Fact Check: Did Trump launch a tirade criticizing Black Friday shoppers?
WASHINGTON, DC: A viral post circulating widely on different social media platforms claims that President Donald Trump criticized those Americans who took part in the Black Friday deals, confusing the shopping event with ‘civil disobedience.’
The claim was supported by screenshots and reposts that were shared extensively across the social media platforms, and thus, many users took the quote to be authentic because of its political nature and its appearance near the holiday shopping season.
Let’s find out if this is actually the truth.
Claim: Trump launched ‘tirade’ against Black Friday, mistaking it for act of mass civil disobedience
On November 24, the internet saw a claim going viral that President Donald Trump had launched an angry "tirade" against Black Friday after he had misunderstood the annual post-Thanksgiving shopping event as a planned mass civil disobedience.
The rumor got traction after Facebook page NewsThump ran an article on November 24, which then got spread across Reddit and Bluesky, thus users were left with the question of whether Trump had actually made such remarks.
A widely shared screenshot of the statement purportedly issued by the president attacking Black Friday shoppers made some viewers decide to look for confirmation.
The claim got more traction when the screenshot was shared again on X, Facebook, and different message boards. Some users believed it as a confirmed statement; thus, a vast number of online followers believed that Trump had rebuked consumerism in a public tirade.
Fact Check: False, no evidence or proof to back viral claim
With the assistance of Snopes' fact-checking, the claim was identified as false.
There was no instance of Trump ranting against Black Friday, nor any recording of the president's tweets or statements.
Rather, it was from NewsThump, a site that clearly marks its pieces as satire. Even its Facebook bio says, "Satire (not news, obviously, but we have to put this here because of the idiots)."
In spite of this obvious disclaimer, the article was still shared extensively without the accompanying context, thus tricking numerous users into thinking it was genuine.
The satirical article by NewsThump mentioned fake posts on X and Truth Social; however, fact-checkers were not able to locate any such posts.
They used the X search tool to look through Trump's account and also through Trump’s Truth, the archive of the president's Truth Social posts. They found no statements similar to those in the viral article.
