Quick Take
A photo of a purported news story from 2015 shared on social media attributes incendiary remarks about Africans to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. There’s no evidence he made those comments.
Full Story
Thousands of users on Facebook have shared an image of a supposed newspaper clip that attributes a series of racist, incendiary remarks to President Donald Trump.
But we could find no evidence that supports the account offered in the purported article, which reverse image searches show has circulated online for several years.
Dated Oct. 27, 2015, and appearing under the text “World News,” the headline reads: “‘Africans Are Lazy, Good at Sex, Theft.'” Complete with a picture of Trump, the text of the story claims that Trump has “once again…expressed his deep disgust for Africans by referring to them as lazy fools only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery.”
The rest of the text attributes a number of direct quotes along those lines to Trump, who at that time was several months into his campaign for president.
The story claims Trump made his remarks while “speaking in Indianapolis,” but we could find no trace of him speaking there in October 2015. Some of his campaign stops that month included Norcross, Georgia; Anderson, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia.
The story also claims Trump called for then-President Barack Obama and “his Kenyan brothers and sisters” to be “deported back to Kenya.” While Trump has in the past promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States — before reversing course in September 2016 — we couldn’t find public statements in which Trump called for Obama to be “deported.”
What we did find, however, is that Snopes debunked the same story after it appeared on Oct. 25, 2015, on a website called “Politica” (not to be confused with the news organization Politico). That story remains online.
The image of the clipping includes a credit to “newzimbabwe” — and we found that a popular YouTube video sharing the story includes a link to a NewZimbabwe.com post in its description. That link is now dead, but an archived version shows the website had republished the Politica story on Oct. 26, 2015.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network. Our previous stories can be found here.
Sources
“Donald Trump Presidential Campaign Announcement Full Speech (C-SPAN).” C-SPAN. YouTube Video. 16 Jun 2015.
Farley, Robert. “Trump on Birtherism: Wrong, and Wrong.” FactCheck.org. 16 Sep 2016.
“Some Africans are lazy fools, only good at eating, lovemaking and stealing, says Donald Trump.” NewZimbabwe.com. 26 Oct 2015.
Trump, Donald (@realDonaldTrump). “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” Twitter. 6 Aug 2012.
FactCheck.org Rating: 