Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.

More Info

I would like to contribute

Samantha Putterman
By Samantha Putterman September 27, 2020

Trump didn’t tweet that the Supreme Court should decide the presidency for every election

If Your Time is short

  • Donald Trump didn’t tweet that the Supreme Court should decide every election. 

Did President Donald Trump really tweet that it’s not fair for a president to have to leave office over "bad votes," and that the Supreme Court should be able to pick the president, instead?

No.

"Not fair for a president to leave office because of BAD votes!," the purported Sept. 23 tweet, timestamped reads. "The Supreme Court should decide the presidency at every election. And the president should always be president because that’s what the American people want! #yourpresident."

 
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat potential false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Trump declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power — on the same day that the tweet was generated — should he lose the presidential election, but there’s no evidence that the tweet is real.

The tweet doesn’t appear on his personal, verified account, @realDonaldTrump, nor does it show up on accounts associated with him, like @WhiteHouse and @POTUS

ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization, maintains a database of tweets deleted by politicians called Politwoops. The alleged post is not captured in the database, and we found no evidence that shows the tweet ever existed on the platform.

If Trump had actually posted this, it would have prompted widespread news coverage and criticism from his opponents. But there’s none — because he didn’t.

Websites allow anyone to generate real-looking, but ultimately fake tweets using tweet generators

There is no record of Trump ever tweeting the statement. 

We rate this claim False.

Our Sources

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

More by Samantha Putterman

Trump didn’t tweet that the Supreme Court should decide the presidency for every election

Support independent fact-checking.
Become a member!

In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.

Sign me up