Did Donald Trump post a map with "United States" covering both Russia and the U.S. on social media? No, that's not true: A review of Trump's Truth Social account found no record of such a post. There are no credible reports that he shared the map or made a statement suggesting that Russia is part of the United States at the time of writing. The image circulating online is a fabricated screenshot.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @defense_civil25 account on X on Sept. 17, 2026. It read:
???
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @defense_civil25 on X.)
Lead Stories manually reviewed Trump's Truth Social account for any matching post (archived here). Lead Stories also searched Trump's Truth (archived here), a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts. At the time of writing, no matching posts were found.
Real vs. fake post
The fake screenshot of the Trump Truth Social post does not bear the typical formatting of a real post. It does not include the same premium mark -- the pinkish-red checkmark and the black with blue plus sign -- as an actual Trump post (archived here) on Truth Social on Sept. 16, 2026. It also lacks the timestamp that appears after the account name, in this case @realDonaldTrump. The two examples are shown below, with the real post on the left and the fake post on the right.
(Image sources: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social and post by @defense_civil25 on X.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from credible news outlets using the search terms: "Trump," "map," "United States," and "Russia."
