FACT CHECK: Did Donald Trump Did Say, ‘If You Elect Joe Biden, There Will Be No Hand Sanitizer’?
A viral Facebook post claims President Donald Trump said, “If you elect Joe Biden, there will be no hand sanitizer.”
“Donald Trump actually said this today,” the Aug. 3 post reiterates.
Verdict: False
There is no record of Trump making the comment. The quote originated in a satirical tweet.
Fact Check:
Author Don Winslow on Aug. 2 sent out a series of tweets, purportedly quotes from Trump, that all began with the phrase “If you elect Joe Biden.” While most people appeared to correctly perceive them as satirical, one particular quote has been widely shared on Facebook as if it were real.
“If you elect Joe Biden, there will be no hand sanitizer,” one such Facebook user credited Trump with saying. “I have spoken to the hand sanitizer people and they have assured me that they will only produce hand sanitizer for a Donald Trump administration.”
There is no record of Trump ever making the statement. Searching his Twitter accounts – @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS – and ProPublica’s archive of his deleted tweets didn’t turn up any matches. It also does not appear in Factbase, an online database that collects Trump’s public statements.
Winslow later tweeted to clarify that the quote was satirical and meant to “highlight the ridiculousness of Donald Trump’s tweets.” The Facebook post gives no such disclaimer.
I posted ten or so SATIRICAL comments to highlight the ridiculousness of Donald Trump’s tweets….
But the best part is the hundreds of people writing to me and asking when/where did Trump say that!
Meaning he regularly says such INSANE STUFF that my SILLY JOKES were believed.
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) August 2, 2020
“I posted ten or so SATIRICAL comments to highlight the ridiculousness of Donald Trump’s tweets,” Winslow tweeted. “But the best part is the hundreds of people writing to me and asking when/where did Trump say that! Meaning he regularly says such INSANE STUFF that my SILLY JOKES were believed.”
Daniel Dale, a CNN reporter, also pointed out to Twitter users that Winslow was “tweeting out a series of invented satirical quotes.”
