New York, NY - May 26, 2022: Denzel Washington attends Salute to Freedom Gala during Fleet Week on Memorial Day celebration on Intrepid. (Photo credit: lev radin / Shutterstock)
President Donald Trump posted a fabricated quote attributed to Denzel Washington on his Truth Social account Monday, spreading a fake endorsement that fact-checkers had publicly debunked two days earlier.
The image Trump posted was a screenshot from an X account called Red Eagle Updates. Under the word “BOOM,” it showed Washington’s photo alongside the supposed quote: “I’ve worked with a lot of people in my life, and I’ve never met anyone braver, smarter, or who cares more about America than Donald Trump. He’s a great friend and an even better president. I’m proud to be a steadfast supporter, and I’ll never apologize for it.” The original post then asked readers, “Do you agree with Denzel? YES or NO?”
The problem: Washington never said it.
Snopes rated the quote an “incorrect attribution” over the weekend, noting it had circulated for at least several months and that searches of major outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax, turned up no reporting that Washington had ever praised Trump. The same words have previously been pinned on Matthew McConaughey and Mick Jagger.
The Red Eagle Updates post, published Saturday evening, had drawn about 214,900 views before Trump shared it to his own following without comment early Monday.
To boot, Washington’s political donations points the other way.
Federal Election Commission records show he gave $28,500 to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and $27,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run against Trump, Newsweek reported. Newsweek also noted that just before the fake quote, Trump’s account shared a post boasting that he “DANCED off the stage in Tennessee” and that “Democrats want you think he’s losing it.”
Fake Washington endorsements of Trump date back nearly a decade.
PolitiFact rated one “Pants on Fire” in November 2016, and FactCheck.org debunked another in 2021, when Washington’s representative called it “a complete fabrication.” Snopes noted that such hoaxes often borrow the names of actors known for tough-guy roles, like Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott, to make them more believable.
Washington has kept his votes to himself. Asked at a December 2016 screening of his film “Fences” whom he had supported, he told reporters, “None of your business.”
Trump’s account has shared false endorsements before.
In 2024, it posted a claim that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had endorsed him, which the bank quickly denied. That August, Trump shared AI-generated images suggesting Taylor Swift and her fans backed him, including one of Swift as Uncle Sam urging people to vote for him, captioned “I accept!” Swift later cited those images when she endorsed Kamala Harris.