Did Donald Trump tweet that he's donating $500,000 toward the expenses of the two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who were shot and critically injured? No, that's not true: This tweet was not posted by Trump's authentic account; it came from a now-suspended fake account. This tweet does not appear in a database that includes all of Trump's tweets.
The fake tweet appeared as a meme in a Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on Sept. 14, 2020. The text above the meme read "Don't think for a minute that I'm voting for the lesser of two evils. I will be proudly casting my ballot for Trump and a straight red ticket in November." The fake Trump tweet read:
Once the 2 ambushed officers are recovered enough, I will be visiting them and letting them know AMERICA loves them.
I will also personally be donating each of the 2 officers $500,000 each to help with expenses!
RT RT RT to show DEMS we love our police!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Sep 17 12:34:22 2020 UTC)
The tweet was posted by the since-suspended Twitter account, @RealDonaldTrwp, which was made to look like the president's real account, but a few things gave away it's inauthenticity: The account isn't verified (instead the blue check was edited into the profile photo) and the account handle is clearly different from the president's actual account. When the account was suspended it had 17.7 thousand followers.
The two Los Angeles County deputies were wounded in an ambush-style shooting. A still-unidentified gunman walked up to their squad car and shot both uniformed officers on Sept. 12, 2020, in Compton. The next day, it was announced they were both out of surgery, according to CNN.
Checkyourfact.com also debunked the fake Trump donation tweet.
