A political meme that’s made the rounds on social media in recent years claims to show a quote from former President Donald Trump where he disparaged Republican voters.
The meme includes a photo of Trump and what it claims is a portion of his comments from a 1998 People magazine interview.
“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific,” the quote attributed to Trump reads.
Several VERIFY readers, including Jackie, have emailed and texted us asking if Trump really said this.
THE QUESTION
Did Trump call Republicans the “dumbest group of voters” in a 1998 People magazine interview?
THE SOURCES
- Julie Farin, a former spokesperson for People magazine
- Queries on Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines for purported Trump quote
- Various People magazine articles published in the 1990s
- RevEye, a reverse image search tool
- Clip from Trump’s 1988 Oprah interview on YouTube
THE ANSWER
No, Trump did not call Republicans the “dumbest group of voters” in a 1998 People magazine interview. The quote is fabricated.
WHAT WE FOUND
Trump did not call Republicans the “dumbest group of voters” in People magazine or any other publication. The quote circulating on social media is fabricated.
Julie Farin, a former spokesperson for People, told The Associated Press in 2019 that the magazine looked into the claim exhaustively when it first surfaced years ago but did not find any such quote from Trump.
“We combed through every Trump story in our archive,” Farin said in an email to the AP.
VERIFY also searched for the quote falsely attributed to Trump through the search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing, and only found various fact-checks debunking it. The quote hasn’t been published by any reputable news outlets.
Trump was the subject of various People magazine articles in the early 1990s. But those articles focused on Trump’s finances and relationships, including his divorce from ex-wife Marla Maples, rather than his political inclinations.
Using RevEye, a reverse image search tool, we found that the photo of Trump that’s used in the meme comes from his 1988 appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Trump is wearing the same red tie and navy blue suit jacket in one version of the meme and a screengrab from his Oprah appearance. His hair is also styled the same way.
The Oprah Winfrey Network posted a three-minute clip from that appearance on YouTube in 2015. During the interview, Trump teased a presidential bid but did not make any comments disparaging Republican voters.
“I know people have talked to you about whether or not you want to run. Would you ever?” Oprah asked Trump during that interview.
“Probably not. But I do get tired of seeing the country ripped off,” Trump responded.
But Trump did qualify his response later in the interview.
"If it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what's happening with this country.... We're really making other people live like kings, and we're not,” he said.
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