Donald Trump’s Truth Social post scapegoating Walt Nauta isn’t real

| 4:10 pm EDT June 14, 2023
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The name “Walt Nauta” is trending on Twitter right now, due to a screen capture of a post that Donald Trump made on Truth Social, scapegoating his aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta in the classified documents scandal. But as is so often the case these days with “Trump Truth Social” posts that go viral on Twitter, the post isn’t real.

All you have to do is look at Donald Trump’s Truth Social page to see that the purported post about Nauta never happened. In fact he hasn’t posted anything in the past fifteen hours. What often happens is that satirists on Twitter will write fake “Trump Truth Social” posts that they think are too over the top for anyone else to think is real (sometimes even labeling it as parody), but then others do in fact think it’s real, and end up sharing it as if it were real. By the time anyone thinks to actually look at Truth Social and sees that the supposed post never happened, millions of people on Twitter have already become convinced that it did happen, and it becomes difficult to walk back.

Donald Trump will surely try to scapegoat Walt Nauta soon enough. It’s been his consistent pattern of behavior for some time. But it didn’t happen today. It’s a good reminder that when you see a supposed “Trump Truth Social” post on Twitter, you should never even consider retweeting or sharing it without first going to the actual Truth Social site to confirm whether it’s even real.