Fact-check: Trump’s ‘Meet the Press’ falsehoods about abortion, Jan. 6 security and bacon prices

Former President Donald Trump during an interview on NBC’s "Meet the Press" claimed to have "all the facts" as he spoke about the 2020 election.

But Trump’s comments to moderator Kristen Welker on Sept. 17, including those about the price of bacon and abortion access, were false or misleading.

Here are some key claims, fact-checked.

This is wrong. Trump’s comments could leave viewers with the impression that Raffensperger, a Republican, said Trump didn’t do anything wrong when he sought to get Georgia officials to "find" more votes to secure him a 2020 reelection victory.

Trump appears to be referring to Raffensperger’s Aug. 28 testimony about Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. (The court released the testimony online Sept. 11.) 

Raffensperger testified in a hearing related to Meadows’ bid to move his case from Fulton County to federal court. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones denied Meadows’ request. Meadows was one of 19 defendants charged with trying to interfere in the 2020 election; he has pleaded not guilty. 

During the hearing, Raffensperger was asked about a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call he had with Meadows, Trump and others. Raffensperger testified that Biden had won and that Trump repeated numerous false claims, including that thousands of ballots were cast using the names of dead people. Raffensperger said that "we spoke the truth," but that Trump did not accept his words. 

Raffensperger also said he "didn't take it as inappropriate," for the Trump team to have asked him for an agreement to review election data. But Raffensperger has not said Trump didn’t do anything wrong.  

In the past couple of weeks, Raffensperger has said he opposes the idea of using the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot. "The people should decide these things," he said. 

This is False.

The price of bacon rose 30% from January 2021, the month Biden took office, to November 2022. It did not go up five times; that would have been a 400% increase.

Also, prices have declined since that November 2022 peak. Today, the price of bacon is 11.5% higher than it was in January 2021.

Today’s bacon price is only 2% higher than it was at its highest point during Trump’s presidency in September 2017.

In 2021 and 2022, "we saw significant inflationary pressures in the economy and increased consumer spending on food," said David L. Ortega, an associate professor in Michigan State University's Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. "High grain prices during that time made it more costly to raise hogs. All of this contributed to increased prices for pork products, and other foods."

More recently, he added, "we are seeing a softening in demand for pork products and a bump in supply, contributing to moderating prices."

Regardless, Ortega said that "fluctuations in bacon or pork prices in general have nothing to do with who is president."

We have rated similar claims False. Killing a baby after birth is infanticide and is illegal in all 50 states.

These types of claims misleadingly try to equate an intervention that may take place in the third trimester when there’s a severe fetal anomaly with a situation where people can just decide after birth to have their baby killed.  

Situations that result in a fetal death late into pregnancy are exceedingly rare, reproductive health experts said. They usually involve emergencies such as fatal anomalies, including severe brain and heart defects, or life-threatening complications affecting the mother. 

In life-threatening cases, an expecting mother may have labor induced. If a baby is expected to survive only minutes or days after delivery, a family may opt for palliative care, which aims to provide comfort to an infant who is near death.

Trump mentioned New York as an example in his comments, but the state doesn’t have a law that allows killing a baby after birth. State legislators in 2019 passed its expanded 24-week abortion limit — considered to be around the point of viability when a fetus can survive outside the womb — with exceptions after that for the health and life of the mother and severe and fatal fetal anomalies.

We have rated a similar claim False.

There is no record that Trump authorized thousands of National Guard troops for the U.S. Capitol in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

As president, Trump had the authority to activate the Washington, D.C., National Guard. However, Christopher Miller, who served as acting defense secretary at the time, told the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that Trump did not give an order to have National Guard troops ready.

Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Gen. Keith Kellogg, former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, both testified that they were unaware of any requests from Trump for National Guard troops.

We rated similar claims Mostly False. 

Although the House speaker has a role in the chain of command in charge of overseeing security at the U.S. Captiol, the speaker is not the sole person responsible.

The House and Senate sergeants-at-arms are the chief law enforcement officers at the Capitol and coordinate with the Capitol Police, a federal law enforcement agency, to provide security. The four-member Capitol Police Board includes both sergeants-at-arms, the Capitol police chief and the Architect of the Capitol and is responsible for security at the Capitol Complex. 

The House sergeant-at-arms reports to the speaker of the House, who was Pelosi at the time of the attack. And the Senate sergeant-at-arms reports to the Senate majority leader, who was Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell.

This lacks evidence. Trump made this statement after mentioning "2,000 Mules," a documentary by a right-wing film maker about ballot drop boxes used in the 2020 election.

The movie incorporates research by Texas-based True the Vote, a national organization that has spread misinformation about voting. True the Vote claimed that certain people it called "mules" repeatedly passed by certain drop boxes. These repeat visits, they argued, revealed a set of delivery runs.

Election and law enforcement officials in battleground states have said they received no evidence to substantiate the allegations of widespread cheating via drop boxes suggested by "2,000 Mules."

Bill Barr, attorney general under Trump, also publicly rejected the movie’s premise. 

Georgia investigators found that one of the men in the video, Mark Andrews, was dropping off ballots for himself and family members, which is allowed under state law. Andrews filed a defamation lawsuit against those involved in making the movie.

A video on Trump’s campaign website disproves Trump’s claim. 

"I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations," Trump said in a video detailing his plan to "destroy the drug cartels." 

Other Republican candidates have taken similar positions, saying they will use force against Mexican cartels and send troops to Mexico. 

We were unable to find any instance in which Biden claimed to have flown airplanes. The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry asking for evidence that Biden had said this. The White House press office told PolitiFact it was unaware of any examples, either.

Trump also said that Biden "said he drove trucks." In 2021, Biden said, "I used to drive a tractor trailer." We found that he had a summer job driving a school bus in the 1960s.

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