CNN Fact-Checker Reveals The 'Most Dangerous Part' Of Trump's Press Conference

On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump held his first official press conference since the 2024 presidential election was called in his favor. CNN's resident fact-checker Daniel Dale reviewed Trump's statement and his answers to press questions.

Dale found numerous incidents of misinformation, false claims, and outright lies. But he identified one answer Trump provided as the "most dangerous."

On CNN's live coverage immediately following Trump's first post-election presser, Dale stated:

"So there was a lot of lying from the president-elect at this press conference."

"But I think the most dangerous part was an equivocation."

You can see Dale's review of Trump's press conference here:

youtu.be

An equivocation is defined as "the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

Dale elaborated:

"It wasn't really a claim, but he was asked whether he thought there was a link between vaccines and autism, and he equivocated. He said, 'Well, we have some brilliant people looking at this,' and he talked about the increased prevalence of autism diagnoses."

"Look, there is no link between vaccines and autism. This notion has been discredited by study after study over decades."

Dale continued:

"The idea that there is some connection came from a thoroughly discredited, in fact scandalous, fraudulently altered study in the 1990s that should just be ignored, dismissed, again, because it was fraudulent, and so the idea that, well, we're just going to look into this, I think is dangerous to consider because the idea is simply wrong."

Vaccines causing autism is a favorite conspiracy theory among virulent anti-vaxxers like Trump's pick to monitor public health as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr., despite no validated or vetted evidence or research to back their claim.

When asked about a link between vaccines and autism, Trump said:

"So 30 years ago, we had, I’ve heard numbers of like one in 200,000, one in 100,000. And now I’m hearing numbers of one in 100."

"So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it."

Much fuss has been made by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers about a purported massive spike in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses. However, the spike came as understanding of the disorder expanded as more research was completed.

As late as the 1980s, ASD was commonly referred to as a disorder limited to only males. Females with ASD were still rarely diagnosed until the beginning of the supposed spike. Adults being diagnosed in their 40s, 50s, and 60s after years of difficulties and misdiagnoses were also never counted as part of ASD rates 30 years ago.

The obvious causes of a spike being ignored by conspiracy theorists is a matter of ongoing frustration for both vaccine and ASD advocates.

It's not possible to determine if the rate of occurrence increased in the last 30 years or if more people were just accurately diagnosed after years of misdiagnoses. But in comparison, a similar spike occurred in diabetes and epilepsy diagnoses after medical knowledge of those disorders became more widespread.

People were disgusted by Trump's perpetuation of dangerous misinformation and the notion a child with polio is preferable to a child with autism.

Dale highlighted other problematic areas of Trump's remarks as well, saying:

"I'll pivot to some other topics."

"He talked, as usual, about tariffs, said under his first presidency, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China. That money was paid by Americans. It is American importers who pay the tariffs, not Chinese exporters, and many of those importers pass along the costs to U.S. consumers."

"He said no previous President had tariffs on China—that's wrong."

"He said there was no inflation under his own presidency, despite the tariffs—certainly lower than during the Biden presidency, but there was 8 percent cumulative inflation during his presidency, so not nothing."

"In talking about health, he also said, well, 'Europe has lower mortality than us or better mortality,' and they don't use pesticides. Europe uses hundreds of thousands of tons of pesticides every year, so I'm not sure where he got that idea."

Dale concluded:

"Earlier in the press conference, he said over and over, I think three times, that during his presidency there were no wars, like, no wars, period, in the world—that is simply not true, a rewriting of history."

"One research institution said there were active armed conflicts in about 50 states in 2020, including, of course, civil wars in Yemen, in Syria, in Somalia, we had an active Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"U.S. troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, so the idea that this was a world at peace left by Donald Trump to Joe Biden—simply not true."

Lying, false claims, and misinformation were such a major part of Trump's first presidency that numerous news and public advocacy organizations tracked Trump's lies. In the four years since he lost his last presidential run, it doesn't appear Trump has become any better acquainted with the truth.