President Trump doesn’t like fake news. Not one bit.
But on Monday, he shared a little fake news on his Twitter page.
Trump on Monday retweeted a post on Twitter that included a fake quote from former President Reagan that reputedly predicted his own presidency.
“For the life of me, and I’ll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with a president,” said the quote, overlaid on a photo of Reagan shaking hands with a young Trump.
“Cute!” the president wrote as he retweeted the two-year-old post from an account that has just 13 followers.
Cute! https://t.co/ylJfs6hh9g
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2019
Twitter promptly suspended the account after Trump retweeted it, making the original tweet irretrievable.
The image and quote circulated on Facebook earlier this year but was ” was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed,” PolitiFact reported.
The photo being shared here is authentic and dates back to Nov. 3, 1987, said Joanne Drake, chief administrative officer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. The image shows then-president Reagan shaking Trump’s hand in the Blue Room at a reception for members of an art and preservation in embassies foundation.
But Drake said the quote attributed to the 40th president about the would-be 45th president is inaccurate: “He did not ever say that about Donald Trump,” she said.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
Snopes also rated the quote “false.”
Although the photograph of Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Donald Trump is genuine, we found no record of the former President’s uttering the phrase quoted above upon meeting the New York business magnate. In fact, this quote wasn’t attached to the photograph at all until 30 July 2016, long after Reagan’s death, when it was posted to the “Trump Train” Facebook page. A previous investigation into “Trump Train” found that the social media site frequently shares hoax stories and fake quotes.
Then again, perhaps Trump was floating the picture as a goof, as he did simply say, “cute.”
