Donald Trump Shares Fake Ronald Reagan Quote About Him
President Donald Trump shared on Monday via Twitter a fake Ronald Reagan quote. Posted by an account named “The Reagan Battalion,” the quote is stamped on a photograph of Reagan and Trump shaking hands.
“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,” is what Reagan said about Trump, according to the image.
However, the quote is completely fake — Reagan never said anything of the sort.
As fact-checking websites Politifact and Snopes noted, there is no proof that Reagan ever said that he felt like he was “shaking hands with a president” when he met Trump.
The quote is, in fact, completely made up, and likely originates from pro-Trump Facebook pages. Joanne Drake, chief administrative officer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, also confirmed that the quote is fake.
Although the photo of the two presidents is authentic, Reagan never praised Trump, and he likely wouldn’t have, according to the late president’s son, Michael Reagan.
“At best, he would be confused by Donald Trump and the way he’s running the campaign,” Michael said of his father.
Furthermore, the tweet Trump shared was not even posted by the official The Reagan Battalion account — it was posted by someone using the same username. The president spent his Monday morning retweeting both the fake Reagan Battalion account, and the real one. The real, verified account posted a number of tweets praising the president, as well as a slew of photos of the crowd gathered to hear Trump’s Independence Day speech.
The president just tweeted an imaginary Ronald Reagan quote about him. https://t.co/MTCtzvUbog pic.twitter.com/7DLBRH44DB
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 8, 2019
A massive crowd that Fake News & some Dems didn’t want to Report! https://t.co/RiRTP2hEJc
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2019
This is not the first time President Trump promoted content created by social media accounts with questionable reputations. As The Inquisitr detailed in an earlier report, the president does not shy away from sharing and promoting false and misleading content on social media.
In March, Trump retweeted a number of messages posted by QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theorists, with one of the posts containing a hateful remark aimed at late Republican Senator, John McCain.
Trump shares fictitious quote of Reagan predicting his presidency https://t.co/npRnI5ds7S pic.twitter.com/Lza0VAdGFJ
— The Hill (@thehill) July 8, 2019
Trump has promoted a number of right-wing conspiracy theories over the years, according to Business Insider, including the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory which claims that former President Barack Obama faked his birth certificate, and that he was actually born in Kenya.
The president has also contradicted science by suggesting that autism is caused by vaccines, and by arguing that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese government.
