In early April 2025, online users claimed a meme accurately quoted U.S. President Donald Trump's response to Fox News host Harris Faulkner about protesters who participated in the nationwide "Hands Off!" rallies on April 5.
According to The Associated Press, the demonstrations assailed Trump's and tech billionaire adviser Elon Musk's actions on government downsizing, the economy, immigration and human rights. Civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists organized the rallies in more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states.
For example, X user @BigBlueWaveUSA posted (archived) of the quote meme, "After the massive, nationwide #HandsOff protest, Trump was asked on Fox what the protesters wanted from the President. His answer is exactly why people call him #DementiaDon."
A reverse-image search also found numerous users on Bluesky, Facebook, Imgflip, Imgur, Instagram, Reddit, Threads, TikTok and X all reposting the meme following the "Hands Off!" rallies, either directly mentioning the demonstrations or not. Snopes readers also inquired about this matter.
(@BigBlueWaveUSA/X)
However, while the meme accurately quoted Trump, he made the remarks nearly five years earlier in June 2020, regarding protests taking place following the death of George Floyd. The users who shared the quote as if it pertained to the 2025 "Hands Off!" rallies did so either with misleading captions or by omitting context. Some users who shared the meme later edited their posts to correct their omissions of context.
As of April 7, Trump had not yet responded at all on his Truth Social account to the "Hands Off!" rallies. White House Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston did, however, issue a statement regarding rallygoers' charges that Trump aimed to cut Social Security and Medicaid. Huston said, "President Trump's position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats' stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors."
Transcript and video of Trump's answer to Faulkner
The TV News Archive, a division of the Internet Archive on Archive.org, hosts the full interview featuring Faulkner and Trump. Fox News aired the interview on June 12, 2020. The following video clip features the pertinent part of the exchange reflected in the meme:
Snopes transcribed the relevant part of the interview as follows:
FAULKNER: I want to talk with you about where we are just in terms of the Black community, people of color.
TRUMP: Yeah.
FAULKNER: You know, I hear you use the word "rioter," and, and I understand, we covered it on Fox News. I covered much of that at night as it was bursting a couple of Saturday nights ago. The looting. And it was heartbreaking to see businesses, small businesses, which we know employ north of 66 percent of ...
TRUMP: They're devastating.
FAULKNER: ... people in America. Yeah, it was. At the same time, you had peaceful protesters ...
TRUMP: Yeah, it's true.
FAULKNER: ... and they were hurting, and I know from your team you watched that eight minutes and 46 seconds ...
TRUMP: I did.
FAULKNER: ... of George Floyd, and Mr. President, your response to that is different than a person of color, and I'm a mom. When he called out "mom" on that tape ...
TRUMP: Yeah.
FAULKNER: ... it's a heart punch. So I'm curious from you, what do you think the protesters. Not not the looters and the rioters. We're intelligent enough to know the difference in our country, right?
TRUMP: Yeah, sure.
FAULKNER: What do you think they want? What do you think they need right now from you?
TRUMP: So I think he had protesters for different reasons, and then you had protesting also because, you know, they just didn't know. I, I've watched, I watch you very closely, "Why are you here?" And they really weren't able to say, but they were there for a reason perhaps, but a lot of them really were there because they're following the crowd. A lot of them there were there because what we witnessed was a terrible thing. What we saw was a terrible thing, and we've seen it over the years. We haven't, you know, this was one horrible example, but you've seen other terrible examples.
FAULKNER: Yeah.
TRUMP: You know that better than anybody would would know it, and, and I know it. I've seen it too. I've seen it before I was president ...
FAULKNER: What do you say to them?
TRUMP: ... and during the presidency, I've seen it. I think it's a shame. I think it's a disgrace, and it's got us, at the same time, you also know that we have incredible people in law enforcement, and we have to cherish them and take care of them. And we can't let something like this, where you have a bad apple, go out and, you know, destroy the image of a whole, of millions of people that take really good care of us. And then you have a movement where they say, "Let's not have a police department," and you say, "Where are these people coming from?"
For further reading, a previous fact check examined the false claim positing Floyd died of a drug overdose. Another article investigated how Faulkner misleadingly claimed the Trump administration found 75,000-80,000 "missing" migrant children.