Did Donald Trump once say he had talked to the "President of Puerto Rico", as social media posts claim? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no public record of Trump ever saying that. He did, in 2017, say he had talked to the "President of the Virgin Islands," a gaffe which his staff at that time cleared up in an official transcript, changing "President" to "Governor".
The claim appeared in multiple social media posts, including an October 5, 2025 X post (archived here) on the @BraddrofliT account with text that started with "Trump said he "talked to the president of Puerto Rico". It continued
BRO THAT'S YOU! YOU'RE THE PRESIDENT of Puerto Rico
just as you are the President of Delaware and Iowa
Here's what the post looked like at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/BraddrofliT.)
Lead Stories used the key phrase (president of Puerto Rico) to search Google News' index of thousands of news sites. No credible outlet had reported Trump saying that.
Conducting the same search of the Yahoo News index of its publishing partners and news services, Lead Stories found no credible report Trump had said it.
What did show up is the corrected transcript of Trump's remarks to the 2017 Values Voters Summit, at which he misspoke, saying he had met with the "President of the Virgin Islands".
As is customary with minor gaffes, the White House transcript of Trump's speech was amended, with the change clearly shown (archived here). Below is a copy of that transcript, from the archive of the first Trump presidency:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of document from https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov.)
