No, Trump didn’t denigrate Africans with this offensive comment
If your time is short
• There is no evidence Trump said "Africans Are Lazy, Good At Sex, Theft."
• This claim was debunked as long ago as 2015.
President Donald Trump is regularly criticized for comments deemed insensitive, racist and more. But at least one comment attributed to him on social media is baseless.
A Sept. 11 Instagram post shows an image of what appears to be a newspaper clipping from Oct. 27, 2015, with a headline in quote marks: “‘Africans Are Lazy, Good At Sex, Theft.’” Under the headline is a picture of Trump with his mouth open as if he were photographed mid-sentence. The first sentence of the story reads, “Business magnate Donald Trump has expressed his deep distrust for Africans by referring to them as lazy fools only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery.”
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
There is no evidence Trump said this. Social media users have revived the old claim in this fabricated newspaper clip despite the fact that it was debunked by other fact-checking organizations as long ago as 2015.
PolitiFact searched news archives for any record of Trump saying the quote or anything similar, and found nothing.
Snopes reported that several African websites in 2015 claimed that Trump, then a candidate for president, made the comments in Indianapolis. But there is no evidence any U.S. or international news outlet reported on the comments, which would have been considered newsworthy. What’s more, his campaign events leading up to Oct. 27, 2015, when this false news story was supposedly published, were in Jacksonville, Fla., and New Hampshire. He was not in Indiana during this period.
Even stories that focus on offensive things the president has said do not include this quote.
The closest we found: In his 1991 memoir, former Trump business associate John O’Donnell wrote that Trump once called Black people lazy. “I think that the guy is lazy,” the quote attributed to Trump says. “And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in Blacks. It really is; I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
Our ruling
An Instagram post shows an image of a newspaper story that claims Trump said “Africans Are Lazy, Good At Sex, Theft.”
There is no evidence Trump said this.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
Our Sources
Lead Stories, "Fake News: Donald Trump Did NOT Say "Africans Are Lazy, Good At Sex, Theft,"" April 30, 2019
FactCheck.org, "Facebook Users Peddle False Trump Story," April 30, 2019
Snopes.com, "Trump Says Africans Are Poor Because They Think of Sex Instead of Farming?" Dec. 12, 2016
Snopes.com, "Did Trump Say Africans Are "Lazy Fools Only Good at Eating, Lovemaking and Thuggery"?" Oct. 27, 2015
BBC, "Mythbuster: What Donald Trump didn't say about Africa," Nov. 11, 2016
Huffpost, "Donald Trump’s Problem With ‘The Blacks,’" Aug. 23, 2017
Politico EU, "The 15 most offensive things that have come out of Trump’s mouth," Dec. 8, 2015
Slate, ""Laziness Is a Trait in Blacks," 1991 Book Quotes Trump as Saying," July 20, 2016
The Washington Post, "Trump’s courtship of black voters hampered by decades of race controversies," July 20, 2016
Donald Trump Tweet, Oct. 25, 2015
Donald Trump Tweet, Oct. 25, 2015
Today, "Donald Trump's TODAY town hall: Guns, ISIS — and the last time he ate McDonald's," Oct. 26, 2015
The St. Augustine Record, "Thousands turn out for Trump speech in Jacksonville," Oct. 24, 2015
Indy Star, "Donald Trump rally at the Indiana State Fairgrounds," April 20, 2016
