An Instagram post claims this was tweeted by US president Donald Trump.
The post shows what appears to be a screenshot of a tweet from Trump’s verified Twitter account, published on 24 May 2020. The image is captioned: “What is Tonald saying??”
In the tweet, Trump appears to be criticising the African National Congress, or ANC, South Africa’s ruling party.
“[The ANC] are just thugs who wanna be celebrities,” the tweet ends.
The post has been viewed more than 69,000 times on Facebook.
Trump has commented on South Africa’s government before. In 2018, South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa announced plans to begin the process of land expropriation without compensation. Trump then tweeted that he had asked his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”.
Has Trump now criticised the ANC directly on Twitter? We checked.
Tweet can’t be found
The tweet does not appear anywhere on Trump’s Twitter account.
Factba.se is an AI powered database that stores every communication that comes from Trump’s social media accounts, interviews, and the White House. The tweet does not appear in their database of Trump’s current or deleted tweets.
US President Donald Trump did not tweet that the ANC was a mob of old people. – Naledi Mashishi
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
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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.
Further Reading
‘A time of crisis’: fact-checking South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2023 state of the nation address
As he tried to reignite the enthusiasm of a wearied nation, did the president get his facts right? As we found out, it's all in the details.
2022 Sona promises: South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa zero for two on state utilities Eskom and Transnet
As president Cyril Ramaphosa prepares to deliver his state of the nation address for 2023, we look back at two promises made a year ago.
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