Did Donald Trump post "0-2" on Truth Social after a second attempt on his life was made on September 15, 2024? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that this post appeared on the former U.S. president's account and the font in the alleged post was not the same as the one used on other Truth Social posts from Donald Trump. No media outlets reported about Trump making the post either.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on September 15, 2024. The post included an image of a supposed post attributed to former President Trump on Truth Social. The image's text read:
0-2
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 16 14:21:48 2024 UTC)
The accompanying caption read, "Absolute beast."
The "0-2" in the claim most likely refers to Trump becoming the target of a second apparent assassination attempt on September 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. The first was in July 2024, when the Republican presidential candidate sustained an injury to his right ear.
Lead Stories checked Trump's Truth Social account at the time of writing, and could no find evidence of this post. We were not able to find or check archived versions of his account.
Lead Stories checked to see if the font used in the claim was the same font used on an actual Truth Social account by comparing a real Trump post to the alleged one. We concluded that the two fonts were different.
One indicator is the difference in the number "2." In Trump's alleged post, the "2" has more soft curves, while the Truth Social post is sharper. In the real Trump post, the "0" bulges out on the right and left; in the other post, the sides of the "0" are straight.
Below are the two posts side-by-side. Highlighting by Lead Stories:
(Source: Truth Social and X screenshots taken on Mon Sep 16 19:22:47 2024 UTC)
Using keywords, Lead Stories searched in the Google News archive and found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim (archived here). Those search results can be seen here.
We have contacted Trump and will update this article if we receive a relevant response.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Donald Trump can be read here.
