Did Donald Trump publish a Truth Social post about "Transcendental Logic" and the doctrine of philosopher Immanuel Kant? No, that's not true: A viral fake screenshot of such a post originated as a joke on Bluesky and the creator explained the joke in later posts. He had lifted the text from a Wikipedia article about Kant's book "Critique of Pure Reason" and no such post appeared on Trump's Truth Social account.
The image of the faked post appeared in a post on Bluesky (archived here) where it was published by Tibor M. Kalman on September 1, 2025 with a caption that read:
I dunno, I'm not buying these recent *proof-of-life* posts from the President on Truth Social.
🤔😳🤨
#Enlightenment #Metaphysics #Epistemology
The text in the image itself read:
In the Transcendental Logic, there is a section (titled The Refutation of Idealism) that is intended to free Kant's doctrine from any vestiges of subjective idealism, which would either doubt or deny the existence of external objects. Kant's distinction between the appearance and the thing-in-itself is not intended to imply that nothing knowable exists apart from consciousness, as with subjective idealism. Rather, it declares that knowledge is limited to phenomena as objects of a sensible intuition. In the Fourth Paralogism ("... A Paralogism is a logical fallacy"), Kant further certifies his philosophy as separate from that of subjective idealism by defining his position as a transcendental idealism in accord with empirical realism, a form of direct realism!!!
This is the image in question:
(Image source: Bluesky post by Tibor M. Kalman)
As Kalman later admitted in two follow-up posts, the image was created as a joke:
Folks...sorry to create so much discord and confusion.
'Tis is pure, unbridled satire. I lifted the text from the preface of Kant's 1781 book, Critique of Pure Reason, and created the fake Truth Social post in Photoshop. Will leave no stone unturned in my quest to humor myself.
😅🫣 😇
In fact, the text I ended up using in the post is from Wikipedia, on Immanuel Kant's philosophical works, who is surely turning in his grave right now. Thanks to all for obliging me on a bit of whimsical zaniness during dire times. Hope I elicited a chuckle.
🙏🏼🌞🕊️
The text fragment could indeed be found on an older version of the Wikipedia page about philosopher Immanuel Kant's book "Critique of Pure Reason" (archived here).
Trump's Truth, a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts, did not include any posts (archived here) with the phrase "Transcendental Logic".
All screenshots of the supposed post showed exactly the same numbers of ReTruths and Likes, 4.89k and 18.8k respectively, and the same layout. If the post had been real, the expectation would be that there were more screenshots circulating showing different view counts and/or layouts (night vs. day mode, mobile vs. web interface...).
