President Trump shared a fake quote Monday alleging former President Ronald Reagan said when he shook hands with Mr. Trump that he felt he was “shaking hands with the president.”
In a now-deleted tweet, an account posing as conservative news outlet The Reagan Battalion said: “Dear weak Conservatives, never forget that you are no match for ’we the people,’ and our president” and attached a photo with the quote superimposed over Mr. Trump and Mr. Reagan 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 the president,” Reagan reportedly said.
“Cute,” Mr. Trump said, retweeting the image. The account has since been suspended.
However, fact-checking publication Politifact reported the image as fake in 2017 when it made the rounds on Facebook.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s chief administrative officer Joanna Drake told Politifact that while the photo of Mr. Trump and Mr. Reagan shaking hands is real, Mr. Reagan’s “quote” is fake.
Mr. Trump’s retweet comes a month after he called actress and singer Bette Midler a “washed up psycho” for tweeting an image with a fabricated quote from Mr. Trump, saying he would run as a Republican for president because they are “the dumbest voters in the country.”
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.