Daniel Dale is CNN’s fact-checker. He has noticed Trump’s repetitive use of the term “nobody knows” or “nobody knew,” which often means that everyone knew but him. Trump is like a carnival barker or a used car salesman who will say whatever might persuade gullible listeners to see “the tallest man on earth,” or the used car that’s five years old but has never been driven, not a single mile.

Dale wrote:

When President Donald Trump says “nobody” knew or expected something, that often means lots of people knew or expected it.

Trump made wildly inaccurate “nobody” claims about multiple subjects during his first presidency. Perhaps most famously, he declared in 2017, while trying and failing to pass a replacement for Obamacare, that “nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”

He’s now doing it again amid the war with Iran.

On multiple occasions this month, Trump has claimed “nobody” had expected Iran to attack its Persian Gulf neighbors after it was attacked by the US and Israel. “Nobody ever thought they’d be shot at,” he said of Gulf countries on Thursday. “Nobody was even thinking about it,” he said Monday. “Nobody, nobody, no, no, no. No, the greatest experts – nobody thought they were going to hit,” he said last week.

In reality, various experts had not only thought but publicly predicted that Iran would retaliate by striking countries in the region. Iranian officials had themselves saidthis was their plan.

Like Trump’s health care claim in 2017 and the “nobody” claims he made about the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the new claim about Iran appears to be an attempt to shield himself from criticism. If nobody expected Iranian attacks on Gulf nations, nobody thought the US needed to prepare for another pandemic and nobody knew it would be so tough to pass a health care bill, surely none of these situations could be the president’s fault.

Trump’s ‘nobody’ claims serve his goals

Many of Trump’s other false “nobody” claims this term have served both his political and personal aims.

His laughable declaration that he ended wars that “nobody” even knew were occurring even though they had killed “millions and millions” of people portrays him as a heroic foreign policy visionary. His strange assertion that “nobody” knows the last name of former vice president Kamala Harris belittles his 2024 election opponent. His false claimthat “nobody” knows who is receiving California’s mail-in ballots fuels both his push to restrict mail-in voting and his lie that he only lost the popular vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections because of widespread fraud in Democratic-dominated areas.

In some cases, though, it’s a mystery why Trump made a “nobody” claim.

For example, when he gave a February speech at the US Institute of Peace headquarters building in Washington, DC, which his administration seized from the nonprofit organization last year, he claimed, “It’s brand new, they built it for peace, but nobody occupied it. You know, nobody knew what the purpose of it (was).” In fact, it was known to numerous people in the federal government and in the broader capital that the building had been custom-built as a home for the US Institute of Peace, which had occupied it since 2011.

Was Trump lying, or did he not know this himself and therefore assume nobody else knew either? Nobody knows.

Trump claimed ‘nobody’ expected peace in the Middle East – but there wasn’t actually peace in the Middle East

Trump’s false “nobody” claims are in keeping with the penchant for hyperbole that has characterized his rhetoric since his days as a celebrity businessman. The most head-spinning of the claims are boasts.

Specifically, they’re the boasts in which Trump correctly says that nobody expected some particular great thing to happen during his presidency… but incorrectly says the thing has happened during his presidency.

For example, in January, he said, “We actually have peace in the Middle East. Nobody thought that was possible.” He said the next day, “We have peace in the Middle East. It’s an amazing thing. Nobody thought we’d ever see that.”

In reality, “nobody” had been proven right.

Despite 2025 ceasefires between Israel and Iran and between Israel and Hamas, the Middle East as a whole obviously wasn’t atpeace at the time Trump made these January comments. Trump implicitly conceded that he was exaggerating, admitting the same day as the latter remark that there were “little flames” in the region and in mid-February that there were “some flames here and there.”

Less than two weeks later, Trump started the war with Iran – the one that prompted the Iranian response he claimed “nobody” had expected.