The 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly has opened at the organisation’s headquarters in New York. On the first day, Tuesday (September 22), the United States president, Donald Trump, spoke for 37 minutes on the Iran war, Greenland, climate change, law and order in Washington, world peace and other subjects.
Analysts say Trump’s speech at the UN was somewhat less explosive than last year’s. But this time too he made false claims on a range of subjects. Here they are.
The claim to have ended wars
Trump has long claimed to have ended eight wars. Repeating it in his speech, he said: “Since I took office I have been able to end eight wars. It is a great honour for me.”
The eight wars and conflicts he lists are Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Gaza, Israel and Iran, and Egypt and Ethiopia.
The figure of eight is plainly exaggerated. Two items on the list were not wars at all when he took office. The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia was a diplomatic quarrel over a dam project.
Nor was the situation between Serbia and Kosovo a war, and it is unclear what war Trump could have ended there. The war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has not ended either: a peace agreement was reached through the Trump administration’s mediation, but the conflict has not fully stopped.
His claim on Gaza is also open to question. A ceasefire was reached there through United States mediation, but Israel still carries out regular attacks in the strip.
The Trump administration did play a part in ending last year’s short war between Israel and Iran. But in February 2026 Israel, together with the United States, went to full-scale war with Iran again.
Global warming
In his speech Trump mocked warnings that artificial intelligence might one day attack or kill people. Those warnings, he said, come from “the same people” who said everyone would die within 12 years because of global warming.
Trump claimed that the term “global warming” was later changed to “climate change” because the Earth was supposedly cooling rather than warming, and that nobody had died because of it.
There are at least four errors in this. First, “global warming” is still widely used, alongside “climate change”, and the two do not mean the same thing. Climate scientists use both: “global warming” for the long-term rise in the Earth’s average temperature, and “climate change” for the wide range of changes that rise is causing.
Second, it is not clear which period Trump meant, but there is no basis for saying the Earth is cooling; it is getting warmer. The World Meteorological Organization said in January that the 11 warmest years since records began are the last 11, with 2023, 2024 and 2025 the three warmest.
Third, experts do not accept that climate change has killed “nobody”. It is hard to say exactly how many people have died because of it, but various estimates put the figure in the millions, and more deaths are feared in future.
Fourth, no major report by climate scientists has said that “we will all die within 12 years because of global warming”. A 2018 report said that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require carbon emissions to be cut sharply within the next 12 years, and scientists warned that the severe effects of climate change could grow if that limit were passed.
Confusion over investment
Trump said in his speech: “We have secured commitments of 21 trillion dollars in new investment from all over the world.” There is no clear basis for the claim, and the White House has not been able to give any reliable figure to support it.
During the speech, the White House website said announcements of major investment in the United States during his second term came to 11.2 trillion dollars, well below the 21 trillion Trump cited.
A detailed CNN review in 2025 also questioned the White House figures, finding that the list counted several trillion dollars of vague investment pledges.
Shortfalls in the US arsenal
Trump sharply criticised claims that the continuing war with Iran has drawn down United States weapons stocks. In his speech he said plainly that there is no shortfall.
Trump said: “Cowards and traitors want to say America’s arsenal has run down. That is not true. We have so many weapons we could never even think of using them. We are building weapons on a scale we never have before.”
No specific figures are published on the size of the United States arsenal, so his claim cannot be fully checked, and it is unclear whom he meant by “cowards and traitors”.
But it is not only CNN and other media: a government inspector overseeing the Pentagon and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office have both said stocks of some United States weapons have fallen during the war with Iran. That was set out in two separate reports published last week.
Those reports also said the Pentagon has begun taking various steps to manage the situation, but that the defence industry will need “significant time” to increase production capacity.
The Pentagon has consistently said there is no shortfall in the United States arsenal, and repeated the claim last week.
Trump also overstated the fall in crime in United States cities. He said that when he took office on January 20 last year the capital, Washington, was riddled with crime, that crime there has now fallen by 87 percent, and that they are trying to bring it down to zero.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report