The exchange is dated July 2021 yet Trump’s Twitter account remains suspended. Deputy President William Ruto’s office has also disowned it.
Syndicates story by PesaCheck.
A social media conversation between former United States President Donald Trump, and Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto, is FAKE.
The fake conversation is captured in this screenshot shared on Facebook, where Trump proclaims support for Ruto’s 2022 presidential bid.
“I will personally support the Deputy President of Kenya @williamsRuto in the next year’s election,” reads the Tweet dated 23 July 2021.
“I am so glad the whole world can see how we are transforming our great nation with wheelbarrows,” Ruto allegedly expresses his gratitude in his response.
The screengrab has also been shared by other social media users, including here.
However, there is no information about the Twitter exchange on the DP’s timeline. Additionally, Trump’s Twitter account remains suspended since 8 January 2021, for what the social media company termed as “glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts”.
PesaCheck showed the screengrab in question to Emmanuel Talam, the director of communication in the Office of the Deputy President, who dismissed the said Twitter conversation as fake.
PesaCheck has looked into the screenshot containing a Twitter conversation allegedly between former US President Donald Trump, and Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto, and finds it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck Chief Copy Editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by Managing Editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.