No, image doesn’t show real Trump post about Department of Education | Fact check
The claim: Image shows Trump post about Department of Education ‘developing a hybrid of the fork and spoon’
A Feb. 8 Threads post (direct link, archive link) appears to show a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump.
“The Department of Education, as we will all soon find out, is one of the terrible organizations on Earth, with millions wasted over many years developing a hybrid of the fork and spoon in our cafeterias – which no one likes. Millions spent teaching our educators, many of which are very ugly, how to read before they are allowed to teach our children,” reads Trump’s purported post. “Millions, even Billions, reinforcing flawed DEI – or DEWHY as we call it now – policies of extreme radicals to endoctrinate (sic) our youth by enforcing peanut bans to accommodate a very small group – very LOUD – who don’t like the beautiful nut. This horrible ‘department’ must be stopped NOW!”
The Threads post was liked more than 60 times in two days. Similar posts were shared on X and Instagram.
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Our rating: Manipulated media
The post in the image is a fabrication. It doesn’t appear on Trump’s Truth Social account, and there are no credible news reports that he made such a post.
Trump hasn’t posted about a ‘fork and spoon’ hybrid
Trump repeatedly promised to close the federal Department of Education during his campaign, though doing so would require Congress to pass legislation. Still, Trump is reportedly considering taking executive action aimed at dismantling the agency, Paste BN reported.
However, there is no evidence that Trump has posted anything about the department spending taxpayer money to develop a “hybrid of the fork and spoon” and enforce "peanut bans.”
There is no such post on Trump’s Truth Social account, nor does anything similar appear in an archive of his posts. Similarly, there is no such post on Trump’s X account, nor are there any credible news reports about the purported statement.
Trump, though, has continued to talk about getting rid of the agency, saying in early February that Linda McMahon, his nominee to lead the department, should eventually "put herself out of a job."
Fact check: No, Trump didn’t post about giving Staten Island to New Jersey
The modern Department of Education was created on Oct. 17, 1979, when then-President Jimmy Carter signed the bill that created it, saying the federal government had “for too long failed to play its own supporting role in education as effectively as it could.”
That wasn’t the first time the country had a federal Department of Education, though. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed a bill that created the country’s first Department of Education, but it was demoted to an office in the Department of the Interior about a year later “due to concern that the department would exercise too much control over local schools,” according to the current Education Department website.
The spork – a combination of a spoon and fork – originated with a Rhode Island doctor named Samuel Francis, who filed a patent in 1874 for a utensil that featured a spoon with prongs on the front and a blade on one side, The New York Times reported. The term, though, wasn’t trademarked until 1970, but it had appeared in a dictionary decades earlier.
Paste BN reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources
- Donald J. Trump, accessed Feb. 11, Truth Social account
- Donald J. Trump, accessed Feb. 11, X account
- Trump's Truth, accessed Feb. 11, Search results
- Paste BN, Feb. 3, The White House is mulling the Education Department's future. Trump has vowed to close it.
- Paste BN, Feb. 4, President Trump says he wants his education secretary to 'put herself out of a job'
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