Donald Trump has spent years warning Americans not to trust what they read online.
On Monday, he proved the point himself and dragged one of Hollywood’s most respected men into it.
Trump’s relationship with Hollywood has always been complicated. He once moved comfortably among celebrities, attended high-profile events, and cultivated connections with some of show business’s biggest names, including boxing legend Mike Tyson.
His political rise, however, strained many of those relationships, turning former admirers into outspoken critics.
Trump, who often floods Truth Social with posts at all hours, shared a screenshot of a Denzel Washington praise quote.
In it, the actor calls him a “great friend” and an even better president, and vows he’d never apologize for standing behind him. For a two-time Oscar winner who almost never talks politics, it was a shocking endorsement.
One problem, and people who know Washington’s track record spotted it almost immediately.
The Truth Social post, shared on Oct. 12, was a screenshot of a graphic that an account called Red Eagle Updates first posted on X two days earlier.
It showed a stern-faced Washington beside an inset of Trump, with a quote claiming the actor had “never met anyone braver, smarter, or who cares more about America than Donald Trump.”
The account then asked followers to vote “YES or NO” on whether they agreed with “Denzel.” Trump didn’t need a poll. He hit share.
Here’s what the president apparently didn’t check first: Washington never said any of it.
According to Newsweek, Trump’s account posted the graphic two days after Snopes published a fact check on Oct. 10.
That fact check found no credible record of the actor praising Trump in those words or any others. The outlet also reported that the same quote has circulated before, with Matthew McConaughey’s and Mick Jagger’s names slapped on it. Neither of them said it either.
The real paper trail points in the opposite direction. Washington gave money to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run, when she was facing Trump.
When Washington has been asked about Trump directly, he has kept it short.
In December 2016, at a screening of “Fences” in Washington, D.C., a reporter asked who he supported in the election. He joked “Fences,” then said it was “none of your business,” according to PolitiFact.
That hasn’t stopped bogus “Denzel loves Trump” stories from circulating for almost a decade.
In 2016, a fake Facebook story claiming Washington had “backed Trump” went viral. Then his longtime publicist, Alan Nierob, shut it down as a “100 percent complete fabrication,” per the BBC.
Since then, fact-checkers have disputed fake claims that Washington called Obama the “criminal-in-chief” and that he’d quit the Democratic Party over its “lies.”
On X, people were not letting this one slide.
“Denzel Washington didn’t say this. It is fake.. Denzel doesn’t even like Trump. lol,” one user wrote. “Why doesn’t Trump check to see if this is real before posting something fake. Now this is FAKE NEWS….”
Another opened with two words before laying out the receipts: “ANOTHER LIE!”
“Fake News President,” a third user wrote, adding that “the exact same quote template has previously been falsely attributed to other celebrities.”
Answering the original “YES or NO” question, a fourth person replied, “No and it’s fake anyway.” A fifth person told it straight, “He’s really desperate.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has been caught passing off a celebrity’s “words” that weren’t theirs. In April, he crawled out of bed at 3 a.m. and dragged Clint Eastwood into a wild post that attributed a long rant about Trump’s critics to the “Dirty Harry” star.
Snopes later traced the words to a New Hampshire state lawmaker, not Eastwood, who, for the record, endorsed Michael Bloomberg in 2020.
Trump’s account has a long history with fake endorsements. According to CBS News, in 2024, he shared AI-generated images suggesting Taylor Swift fans were backing him, and Swift later cited those images when she publicly endorsed Kamala Harris.
That same summer, his account pushed a false claim that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had endorsed him, which the bank quickly denied.
Meanwhile, the Denzel graphic had already pulled in more than 14,000 likes on Truth Social. Those are likely from people who apparently didn’t fact-check Trump’s post.
