Fact Check: Did Donald Trump mock Xi Jinping's name in a social media post?
WASHINGTON, DC: During the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States for a summit at the White House, a social media post claimed President Donald Trump mocked the Chinese leader’s name in a social media post. The claim has sparked mockery and criticism against Trump, prompting a fact-check.
Claim: Donald Trump mocked Xi Jinping's name
The rumor spread in the form of a screenshot, claiming to show a post by Trump on his official Truth Social handle.
The alleged post began with Trump praising the Communist leader, stating, “I was deeply honored to meet and greet my very good friend, President Xi of China-a brilliant guy, very strong, rules over 1.4 billion people with an iron fist, everybody knows it!”
It goes on to say, “We were sitting in a fantastic, high-level meeting-top experts, great diplomats, very impressive room-and I looked at him and said, 'Mr. President, you're a great leader, but you are spelling your name completely WRONG! It shouldn't be X-I. It needs to be S-H-I!'"
"And you know what? President Shi AGREED with me! He looked at me, he smiled, and he totally understood! He said, 'Donald, you are so right, nobody has ever pointed that out to me before!'"
"Because every time people say 'She is coming,' they don't know if it is a woman or the President of China. Very confusing, highly complicated!"
"This had never occurred to anyone! Not to the top scholars, not to the folks in the State Department-nobody! But I brought it up to him, we fixed it right on the spot, and now we have a tremendous, high-IQ understanding! A beautiful thing!”
Fact Check: Donald Trump made no such post
However, the screenshot is fake and fabricated, as no such post exists on any of Trump’s social media handles.
A search on his official Truth Social handle, as well as on the commentary accounts on X that archive his social media posts, yielded no results that match the text in the screenshot.
Moreover, the screenshot includes several clues that its fabricated and was intended as satire, including a watermark stating, ‘Mrs Putin Satire.’
Also, the username in the screenshot is different from Trump’s actual username on the platform.
Although Trump did praise Jinping and their friendship during his visit to the White House on Thursday, there is no mention of the president describing anything about Xi’s name.
