Did President Trump make a post on Truth Social asking Markwayne Mullin if ICE detention centers could be used to lock up communists? No, that's not true: Viral images that appear to show such a post are fake, there is no such message on Trump's actual account. It likely originated as satire because the message also attacked people for "demanding affordable childcare" and "giving everyone healthcare".
An example of the viral image appeared in a post on X (archived here) published on July 8, 2026. The text in the fake Truth social post read:
I am asking our GREAT Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately investigate whether ICE detention centers can also be used for COMMUNISTS. We have the space, beautiful facilities, and many dangerous Communists already identified, mostly Democrat politicians, radical organizers, and people demanding affordable childcare. Minnesota was a very successful test. We must protect America before these lunatics give everyone healthcare!
This is what the viral image looked like:
(Image source: @DougWahl1 post on x.com.)
Lead Stories searched for posts on President Trump's Truth Social account @realDonaldTrump that contained the words and phrases "ICE detention", "COMMUNISTS" and "Mullin" using the platform's search function and it did not come up with any matching posts (archived here).
A Google search for the same terms 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 either.
A Google News search for those same phrases and keywords returned no news stories published after July 5, 2026 (archived here), the date in the screenshot, indicating there has been no news coverage of what would have been a major Presidential statement if it was real.
All screenshots of the supposed post reviewed by Lead Stories showed exactly the same like count and background. 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...)
