Fact-check: President Donald Trump’s Super Bowl LIX interview with Fox’s Bret Baier

In his Super Bowl Sunday interview, President Donald Trump defended efforts carried out by Elon Musk to slash the federal budget, including at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and he said more is coming. 

Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier that "maybe in 24 hours" he will tell Musk, the billionaire leading the Department of Government Efficiency, to "check the Department of Education" and the "military." 

"We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse," Trump said in an interview taped at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, estate. (A second segment will air Feb. 10 on Fox News). "But I campaigned on this, Bret." 

Without citing specifics during the seven-minute segment, Trump alluded to a list of "ridiculous" USAID spending projects. As Trump, Musk and the White House have described what they see as wasteful spending, we have found that not all of their singled-out programs involved USAID funding.

The interview then turned to something that Trump did not campaign on: making Canada the 51st state. When Baier asked whether Trump’s idea was a "real thing," Trump said yes, then talked about the U.S. trade deficit with its northern neighbor, using an inflated number.

Trump attended the Kansas City Chiefs-Philadelphia Eagles game in New Orleans, the site of a deadly attack weeks earlier. In a statement, Trump called for remembering the 14 people who were murdered while celebrating the new year on Bourbon Street.

Here’s a rundown of interview moments. We sent an email to the White House press office for comment and did not immediately hear back.

Trump’s assessment of the Canadian trade deficit

Trump defended his Canadian trade policy by telling Baier, "Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially in subsidy to Canada?"

The $200 billion figure is far higher than the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, something Trump has cited in his effort to hit Canada with tariffs. (Those tariffs are on a 30-day pause.)

The U.S. trade deficit in goods with Canada was about $63 billion in 2024. The overall trade deficit with Canada falls to about $41 billion when factoring in a U.S. surplus in services.

A trade deficit is not a subsidy. It might be considered a subsidy if the U.S. transferred billions of dollars every year to Canadian companies purely "out of goodwill," TD Economics analysts wrote in January. Rather, the money going from the U.S. to Canada is to buy goods and services with a monetary value.

What else might the $200 billion figure include? The Trump transition team previously told CNN that much of it stems from U.S. defense spending directly benefiting Canada. Canada’s current defense expenditures amount to less than 1.4% of the nation’s gross domestic product, which is less than the 2% NATO target. 

However, Canada spent an estimated $30.5 billion on defense in 2024, ranking sixth highest among all NATO countries. That was far less than what the U.S. spent that year, $968 billion, but Canada has one-eighth the population of the U.S. and one-thirteenth its gross domestic product.

Comparing US wealth with peers

Baier noted "jittery" signs with stock markets and consumer confidence, asking when families would be able to feel lower grocery and energy prices he promised.

"Look, we're not that rich right now," Trump said. "We are $36 trillion (in debt), that's because we let all these nations take advantage of us."

Compared with the rest of the world, though, the United States is rich indeed.

The U.S. gross domestic product is the world’s biggest, at $27.7 trillion. The GDP of China, the second closest, is $17.8 trillion. 

Adjusting for population, the U.S. ranks fourth, trailing only three smaller countries: Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland.

A different measurement, by Global Finance magazine, ranks the U.S. ninth globally on a list also dominated by smaller countries, including Macau, Singapore, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and San Marino. 

Fact-checking false social posts about the Super Bowl

PolitiFact examined two claims about Super Bowl VIPs ahead of the game.

The first involved Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, whose career at Texas Tech University came up in a podcast interview with Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who coached there.

When host Megyn Kelly incorrectly said Tuberville coached Mahomes at Texas Tech, Tuberville tried to correct her, saying, "I recruited (Patrick Mahomes) … I’ve got to be very good friends with him." 

We rated Tuberville’s claim False. Mahomes rebutted Tuberville's statement. "He did not recruit me at the time," Mahomes said during a Feb. 6 press conference. "I don’t — I don’t remember if I ever got to meet (Tuberville) or not." 

Tuberville was Texas Tech’s head football coach from 2010 to 2012; he resigned as head coach Dec. 8, 2012.  Mahomes played for Texas Tech from 2014 to 2016, before the Chiefs drafted him in 2017. News reports credit Tuberville’s successor, Kliff Kingsbury, with recruiting Mahomes. 

Then there’s Taylor Swift, the singer-songwriter girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Social media posts used "breaking news" language to raise doubts about her expected appearance at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome, saying Swift was "officially banned from Super Bowl 2025." 

The False post linked to a story that lacked a byline, cited anonymous sources and provided no evidence. Swift has attended numerous Chiefs games in the past year and a half, and she has been spotted around New Orleans, including with Kelce, in the lead-up to Sunday’s game.

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