Trump repeats false claim Iran was ‘two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon’
Speaking in Alaska, Donald Trump is once again airing a list of familiar boasts and grievances, many of which are based on claims that are entirely untrue.
Trump repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because, “they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”.
In fact, two months into Trump’s second term, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.
Eight months later, in February 2026, Trump announced that a full-scale war on Iran was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The president also claimed, as he has previously, that the media unfairly blamed him for high prices less than 24 hours into his second term.
“We had the worst, literally the worst inflation in history,” Trump said, incorrectly.
He then told an imaginary story he has repeated frequently in recent weeks.
“Then I came into office on January 20th,” Trump said. “And I had a news conference on January 21st, a day after, and they started screaming, ‘Affordability! What about affordability?’ I said, ‘I’ve only been here for one day.’ It’s not even a day, because it was a little less than the 24 hours. No, ‘I’ve only been here for a short period of time. What are you talking about?’ ‘Prices are high!’ they said.”
In fact, no such exchange took place at Trump’s first news conference with reporters on 21 January 2025 during which he announced AI infrastructure investments and was mainly pressed on the pardons he signed the day before for Capitol rioters convicted of violence against police officers on January 6 2021, in support of his attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.
A review of transcripts reveals that the president was not confronted about persistent high prices for months after he took office.
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In Alaska, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because, “they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”. In fact, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003. Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. Eight months after that, he launched a full-scale war on Iran justified, he now says, by Iran being just weeks away from getting the bomb.
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Aboard Air Force One on his way to Alaska for a campaign rally, the president of the United States posted video of a British man who was fatally mauled by a tiger last week on his social media platform with the mocking caption: “Don’t ever mess with nature!”
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The new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, passed on an opportunity to set the record straight on whether she is licensed to practice law anywhere in the United States. Asked “Where did you pass the bar exam?” Zacharia just said: “I moved to China.”
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Donald Trump has just wrapped up his campaign rally for Republican candidates in a Wasilla, Alaska sports center by promising to give voters cash payments and favors if his party wins.
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In yet another remarkable breach of protocol, and likely the Hatch Act, a federal law that bars government officials from partisan campaigning, Trump invited his Federal Communications Chair, Brendan Carr, to the stage and promised that the FCC would vote “to invest an additional $162 million to expand high speed internet in Alaska.”
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Then, Trump ended his speech with a more direct appeal.
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“So in conclusion, if you elect a Republican House and a Republican Senate November 3rd, you get $5,000,” the president said.
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Speaking in Wasilla on Tuesday, Donald Trump repeated his claim that South Korea has agreed to spend $50bn to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska, just days after Alaska Public Media reported that Korean officials told state lawmakers in Anchorage that the country had not agreed to invest in the pipeline and would consider investing in the project if it’s commercially reasonable.
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In an Oval Office announcement last month, Trump, flanked by senator Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican facing a tough re-election battle, said that South Korea had agreed to pay for an 807-mile (1,299km) pipeline to carry natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to a liquefaction facility on Alaska’s southern coast.
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The Korean investment, Trump said, was part of a $200bn package of US projects that South Korea agreed to in 2025 as part of a trade deal in exchange for lower US tariffs on South Korean cars, auto parts and other products.
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The next day, however, South Korean officials insisted that they did not “agree to a specific dollar figure—or even to invest at all.”
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South Korea’s industry ministry said that the government had only agreed to “initiate a review” of the pipeline deal.
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South Korea’s industry minister, Kim Jung-kwan, took issue with to Trump’s characterization of the country’s Alaska LNG investment. “Putting out figures, or using definitive language, goes far beyond what was agreed,” he said at a briefing for reporters.
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In his remarks to supporters in Wasilla, Alaska, Donald Trump is boasting about his own record in office by repeating a large number of false claims.
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Perhaps the most important lie is his imaginary claim that he has secured $21tn in foreign investment during his second term. As CNN has reported, the figure, which he keeps inflating, is fictional.
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A detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.
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The White House figure includes pledges from US-based companies as well as foreign entities. Federal data published last month shows that new foreign direct investment in the US was about $232 billion in 2025.
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Trump also claimed that “just recently I gave all members of our military $1,776,” which he called “a bonus”.
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“We’re doing well, we’re kicking ass in Iran. And I said, ‘You know, let’s give them some money. What can we do?’”
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In fact, the money was not a bonus to service members but a planned housing benefit included in previously appropriated congressional funding.
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The president also told his admiring supporters another fictional tale that has become a fixture of his speeches, about how he Saudi king had praised him for almost instantly turning around the US economy during his visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2025.
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“Less than two years ago- they would tell me, king of Saudi Arabia, many of the leaders, they’d say, ‘You know, just a short time ago, your country was dead. We never thought it had a chance.’ They never did. They disrespected us. They laughed at us. They don’t laugh anymore,” Trump said. “Now they said, ‘‘Sir, you’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.’ We’re the hottest country in the world.”
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As the Guardian has reported previously, Trump did not meet the Saudi king, who is elderly and not often seen in public, during his visit last year. Instead, he was hosted by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. There is also no evidence that the Saudi prince made this statement to Trump, but there is video of Trump making a version of that claim to bin Salman during an address to a US-Saudi investment event in Riyadh on 13 May 2025.
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“The days of economic misery under the last administration are rapidly giving way to the greatest economy in the history of the world,” Trump said before directly addressing the crown prince in the audience. “We are rocking. The United States is the hottest country, with the exception of your country, I have to say, right? … No Mohammed… You’re hotter. At least as long as I’m up here, you’re hotter. But groceries, gasoline, energy and all other prices are down with no inflation. We have no inflation.”
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Two weeks after his return to the US, Trump began saying that this observation had been made not by him, but to him. “I went to Saudi Arabia,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on 28 May 2025. “The king told me, he said, ‘you got the hottest com-’ we have the hottest country in the world right now.,” Trump said. “Six months ago this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country.”
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As he repeated the story, again and again, Trump began to also attribute his own claim, that the US was “dead” under Joe Biden, to the Saudi king as well. In remarks at the Nato summit in the Hague in June 2025, Trump insisted that the Saudi king had told him: “A year ago, your country was dead. You had a deadhead running it. You had a country that was dead”.
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Since then, Trump has repeated the tale dozens of times.
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Speaking in Alaska, Donald Trump is once again airing a list of familiar boasts and grievances, many of which are based on claims that are entirely untrue.
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Trump repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because, “they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”.
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In fact, two months into Trump’s second term, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003.
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Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.
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Eight months later, in February 2026, Trump announced that a full-scale war on Iran was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
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The president also claimed, as he has previously, that the media unfairly blamed him for high prices less than 24 hours into his second term.
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“We had the worst, literally the worst inflation in history,” Trump said, incorrectly.
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He then told an imaginary story he has repeated frequently in recent weeks.
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“Then I came into office on January 20th,” Trump said. “And I had a news conference on January 21st, a day after, and they started screaming, ‘Affordability! What about affordability?’ I said, ‘I’ve only been here for one day.’ It’s not even a day, because it was a little less than the 24 hours. No, ‘I’ve only been here for a short period of time. What are you talking about?’ ‘Prices are high!’ they said.”
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In fact, no such exchange took place at Trump’s first news conference with reporters on 21 January 2025 during which he announced AI infrastructure investments and was mainly pressed on the pardons he signed the day before for Capitol rioters convicted of violence against police officers on January 6 2021, in support of his attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.
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A review of transcripts reveals that the president was not confronted about persistent high prices for months after he took office.
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Speaking in a sports center in Wasilla, Alaska that the town’s former mayor, Sarah Palin, helped build, Donald Trump just urged his supporters in Alaska to vote to repeal ranked-choice voting in a ballot initiative.
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“All it is is a way to cheat,” the president claimed, without a shred of evidence. “You got some guys sitting behind the table, I guess, just picking a winner.”
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“Any place you have ranked choice, you have damn bad cheating,” Trump said.
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Donald Trump is rethinking defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, after learning that the convicted attacker is paralyzed from the waist down, CNN reports.
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