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Tom Kertscher
By Tom Kertscher April 20, 2020

Pelosi tweet attacking Trump for letting people 'keep' their money is fake

If Your Time is short

  • An image appears to show a tweet issued by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

  • It’s fake, posted by a now-defunct fake-tweet generator.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t much care for the policies of President Donald Trump. 

Standing a few feet behind him and in front of millions of television viewers, Pelosi tore up a copy of Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech seconds after he finished giving the address. 

But despite an image you might have seen shared on Facebook, the California Democrat did not issue a tweet saying she was disgusted with Trump over taxes.

The tweet attributed to her reads:

"I am disgusted with ‘President’ Trump allowing people to keep more of the money they earn. It is this type of wide spread theft of public resources that keeps America from being great ‘Mr. President.’" 

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The image was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The supposed tweet is dated Dec. 20, 2017. That’s the day Congress passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill that Trump signed into law a few days later. Pelosi opposed the measure and Democrats criticized it as favoring the rich.

While the blue-checked Twitter handle that appears in the image (@NancyPelosi) might seem legitimate, her actual Twitter account handle is @SpeakerPelosi. What’s more, she uses a different photo for her Twitter account than the one we see in this Facebook image. 

A Pelosi spokesman called the supposed tweet "fiction."

He’s right. It was outed as fake long ago.

Snopes, in December 2017, and FactCheck.org, in October 2018, reported that the tweet was a fake, posted by Tweeterino, a fake-tweet generator that shut itself down in June 2018.

It has also been debunked by the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner.

Our ruling

An image shared on Facebook that appears to be a tweet from Pelosi saying she is disgusted with Trump over tax breaks was posted by a now-defunct fake-tweet generator. 

We rate the image False.

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Pelosi tweet attacking Trump for letting people 'keep' their money is fake

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