In summer season 2025, a years-old quote attributed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s mom, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, made the rounds on-line once more. The alleged quote learn: “Sure, he is an fool with zero widespread sense, and no social expertise, however he IS my son. I simply hope he by no means goes into politics. He’d be a catastrophe.”
Many web customers shared the quote within the type of what seemed to be a newspaper clipping. Examples appeared in posts on social media platforms together with Threads (archived), Facebook (archived) and Bluesky (archived).
(Threads consumer @luverd3)
We first regarded into the authenticity of this quote in 2019 and located no evidence Trump’s mom had ever made such an announcement. Different publications, corresponding to PolitiFact and Reuters, additionally fact-checked the quote and located no proof it was actual.
As a result of digital archives of newspapers, books, and magazines develop and alter over time — which means that it is all the time potential for brand new proof for historic claims to grow to be out there — we took one other have a look at the quote after it started circulating once more within the months throughout and after Trump’s marketing campaign and eventual victory within the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
In brief, simply as in 2019, we discovered no compelling proof to assist claims of the quote’s veracity on the time of this writing.
We ran searches for the complete quote in addition to the distinctive clauses “he is an fool with no widespread sense” and “I simply hope he by no means goes into politics” on Newspapers.com and Gale OneFile, each of that are massive databases of periodicals, and located no proof to assist the quote’s authenticity. We additionally looked for the quote on Google Books and the Internet Archive, which likewise returned no proof that the quote ever appeared with safe attribution in any legit publication.
A Google search for the quote discovered no situations of it in any respect earlier than 2019, practically 20 years after Mary Anne MacLeod Trump’s August 2000 death. The absence of any proof of a quote courting throughout the alleged originator’s lifetime is a typical red flag for pretend or misattributed quotes.
One growth since 2019 was the emergence of the supposed newspaper clipping displaying the quote beneath a photograph of Trump and his mom, which appeared (archived) to have first circulated (archived) on-line in June 2020. Examples of the clipping, which didn’t embrace the identify of the paper during which it was allegedly revealed or a date, appeared (archived) in numerous (archived) posts on X (archived).
(X consumer @RobertCStern)
Nevertheless, we discovered no proof that the clipping was real. Though the alleged clipping included a real picture of Trump and his mom that was prominently featured in a 2016 New Yorker article, titled, “Donald Trump’s Immigrant Mom,” we discovered no situations of the picture paired with the quote in any actual newspaper or journal.
It stays potential {that a} major supply proving the quote’s authenticity exists someplace — for instance, in a newspaper archive that had not been digitized by the point of this writing — and for that purpose we have kept away from issuing a definitive score.
Beforehand, we regarded into the claim that Trump’s mom was an undocumented immigrant.
Sources:
Emery, David. “Here is How you can Authenticate Viral Quotes Connected to Historic Figures.” Snopes, 5 Dec. 2022, https://www.snopes.com//articles/464027/how-to-authenticate-quotes/.
Evon, Dan. “Did Trump’s Mother As soon as Name Him an ‘Fool’?” Snopes, 12 Dec. 2019, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trumps-mom-call-him-idiot/.
Reality Examine Scores | Snopes.Com. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check-ratings/. Accessed 31 Dec. 2024.
“False Declare: Donald Trump’s Mom Mentioned He Would Be a Catastrophe in Politics.” Reuters, 17 Apr. 2020. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-donald-trumps-mother-said-he-would-be-a-disaster-in-politics-idUSKBN21Z29U/.
Kasprak, Alex. “FACT CHECK: Was Donald Trump’s Mom an Undocumented Immigrant?” Snopes, 30 Jan. 2017, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/donald-trumps-mother-immigrant/.
“Mary MacLeod Trump Philanthropist, 88.” The New York Occasions, 9 Aug. 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/09/nyregion/mary-macleod-trump-philanthropist-88.html.
Pilon, Mary. “Donald Trump’s Immigrant Mom.” The New Yorker, 24 June 2016. www.newyorker.com, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trumps-immigrant-mother.
Putterman, Samantha. “No Proof Trump’s Mom Referred to as Him an Fool.” @politifact, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/dec/18/facebook-posts/no-evidence-trumps-mother-called-him-idiot-zero-co/. Accessed 31 Dec. 2024.
