Donald Trump told People magazine in 1998: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”
This is a fake quote. People magazine has previously said they have no record of Mr Trump saying this, or “anything like this quote”.
An image attributing a quote about Republicans being the “dumbest group of voters” to President Trump has been recirculating online in recent weeks. But there is no record of him saying this, and it has been widely debunked.
The image features a photo of Mr Trump when he was younger alongside text that says: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. Donald Trump. People Magazine, 1998.”
A number of posts have shared this image following Mr Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025. Overlaid text on some of the posts says: “Trump being re-electd [sic] is proof this people magazine article is 100% legit.”
But People magazine has previously confirmed that they have no record of ever having published this, or “anything remotely like this quote”, and that they have no interviews with Mr Trump in 1998 in their archives.
The photo of Mr Trump being shared in the image actually shows him on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988. While he was asked if he’d ever run for president, he does not say what is attributed to him in the social media posts.
He actually responds: “Probably not, but I do get tired of seeing the country ripped off […] I just don’t think I really have the inclination to do it, I love what I’m doing, I really like it […] I just probably wouldn’t do it, Oprah. I probably wouldn’t. But I do get tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, how we’re really making other people live like kings and we’re not.”
The fake quote is an example of a “zombie claim”—one that crops up repeatedly over the course of weeks, months or years, even after being repeatedly debunked. We’ve previously written about the same image, which has appeared online since at least 2015, and it has also been widely debunked by other fact checking organisations.
You can find more of our work checking claims relating to the US on our website, including a roundup of claims from Mr Trump’s inauguration speeches, and social media posts falsely claiming Mr Trump signed an executive order to remove capital gains tax on US cryptocurrencies.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because People magazine has previously confirmed that they have no record of President Trump saying this or “anything like this quote”.
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