Former President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Saturday with a rally in Waco, Texas, that was reminiscent of his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
The rally comes as Trump is facing investigations in New York City over a hush money payment, in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith over classified documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
In recent days, the former president has made increasingly bellicose remarks about those probes, including predicting last week his own indictment and arrest in Manhattan – something that has not come to pass – and urging supporters to protest if he is indicted.
Saturday’s rally included many of Trump’s most often repeated false claims. Here’s a look at some of those claims.
CNN is continuing to fact check the rest of his rally and this story will be updated.
Trump claimed that he actually won the 2020 election but it was “rigged.”
“We won in 2016. We won by much more in 2020 but it was rigged,” he said. Later he reiterated the claim, saying “It’s a rigged system. Like we had a rigged election.”
Facts First: This is one of Trump’s regular lies. He lost the 2020 election, fair and square. Democrat Joe Biden won a 306-232 victory in the Electoral College – earning over seven million more votes than Trump, good for a margin of 51.3% to 46.8%.
Trump went on to repeat a version of a false claim that he made more than 100 times as president – that the US used to have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. On Saturday he claimed that before he took office, “China was ripping us off, making $600 billion a year.”
Facts First: The US has never…
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