Ahmad Austin Jr.May 12th, 2026, 12:18 pm

CNN’s Daniel Dale on Tuesday offered a scathing takedown of President Donald Trump’s bizarre Truth Social spree from hours earlier, which included posting a made-up quote from a U.S. Senator.

Early Monday morning — specifically after 1 a.m. ET — Trump published a barrage of wild posts focusing on a number of issues. In addition to his lengthy rant about the cost of his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool makeover, the president also posted an AI-generated image of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden swimming in feces. He posted another AI image of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) eating a large amount of food. A third image depicted Trump on the $100 bill.

Dale, who routinely fact-checks statements from Trump and the rest of his administration, described the president’s overnight posts as “detached from the reality.” In a Tuesday morning tweet, Dale said:

It’s hard to explain just how detached from reality President Trump’s conspiracy-theory-filled social media posting spree last night and this morning was. One easy example: The president shared a completely made-up and frankly nonsensical “quote” about former president Obama the post attributed to GOP Sen. John Kennedy. The fake quote originated with a “satire” website, basically a fakery factory, that invents stories to be shared by online conservatives; per the fact-check website Lead Stories, versions of this particular fake quote have been wrongly attributed to everyone from Kash Patel to Madonna.

Included in the tweet was a link to a more in-depth analysis from Lead Stories. The report added:

Did Kash Patel, Sen. John Kennedy, Pete Buttigieg, Vince Gill and others demand that former President Barack Obama return millions he earned through ownership related to “Obamacare”? No, that’s not true: Nearly identical stories that swap-in those and other names are part of an international network of websites and Facebook pages that publish fake news stories about famous people to generate traffic. The claim that Obama earns royalties on Obamacare originated with a satire web publisher who baits conservatives into re-posting fake stories.

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