Columnist’s Trump Quote Went Viral — Then He Admitted He Made It Up

Time Magazine columnist Ian Bremmer on Sunday tweeted a quote from President Donald Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that quickly went viral — but it wasn’t real.

“President Trump in Tokyo: ‘Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.'” Bremmer wrote on Twitter.

While Trump did praise the North Korean dictator’s insult of former Vice President Joe Biden, the president never said what Bremmer quoted him saying — because Bremmer made it up.

Bremmer left the false post up for several hours before conceding he made up the quote and deleting the tweet, which he defended as “plausible.”

Bremmer’s tweet went viral among Trump critics before he took it down.

“Don’t shrug your shoulders. Don’t get used to this insanity,” wrote CNN contributor Ana Navarro. Her tweet amplifying Bremmer’s fake quote was shared thousands of times across Twitter.

Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu also spread Bremmer’s false tweet. Lieu later wrote that he “removed the retweet” after Bremmer admitted the quote was fake.

Left-wing activist group Media Matters‘ deputy director of rapid response, Andrew Lawrence, also amplified the invented quote.

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