CNN
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While visiting Canada on Monday for a Group of 7 summit, President Donald Trump repeated one of his many false claims about Canada – again wrongly blaming former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for getting Russia booted out of the group formerly known as the Group of 8.
Speaking of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump claimed Monday: “He was thrown out – by Trudeau, who convinced one or two people, along with Obama. He was thrown out. And he’s not a happy person about it, I can tell you that.”
In fact, Trudeau did not become Canada’s prime minister until November 2015 – more than 19 months after Russia’s 2014 ouster from the Group of 8, a forum made up of countries with large industrialized economies. It was Trudeau’s Conservative predecessor as prime minister, Stephen Harper, who led the effort to kick Russia out in the wake of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region. Trudeau’s Liberals were not even the biggest opposition party in Canada’s House of Commons at the time.
Trump made the false claim while standing beside Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trudeau’s successor as Liberal leader.
Trump made a similar false claim about Trudeau during an exchange with reporters at the White House in May, incorrectly saying of Russia’s removal from the Group of 8: “I thought it was a very bad decision. It was headed by Trudeau, by the way, and Obama. They were the ones that really fought hard to get Russia out.”
Trade and US aid to Ukraine: Trump made other false claims in his Monday remarks at the G7. Speaking to reporters alongside UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump erroneously described his trade deal with the UK as a deal with the European Union, which the UK does not belong to. Trump then twice repeated his long-debunked assertion that former President Joe Biden had given “$350 billion” in aid to Ukraine.
The figure is not close to correct.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $138 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion, through April 2025. (That period includes more than three months of Trump’s current presidency.)
It’s possible to arrive at different totals using different counting methodologies, but there is, regardless, no basis for Trump’s “$350 billion” figure. The US government inspector general overseeing the response to the invasion of Ukraine says on its website that the US had appropriated about $185 billion for the response through March 2025, including about $90 billion actually disbursed – and that includes money spent in the US or sent to countries other than Ukraine.
The number of Biden-era migrants: While talking about undocumented immigrants at the G7 on Monday, Trump repeated his frequent assertion that “Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country.” That “21 million” figure is wrong, too. Through December 2024, the last full month under the Biden administration, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total was “21 million.”
