Did former President Donald Trump post on Truth Social that he was secretly knighted by Queen Elizabeth II? No, that is not true: There is no evidence of this post on Trump's Truth Social account. A Trump spokesperson denied this claim as well. Former presidents were given honorary knighthoods by Queen Elizabeth, but Trump was not one of them.
The claim appeared in a tweet (archived here) on September 9, 2022, with the caption, "This is what happens when you take too much Adderall." The Truth Social post read:
I never told anybody but she knighted me in private.
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Mon Sep 12 14:39:58 2022 UTC)
There is no date on the Truth Social post. Lead Stories searched for this post starting from the day the queen's death was announced, September 8, 2022. There is no evidence on Trump's account or in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine that he posted this statement.
Lead Stories reached out to Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Trump. On September 12, 2022, she denied that this post was real, saying via email:
He did not post this, thank you.
Although there is no evidence that Trump was knighted, it is not uncommon for former presidents to be knighted. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, two former presidents, were officially given an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II.
Here are more Lead Stories fact checks about Donald Trump.
