Did U.S. President Donald Trump call Australian PM Anthony Albanese a "total RETARD" in a post on Truth Social? No, that's not true: A fabricated screenshot of such a post, in which Trump accused Albanese of "running the country into the ground" originated on an X account that said it was "fake". There is no trace of such a post about "discussing a trade deal soon" on Trump's actual Truth Social account.
Before going viral in other places, the fake screenshot first appeared in a post on X (archived here) on May 12, 2025 with a description that indicated it was fake:
🚨 BREAKING: Donald Trump roasts Anthony Albanese in recent fake TRUTH Social post.
This is what the image looked like:
(Image: screenshot of x.com)
The text included in the fake screenshot read:
Anthony Albanese, Australian PM, total RETARD! Running the country into the ground. Sad! We will be discussing our trade deal very SOON. #MakeAustraliaGreatAgain
Lead Stories manually reviewed Trump's Truth Social account for recent posts that contained the phrase "Anthony Albanese" and did not find any matching posts.
Trump's Truth, a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts, did not include any posts indexed with that phrase either (archived here).
A Google search (pictured below) for the phrase "Anthony Albanese", limited to links containing truthsocial.com/@realdonaldtrump using the "site:" search operator returned no results (archived here), indicating Google didn't recently index such a post.
