In early 2025, a viral post on X reignited an old false rumor about George Floyd, a Black man killed at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. The post contained a purported screenshot of a tweet in which Floyd allegedly made an offensive statement regarding trans people.
The offensive tweet was attributed to an old X (formerly Twitter) account (@BigFloyd73) that claimed to be Floyd's, but in fact was not. Dated Aug. 3, 2011, the pictured tweet said: "These trans folk straight up f**** in they head [sic]."
(X user @MomsPostingLs)
No such account was ever owned by George Floyd. The account's bio indicates it was created in July 2022, more than two years after the real Floyd died when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for about nine minutes as he struggled to breathe. That incident occurred on May 25, 2020.
It's impossible for the tweet to be correctly attributed to Floyd, since he died years before the impersonator account on which it appeared even existed.
That same account appeared to acknowledge being the original source of the screenshot in another tweet, saying "yeah I said dis and? [sic]"
Oftentimes, rumors surrounding victims of police brutality go viral, particularly because they seek to discredit the victims, or in this particular case, pit vulnerable groups against one another. We put together a guide on racial propaganda here.
But this account does not (and never did) belong to Floyd, nor do we have any evidence that he ever made such a statement. We thus rate the screenshot and the quote as fake.