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Samantha Putterman
By Samantha Putterman July 20, 2020

Trump didn’t tweet about South Dakota-California border

If Your Time is short

  • The tweet is fake. 

  • It doesn’t appear on his Twitter timeline, in Twitter searches or in a database of deleted tweets.

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An image of a tweet that appears to be from President Donald Trump would have you believe that he encouraged South Dakota to keep its border with California closed. But the two states don’t share a border. And the tweet isn’t real.

A screenshot of the fake tweet shows a July 4 time stamp. It appeared on Facebook a couple of days later. The full tweet reads:

"Thank you to the Great people of South Dakota. The state is doing a tremendous job with the coronavirus. I told the governor that everyone is fine without a mask. They just need to keep there border with California closed! That state is full of LOSERS!"

One Facebook user who shared the tweet wrote, "A president who can’t bother to look at a map, has no clue where states are in relation to each other and is the most ignorant person to EVER be in the WH."

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The post 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 tweet is fabricated. There is no record of it on Trump’s Twitter timeline on July 4 or any other day, and it doesn’t appear in Twitter searches for posts with that wording or in databases that track deleted tweets.
 
RELATED: No, Trump didn’t tweet this about the Confederate flag
 
The fictitious post appeared shortly after Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for a July 4 holiday event. The landlocked state borders six other states, but California isn’t one of them.
 
The alleged post is not captured in the database of deleted tweets maintained by ProPublica.
 
We also found no evidence that shows the tweet ever existed on the platform, and no news outlets have reported that Trump tweeted this.
 
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