine line on the Middle East. He called for Hamas to free the Israeli hostages it continues to hold in Gaza — the families of some hostages were in the chamber for his address — but also announced a plan to build a temporary pier to expand humanitarian aid to Palestinians caught in the crossfire.
We fact-checked key statements on immigration, Trump, the economy, reproductive rights and crime.
Immigration
Biden blamed Republicans for sidelining Senate border security bill
For years, Republicans have blamed Biden for the historically high illegal immigration under his watch. Some Republicans wore red and white pins that said “Stop the Biden border crisis” in large capital letters.
As Biden entered the House chamber, Greene gave him a pin with text that said: “Say her name: Laken Riley,” the University of Georgia student who was murdered.
As he discussed border security and immigration, Greene interrupted Biden and challenged him to say Riley’s name.
“Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Biden said, misstating Riley’s first name.
Some high-profile Democrats criticized him for using the phrase “illegal,” which some argue is dehumanizing.
“He should have said undocumented,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on CNN.
“Let me be clear: No human being is illegal,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., posted on X.
Biden also said it was Republicans’ turn to act and cooperate with him and Democrats on a border security bill. He blamed Republicans for sidelining a Senate immigration bill, which failed in a 49-50 vote, that he claimed was “the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen.”
Attacking Trump with his own words
In more than a dozen nameless references to his predecessor, Biden used partial quotes by Trump to draw policy contrasts on guns; Roe v. Wade; and Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘do whatever the hell you want.’ That’s a quote.”
Trump wasn’t directly inviting Russia to do whatever it wanted to NATO allies. He was telling a story during a rally in South Carolina about what he said to an unnamed ally years ago. Trump claimed he was tough on NATO and got results, misrepresenting several facts about the alliance and his record in the process.
“I got them to pay up,” Trump said Feb. 10. “NATO was busted until I came along. I said, ’Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘ Absolutely not.’”
Trump added, “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we are attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you are delinquent?” He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you, in fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they wanted. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”
“My predecessor told the NRA he’s proud he did nothing on guns when he was president.”
Trump did say that, even though his record was more nuanced. Speaking at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Pennsylvania in February, Trump said, “During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me, having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield.”
But in 2019, when Trump was asked what he had done about the gun problem, he said, “We’ve done, actually, a lot.” Trump banned bump stocks, which let semi-automatic weapons fire dozens of bullets in seconds. He also supported a bipartisan effort to improve the background-check database and his administration prioritized gun-related prosecutions. However, Trump’s administration also tried to expand gun laws and regulations or block efforts to tighten them.
Economy
Biden took a victory lap on the reduced inflation rate and other economic metrics. But a few of his talking points, including on “soaring” consumer confidence and cuts to the deficit, were exaggerated.
“Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% — the lowest in the world!”
The U.S. is doing better on managing inflation than most advanced industrialized nations are, but does not rank No. 1 internationally.
Biden is correct that the year-overyear inflation rate has dropped from 9%, a four-decade high, in summer of 2022 to a little above 3% today amid sharp interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
In December 2023, seven countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — Canada, Denmark, Italy, Latvia,Lithuania, the Netherlands and South Korea — had inflation rates lower than the U.S’.
Twenty OECD member countries had higher inflation rates than the U.S., including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, each of which belongs to the G-7 of elite economies.
“I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over a trillion dollars.”
This merits asterisks. The deficit — the difference between federal spending and federal revenues — fell by $1.4 trillion between 2021, Biden’s first year in office, and 2022, his second year. That was a larger decline than any in any previous one-year span.
However, this reduction stems largely from the phasing-out of pandemic era relief programs. Also, even at its reduced levels, the deficit remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic. The deficit in 2022 and 2023 under Biden was higher than in each of Trump’s first three years, partly because of bills such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan, a pandemic recovery measure.
A “law and order” president
Violent crime has declined recently in the U.S., and Biden largely took responsibility.
“America is safer today than when I took office,” he said, claiming that the year before he became president, “murders went up 30%, the biggest increase in history.”
Homicides did increase 30% in 2020, and it was considered the largest singleyear jump in more than a century. But Biden ignored that the spike coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Touting his 2022 American Rescue Plan Act as “the largest investment in public safety ever,” Biden pointed to the 2023 homicide rate: “Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history. Violent crime fell to one of its lowest levels in more than 50 years. But we have more to do.”
Violent crime has decreased from 2020’s record highs, but this is because of a confluence of factors, experts said, some that are beyond Biden’s control.
Using data from hundreds of cities, criminologists estimated that 2023 homicides were down around 12% compared with 2022. The numbers are considered preliminary, but crime analysts say that if the final numbers remain the same, it would represent one of the largest single-year homicide declines since U.S. crime record-keeping began.
Despite the decline, data shows that the 2023 homicide rate is expected to be about 18% higher than it was in 2019, before the pandemic began.
Legislation such as the American Rescue Plan, which included funding for community public safety initiatives, and the 2022 Bipartisan Safer in Communities Act, which provided funding to help states implement “red flag laws” and put more limits on gun purchases, might have helped propel the downward trend, researchers said. Other contributing factors likely include an easing of the pandemic’s social disruptions and cities’ individual crime-reduction efforts in response to homicide spikes.
PolitiFact staff
Reproductive issues
“The Alabama Supreme Court shut down IVF treatments across the state, unleashed by a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”
On Feb. 16, the Alabama Supreme Court released a ruling that said frozen embryos should be considered children.
The decision lacks the power to shut down in vitro fertilization treatments statewide. But it caused multiple clinics in the state to pause IVF treatments as they reviewed the decision and potential liabilities.
Since then, Alabama lawmakers passed legislation to shield IVF providers from civil or criminal liability in a rush to protect fertility treatments after backlash grew. Two clinics announced they were resuming operations after Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. — who had two daughters using in vitro fertilization — introduced a similar federal bill aimed at protecting IVF. But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked it Feb. 28, saying it was a “vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far — far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF.”
“If you, the American people. send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”
We continue to rate Biden’s promise to codify Roe v. Wade Stalled.
Biden called on Congress to help him achieve his 2020 campaign promise to codify Roe v Wade.
He can’t do it alone.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2022 to overturn Roe, ending nearly 50 years of federally protected abortion access.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023, which would prohibit governmental restrictions on access to abortion. But it has no Republican cosponsors and didn’t advance.
We have been tracking Biden’s campaign promise to codify Roe v. Wade, one of about 100 promises on our Biden Promise Tracker. The lack of 10 Republicans to overcome an expected filibuster has stalled Biden’s efforts on codification. That lack of a path forward continued even after Democrats kept narrow control of the Senate in the midterms.