An old Trump campaign video with a plan for free college is mischaracterized online as new policy

In 2023, Donald Trump — who was then campaigning for president — announced a plan to offer free college education to Americans.  

A clip from that announcement is now spreading on social media out of context. 

“I’m announcing today, we will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy,” Trump says in the clip shared  Nov. 16 in an Instagram post. “Its mission will be to make a truly world class education available to every American free of charge and do it without adding a single dime to the federal debt.” 

The video then cuts to a woman who says, “So, this happened this week and I’m not sure why no one’s talking about this. Free college education — Trump just announced that. He’s made a lot of announcements and this one is absolutely insane. Only politicians could have dreamed about ever doing something like this in their presidency and he just casually throws it out there one week after he won the presidency.”

Text over the video says: “Trump announces free college education!” and the video’s caption says the same.

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The clip in the Instagram post omits the start of Trump’s video announcement, where he describes his announcement as a “plan.” 

“Under the plan I’m announcing today … ” he said in the video that was originally posted on his Facebook page Nov. 1, 2023. 

The person in the Instagram video claims that no one is talking about this academy, but the announcement happened more than a year ago. At the time, it drew news coverage from publications including Politico, The Atlantic and Forbes. 

Plus, news organizations, such as The Tennessee Star, the Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press and The Guardian, have revisited the proposal in recent news coverage. 

We rate claims this video shows Trump announcing “free college education” a week after winning the presidency in 2024 False.