QUANTICO, VIRGINIA – SEPTEMBER 30: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia. In an unprecedented gathering, almost 800 generals, admirals and their senior enlisted leaders have been ordered into one location from around the world on short notice. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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CNN’s resident fact checker says President Trump “repeatedly lied” during a speech to senior military leaders Tuesday, including repeating one of his favorite lies about CNN, which was provably false to anyone watching the network’s live coverage of the president’s remarks.
In a report on CNN’s Situation Room, senior reporter Daniel Dale unraveled Trump’s “numerous false claims,” which included previously debunked claims about Joe Biden, Ukraine, NATO, Venezuela, protests in Portland–and CNN. “Fake news CNN,” Trump said, gesturing to the cameras on a press riser in the back of the room. “Oh, their camera just went off. You know, their camera, every time I mention them, they turn their camera off because it’s never good.”
This claim was carried live on CNN via a camera that the network did not, in fact, “turn off.” CNN’s camera, in fact, was capturing the speech not just for CNN, but other media as well, serving as a “pool” camera. The network carried Trump’s speech live–and in full.
‘Trump is lying right now’
Trump has repeatedly suggested at rallies that CNN cuts away from him when the network doesn’t like what he’s saying–a claim CNN and other journalists have long called out as false.
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in 2016, then-candidate Trump told a crowd of thousands of supporters that CNN had turned off its camera as soon as he began disparaging the network. “CNN is a disgrace,” he said. “Oh, they just turned off their camera. So funny, they just turned off their camera. I love it,” Trump said.
“CNN’s camera is on,” said NBC correspondent Katy Tur, who was covering the Trump rally. at a 2016 rally. CNN’s “reporter is doing a live shot right now,” Tur said. “Trump is lying right now.”
US President Donald Trump addresses senior military officers gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30, 2025. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the US military must fix “decades of decay” as he addressed a rare gathering of hundreds of senior officers summoned from around the world to hear him speak near Washington. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
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‘Simply not true’
In his speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, the president told senior military leaders that the city of Portland “is burning down,” and that any pictures or video that suggests otherwise would have to be “false tapes” because Portland looks “like World War II.” Dale said that was “simply not true.”
Trump piled on former President Biden, accusing him of letting “25 million” migrants into the country. “The ‘25 million’ figure is fictional,” Dale reported, adding that Trump has repeated this figure repeatedly, though at times insisting that the number was 21 million. “Even Trump’s previous ‘21 million’ figure was a wild exaggeration,” Dale said.
‘A gross exaggeration’
“There were just so many false claims,” Dale told anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. “I say that after essentially every speech unfortunately from President Donald Trump, but I think this is notable because of the audience. He was telling a lot of lies, saying a lot of other inaccurate things regardless of his intentions to the U.S.’ top military leaders.”
In a post on X, Dale listed 13 separate false claims, including some of the president’s favorites, like saying he has personally ended seven wars, that Washington, DC was the country’s “most dangerous city” until Trump stepped in to clean it up (and that the nation’s capital now has “no crime at all”), and that the U.S. experienced 300,000 drug deaths last year (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in September that the actual number is 79,383). An addiction expert at the time told FactCheck.org that Trump’s number was “a gross exaggeration.”
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