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| - Early in February 2025, a supposed Truth Social post by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he called teachers "ugly" began to circulate online. For example, a user on X shared it, seemingly taking the screenshot of Trump's alleged post at face value (archived):
The Department of Education, as we will all soon find out, is one of the terrible organizations on Earth, with millions wasted over many years developing a hybrid of the fork and spoon in our cafeterias (which no one likes). Millions spent teaching our educators, many of which are very ugly, how to read before they are allowed to teach our children. Tens of Millions, even Billions, reinforcing flawed DEI - or DEWHY as we call it now policies of extreme radicals to indoctrinate our youth by enforcing peanut bans to accommodate a very small group (very LOUD) who don't like the beautiful nut. This horrible "department" must be stopped NOW!
Other X posts shared the same screenshot, as evidenced by the number of likes (7,700) and "ReTruths" (2,200) on the image. The image also indicated that Trump had posted these words at 12:36 a.m. The image and the claim that Trump had called teachers "ugly" spread on Facebook and TikTok as well. Further, several Snopes readers emailed to ask us whether the image was real.
Trump did not post this message. We therefore have rated the image a fake.
A thorough review of Trump's feed on Truth Social revealed no such post between Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, 2025, as the date stamp on the purported screenshot indicated.
Further, a Google search showed that the search engine had not indexed this post. A search on Google Images brought up a few references to the same screenshot, with the same time stamp and numbers of likes and "ReTruths." Typically, when a post becomes viral on social media, several people in different time zones take screenshots of it, from different devices with varying aspect ratios. Screen shots of genuine posts also tend to show different numbers of likes and shares, unlike the images of this alleged post. This suggested the only source for the quote was the image itself, another indication it was fake.
A search for the same quote in Google News revealed that no reputable news outlet had reported on it, either.
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