A rumor that circulated online in 2025 claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump on June 2 delivered the eighth-grade commencement address to "Riverwood Middle School." Several readers emailed to ask about this matter, with one person inquiring, "Can you verify Trump middle school speech?" Readers shared a link or screenshot to an article (archived) reported by the education-policy publication Education Next. The headline read, "Trump's Big Middle School Commencement Address." The story appeared in the "Old School with Rick Hess" column naming its author, Frederick M. Hess.
Numerous users shared this rumor, either as a link or in their own words, on Bluesky, Facebook, Threads and X. Some users specifically shared a link to the article (archived) on the mobile app SmartNews, where Education Next syndicated the story.
(Image courtesy of @ssmithlang/Threads)
The article began with an identifier as a purported "White House transcript":
White House transcript of President Donald J. Trump's remarks to Riverwood Middle School 8th grade commencement, June 2, 2025.
Good morning. You're very lucky to have me here. Very lucky. I'm one popular cookie. That's so true. I am. Lots of other middle schools wanted me. But I'm here. So, congratulations.
I'm thinking, if your teachers are smart, they'll have you write about how fortunate you are to have me here. Just an idea. I don't know for sure. It's what I would do if I were a teacher. But I'm not. I'm president. But being a teacher is still very good, very great, if you can't be president or work in a factory. We had teachers in the 1950s. They were the best. The best teachers.
Anyway, let me look at my speech here. I'm supposed to tell you that education is so important. It is. So very important. Let me tell you why.
However, Trump did not deliver a commencement address at a middle school in early June 2025. Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting news of Trump recently speaking at a middle school graduation.
Seeing as the article read much like satire, Snopes emailed Hess, the executive editor of Education Next, to inquire if he considers the untrue story as satire, humor, something else or a mix of descriptive terms. We also asked if he wished to give his thoughts about the fact some social media users' remarks reflected they believed Trump genuinely delivered the speech.
Hess responded, "It's outlandish humor. It ran in my 'Old School' column at Education Next, which frequently features satire and humor. All I can really say is that reading this as anything other than an over-the-top exercise in humor seems to say something noteworthy either about our sense of humor or the President's rhetoric."
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) website (archived) names Hess as a senior fellow, the director of education policy studies at AEI and an affiliate of AEI's James Q. Wilson Program in K-12 Education Studies.
For further reading, a previous fact check examined another satire-based rumor claiming Trump offered "Trump Gas" costing at least $49.99 per gallon to Floridians fleeing Hurricane Milton in October 2024.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources calling their output humorous or satirical.