A graphic posted on Facebook on 4 July 2019 claims US president Donald Trump has weighed in on the debate on reparations for slavery in his country.
It reads: “Any African American who wants reparations can receive a check for 100k, but must also rescind their US citizenship and leave the country for good. You're unamerican to want reparations.”
The image appears to be a screenshot of a tweet from Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.
The post was flagged as possibly false by Facebook’s fact-checking system, sending an alert for Africa Check to investigate.
Did Trump tweet that African Americans wanting compensation for slavery and its consequences would be given a US$100,000 cheque, but then lose their US citizenship?
A clue that the tweet may be fake is that it’s written in a different, narrower font than the one used by Twitter.
And an advanced Twitter search for “reparations” in tweets from @realDonaldTrump returns no results.
The tweet is not recorded in the Trump Twitter Archive, a collection of all 30,000+ tweets from @realDonaldTrump since 2009, the year the account was created.
From 27 January 2017 – seven days after Trump became president – the archive has even automatically recorded any tweets deleted from the account. The word “reparations” doesn’t appear in any of these tweets.
The tweet also doesn’t appear in two different collections of tweets Trump has deleted during his presidency. The collections are maintained by public interest investigative journalism site Propublica, and by Factbase, a searchable archive of all digital communication from Trump’s administration.
Finally, there are no credible news reports since January 2017 of Trump tweeting that “un-American” African Americans wanting slavery reparations would be given a $100,000 cheque but lose their citizenship. The tweet is fake. – Mary Alexander
It reads: “Any African American who wants reparations can receive a check for 100k, but must also rescind their US citizenship and leave the country for good. You're unamerican to want reparations.”
The image appears to be a screenshot of a tweet from Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.
The post was flagged as possibly false by Facebook’s fact-checking system, sending an alert for Africa Check to investigate.
Did Trump tweet that African Americans wanting compensation for slavery and its consequences would be given a US$100,000 cheque, but then lose their US citizenship?
Tweet nowhere to be found
A clue that the tweet may be fake is that it’s written in a different, narrower font than the one used by Twitter.
And an advanced Twitter search for “reparations” in tweets from @realDonaldTrump returns no results.
The tweet is not recorded in the Trump Twitter Archive, a collection of all 30,000+ tweets from @realDonaldTrump since 2009, the year the account was created.
From 27 January 2017 – seven days after Trump became president – the archive has even automatically recorded any tweets deleted from the account. The word “reparations” doesn’t appear in any of these tweets.
The tweet also doesn’t appear in two different collections of tweets Trump has deleted during his presidency. The collections are maintained by public interest investigative journalism site Propublica, and by Factbase, a searchable archive of all digital communication from Trump’s administration.
Finally, there are no credible news reports since January 2017 of Trump tweeting that “un-American” African Americans wanting slavery reparations would be given a $100,000 cheque but lose their citizenship. The tweet is fake. – Mary Alexander
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
Add new comment