Trump statement gloating about Alec Baldwin shooting is fabricated, fact-checkers say

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An online statement claiming to be from Donald Trump which mocked Alec Baldwin over the accidental fatal shooting on teh set of the movie Rust has been shown to be a fake.

The post, which showed Trump’s Save America masthead, was shared thousands of times across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“A great President – me – once said ‘I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,’” reads the falsified statement.

“Now Alec Baldwin, a total loser, has taken his impression of me to a new low by testing out this theory. Alec, you aren’t me! Now you’re going to prison, as you should have because of that awful, terrible job you did on SNL – which I have hosted.”

Mr Trump famously boasted that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

The statement was not posted on Mr Trump’s official website, or shared by his spokespeople online.

Margo Martin, Mr Trump’s deputy director of communications, told an independent fact checking site Checkyourfact the statement was “not a real press release”.

Fact checkers from Reutersalso debunked the statement.

Instagram and Facebook had marked the posts as fake, but days after being posted to Twitter it was still visible without being labelled as false.

The Independent has approached the Trump team for comment.

Baldwin has been involved in an ongoing feud with Mr Trump over his buffoonish portrayal of the former president on Saturday Night Live.

Since the accidental shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust  on 16 October, Mr Trump’s son Donald Jr has repeatedly attacked Baldwin on social media, even going as far as selling T-shirts with the words: “Guns don’t kill people, Alec Baldwin kills people” on his website. 

Candace Owens, a Trump ally and far-right commentator, was slammed for describing the death as “poetic justice”.

Baldwin is cooperating with authorities over the shooting and is supporting Ms Hutchins’ grieving family.

The cinematographer died and the film’s director, Joel Souza, was wounded when the actor fired a handgun he believed to be an unloaded prop.