This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.
In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump defended the United States’ robust use of military force in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere, saying the international community is incapable of handling threats from those countries.
WATCH: Trump addresses 2026 United Nations General Assembly
Undaunted by polls that show Americans tiring of the nearly-seven-month Iran war and its impact on fuel prices, Trump said in the Sept. 22 speech that the U.S. is “settling years of unfinished business. And we’re doing it well.”
He also brushed off concerns that rapid advances in artificial intelligence could endanger humanity, saying the U.S. “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control artificial intelligence.”
Members of the Cuban and Iranian delegations walked out at points during Trump’s speech. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was traveling to address the General Assembly on Sept. 23 — an unusual visit by a leader of a country at war with the U.S.
Here are fact-checks of some of Trump’s statements.
Artificial intelligence
“The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming … These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all. … This is the group that came up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, climate change, open borders.”
Although some anti-AI groups may have overlaps with advocates concerned about climate change, alarms over AI are not confined to one group of people. The loudest warnings of late have come from the top of the industry itself.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a Sept. 12 essay urging a slower pace of developing AI capability. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind Cofounder and Chair Demis Hassabis and xAI founder Elon Musk agreed with Amodei, a rare concurrence in the competitive tech industry.
U.S. lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation to regulate AI.
On artificial intelligence, “We’re leading now over China by a lot.”
The U.S. has a lead over China in model capability, but key AI industry leaders and experts have said China is only a few months behind. U.S. models have rapidly become more powerful, leading to multiple safety breaches, and AI leaders are calling for a slowdown. The gap between the U.S. and China could shrink if development proceeds more slowly in the U.S., but China continues apace.
“From this point forward, all United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term ‘super’ as opposed to artificial. So it’s superintelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of superintelligence — SI.”
Superintelligence is a specific term in the field of AI, but those in the industry say it’s not an accurate description of currently available AI systems.
WATCH: Trump dismisses concerns about AI risks at UN, says he won’t rein it in
Superintelligence is generally understood by industry experts as an AI system that is far ahead of human intelligence at nearly all cognitive tasks, including scientific research and communications. A recent paper from Google’s AI lab, Deepmind, defined artificial superintelligence, or ASI, as “an artificial general intelligence that has superhuman abilities across virtually all tasks and domains of human interest and activity.”
Current AI systems excel at coding, math, and a lot of complex cognitive tasks. But they have limitations that place them well behind superintelligence. A 2026 international AI safety report describes current AI’s performance to be “jagged across tasks and contexts.”
U.S. involvement in wars, conflicts
“The cowards and traitors would love to say the United States is low on munitions, but that’s not true. We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using, and we’re building them at levels that we have never done before.”
This is misleading. Several news and expert reports have found that U.S. weapons stockpiles are rapidly decreasing as the Iran war continues.
A May analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security-focused think tank, projected that certain heavily-used munitions in the Iran war — such as the Tomahawk missile system and Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors that defend against missiles and drones — will take about three to four years to replenish.
In July, NBC News reported that the U.S. military was rationing munitions and allowing some Iranian attacks because of the diminishing stockpile.
Defense experts have said that aid to Ukraine under President Joe Biden’s administration also reduced the United States’ weapons reserve. The Biden administration started a process to expand production and replenish the stockpile, something the Trump administration has accelerated.
“The United States has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea.”
False. Air and marine drug seizures have dropped since the strikes began in September 2025, but the administration hasn’t provided a clear link. The Coast Guard, which oversees most drug seizures on water, recorded a 200% increase in seizures in fiscal year 2025 compared with other annual averages.
Seizures show how many drugs are stopped from entering the U.S., not how many drugs are being sent to the U.S. or how many make it in. It’s a black market, making the number unknowable, according to drug experts.
Oil supplies
“When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60% of the oil in the world.”
It’s not that high. Measured by proven reserves — the amount of oil that is practical to produce — the U.S. and Venezuela combine for 21.9% of the world’s supply.
Measured by current production, the two countries combine to 23.2%.
Although Venezuela has the potential to become a major oil producer, its oil industry will need infrastructure investments in several major areas, said Skip York, a fellow at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies.
It could take four to 10 years for Venezuelan oil production to expand in a significant way, experts told PolitiFact. And that’s assuming that billions of dollars of investment materializes.
“The up-front costs associated with infrastructure will be quite large, and there is a lot of uncertainty in the long-term ability for companies to operate there,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor with the University of Texas at Austin’s petroleum and geosystems engineering department.
Cuba and communism
“The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States, as our State Department has detailed. They’ve cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Democrat Socialists of America.”
This is based on a July U.S. State Department report that found the Cuban government has spent decades coordinating with and supporting left-wing communist networks both inside and outside the U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration have used the report to justify economic sanctions and an oil embargo on Cuba, which have worsened blackouts on the island.
The nearly 100-page report devotes multiple chapters to organizations it says have played a role in developing or maintaining ties between American activists and the Cuban government, NBC 6 reported. It references the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples as the central organization coordinating many exchanges and delegations connecting Cuba with left-wing activists and U.S. organizations, including the Democrat Socialists of America.
The report argues that these ties have helped Cuba establish a foothold in political movements in the U.S.
