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A FAKE SCREENSHOT has been shared widely across social media that purports to show US president Donald Trump saying he wants to annex the US state of Alaska.
Last week, multiple accounts on Meta platforms Facebook and Threads shared what appeared to be a screenshot of a post made by Trump in his own social media platform, Truth Social.
The post within the screenshot (which contains many typos) purportedly shows Trump saying: “After I’ve annexed Greenland and making it the 52nd State, I will annexe Alaska.”
It continues: “The people of Alaska don’t want to be part of a backward nation in Canada. I will make all Alaskan’s rich and prosperous when they become the 53rd State of our mighty country. Nobody in Greenland or Alaska would ever have dreamed of this under Crooked Joe Biden [sic]. ”
A number of accounts posted the screenshot to Facebook (here are some examples). The doctored screenshot also had wide reach on Threads, where one post that shared it was liked thousands of times.
Those sharing the screenshot used it to deride Trump by pointing out that Alaska is already a US state.
Alaska became the 49th US state on 3 January 1959. It is the largest state in the US by land mass, and is the third least populous. It lies at the north-western tip of the Americas and is bordered by parts of Canada.
Since being re-elected as president, Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex Canada and for that country to become the 51st state of the US.
Trump has also spoken on multiple occasions about acquiring Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish region, for national security reasons.
However, the screenshot referring to an annexation of Alaska is fake. Trump has never spoken or posted about doing this, nor has he suggested that the state is part of Canada.
A search of the website ‘Trump’s Truth”, which archives all of Trump’s Truth Social posts and which is run by a group of Republican and conservative critics of the US president, found no evidence of him mentioning annexing Alaska.
Trump has posted about Alaska on multiple occasions in the past, supporting candidates for the Senate during primary races and criticising others.
He has also held multiple rallies in the state, and has displayed knowledge that he is aware it is a US state.
As well as this, no major news organisations reported on any statements about the annexation of Alaska being made by Trump.
Ultimately, there is no evidence to suggest the Truth Social post is real, and any suggestion that Trump used the platform to announce the annexation of Alaska is false.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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