Donald Trump Jr. took up his father's defense after the Wall Street Journal published the contents of a letter he allegedly signed wishing Jeffrey Epstein a happy 50th birthday, but his denials were broadly fact-checked by other social media users.
The letter was purportedly signed "Donald," squiggled to resemble pubic hair, within the sketched outline of a nude woman's body, along with an imagined dialogue between the two men, noting "enigmas never age," and wishing that "every day be another wonderful secret" for the disgraced financier, but the president insisted the missive was "fake."
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” Trump told the Journal. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
His eldest son backed him up, saying the language didn't match his father's syntax and insisting he wasn't a doodler.
"My father has a very specific way of speaking," Trump Jr. posted on X. "People all over the world have mimicked it for decades. The insanity written in the Wall Street Journal, AIN’T IT and everyone knows it. Also in 47 years I’ve never seen him doodle once. Give me a break with the fake 'journalisming.'"
However, other social media users debunked his denials with examples of his father's artwork and examples of him using the word "enigma."
“'Carson is an enigma to me,'" posted podcaster Olga Lautman, quoting Trump and adding a video clip of him from 2015 discussing his then-Republican presidential rival Ben Carson.
"Interesting what you say that is false," said the widely followed Ford News account, adding pictures of nine drawings by the president.
“'In 47 years, I’ve never seen my father doodle,'" added Isaac Saul, co-founder of Tangle News, highlighting Trump's sketches. "The credibility is just beyond laughable at this point. Kind of shocking how badly they are at containing this."
"Here is another," replied X user BeserkerChilla, showing a photo of Trump holding a hurricane map he'd altered with a Sharpie marker.
"He never doodles," chimed in X user L King, sharing a screen shot of an April 2019 article in the Washington Post about a sketch Trump sold at auction.
"He literally published a book that says: 'Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green,'" said entrepreneur Joel Milne.
Conservative Sean Davis, co-founder and CEO of The Federalist, got slapped for a community note for posting that xAI chatbot Grok had found no examples of Trump using the word "enigma," and the chatbot later offered up a mea culpa for the mistake.
"Yes, a prior response from me incorrectly stated no record exists of Trump using 'enigma,'" Grok posted. "Upon deeper verification, he did: in a 2015 Iowa rally, calling Ben Carson 'an enigma to me' (twice), and in his 2004 book 'How to Get Rich.' Apologies for the error—facts matter. Sources: http://techarp.com, YouTube rally video."
