FACT CHECK: Did Donald Trump Tweet That He Wasn’t ‘The Only US President To Hide From The American People In A Bunker’?
An image shared on Facebook claims President Donald Trump tweeted that he wasn’t “the only U.S. president to hide from the American people in a bunker.”
Verdict: False
There is no record of Trump ever tweeting the statement.
Fact Check:
The Secret Service took Trump to the White House bunker for a short time on May 29 amid nearby protests over the death of George Floyd, CNN reported. Trump claimed in early June that he had entered the bunker to inspect it, but Attorney General William Barr later contradicted the president’s statement, saying that Trump had been taken there in response to the protests, according to USA Today.
The image being shared appears to show a June 6 tweet, purportedly deleted by Trump, that references his brief time in the bunker.
“FAKE NEWS MEDIA! It is NOT true that I am the only U.S. president to hide from the American people in a bunker,” reads the alleged tweet. “People say that even Franklin Roosevelt hid in a bunker during the protest of the Vietnam War! So UNFAIR!!”
Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt served as president from 1933 to 1945. He died in 1945, years before the Vietnam War even started.
“I am guessing that one of his handlers explained that it would make him look like an idiot,” the caption remarks. (RELATED: Viral Image Claims To Show All The Lights Out At The White House During George Floyd Protests)
The tweet appears to be fabricated. There is no record of him deleting it in ProPublica’s archive of his deleted tweets on June 6 or any other date. Media outlets likely would have reported on the comment had he tweeted it.
This isn’t the first time social media users have shared a fake tweet claiming that it was deleted by a politician. Earlier this month, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the target of such a hoax that falsely suggested she tweeted that governors should “maintain restrictions on businesses until after the November Elections.”