Bad enough, President Trump lied during the State of the Union address to both houses of Congress.
On Friday, Trump repeated the same falsehood at a luncheon in the White House Rose Garden to celebrate motherhood.
“11,888 murderers were allowed in our country,” he lied to the women at the gathering, many of whom were wearing summer dresses and colorful hats.
Trump had cited this same precise number of immigrant killers on numerous other occasions and has been told on numerous occasions that it is false. He sometimes compounds the falsehood, as he did at the 2025 signing of a Social Security executive order, speaking of “11,888 murderers, half of whom committed more than one murder.”
The State of the Union claim, in particular, prompted numerous news organizations to declare the 11,888 figure unfounded. “There is no evidence of this,” NPR concluded in February.
And yet there he was on Friday, standing in the springtime sunshine among the blooming roses with a group of grief-scarred moms, repeating the false figure yet again.
Among the mothers were Gold Star Moms who had lost a child in the armed forces and so-called “Angel Moms,” meaning those who had lost a child to a murdering migrant.
When asked the source of Trump’s statistic, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “President Trump is right about the countless criminal illegal aliens who entered our country under the Biden administration and murdered innocent Americans. The Daily Beast should cover those Americans who tragically lost their lives and the angel parents still mourning their children.”
But Trump repeatedly offers a very specific count of murderers from among these “countless criminal aliens.”
How exactly Trump derives the number is unclear. DHS does have a list of 647,572 “non-detained” noncitizens with a criminal record as of 2024. But many of them are legally in the country. And the list is only of those who had been arrested but not necessarily convicted of various charges, including traffic offenses. It goes back four decades, which includes Trump’s first term.
Over the past month, Trump’s many lies have included repeatedly saying the pope thinks it is OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Trump also lied to a group of school kids in the Oval Office for a presidential fitness award on Tuesday, telling them that the 2020 election had been “rigged.”
But even mendacity with the pope and with youngsters is not so low as lying to moms who have suffered the greatest possible loss. He even added an additional flourish to his standard falsehood.
“They emptied the prisons of the Congo into the area of the southern border, and they told them to just walk in, because stupid Americans are going to accept you beautifully,” Trump said. “And these were hard, mean, vicious criminals they allowed into our country.”
That is called fear-mongering.
Trump’s lies were all the more shameful because he was also telling them for the benefit of the cameras covering the event.
In truth, some of these mothers would still have their children if the killers had not gained entry to America. But in using fake numbers, Trump is using the moms as political props, trying to turn sympathy for them and outrage over the murder of their children into support for his agenda.
And his agenda is always ultimately himself.
The gloriously sunny day amid the roses darkened with the truth about his lies.
