STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Did Donald Trump say, "I'm naturally selfish, and the idea of representing the interests of others is alien to me"? No, that's not true: The statement is part of a supposed 1990 quote attributed to Trump that has been on social media since at least 2018. However, there is no evidence in online searches that President-elect Trump ever said those words.
The claim reappeared in a post on Instagram (archived here) on December 11, 2024. It included a photograph of a younger Donald Trump holding an armload of what appeared to be cash.
It opened with this quote:
'Politics is boring, but more importantly there's no money in it! As a successful business man, I'm naturally selfish, and the idea of representing the interests of others is alien to me.'
-Donald Trump, 1990
Here is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Thu Dec 12 15:11:42 2024 UTC)
The post does not offer any attribution for the quote other than the year it was supposedly made.
A Google News search for the entire quote (archived here) returned no pertinent results except for a 2018 fact check by Snopes on the same purported quote used in a meme published that year.
Lead Stories searched for two key portions of the quote. A Google News search for "I'm naturally selfish" returned no results (archived here).
A Google News search for "politics is boring" did produce results (archived here). On April 14, 2016, then-candidate for president Trump was quoted by Politico and Vice at a New York state Republican gala (archived here and here) saying this:
Who the hell wants to talk about politics? Politics is boring.
A search of Trump White House archives website for the phrase "I'm naturally selfish" also produced no pertinent results (archived here).
Lead Stories contacted David Cay Johnston (archived here), author of the 2016 book "The Making Of Donald Trump," to see whether he had ever come across such a quote in his research.
On December 13, 2024, Johnston emailed his response:
That doesn't sound right. And, no, I have never seen that particular quote.
A search of the book recommendation site Goodreads (archived here) for quotes from Trump using the word "selfish" also returned no pertinent results (archived here).
To see other Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Donald Trump, click here.
Updates:
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2024-12-13T17:00:57Z 2024-12-13T17:00:57Z Quote from author of book "The Making Of Donald Trump."
