Fact Check

Trump Deletes 'Global Warning' Claim?

The Republican presidential nominee tweeted in 2012 that China invented the concept of global warming, but he didn't delete the statement during the debate.

Published Aug. 30, 2016

 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Image Via Gage Skidmore/Flickr
Claim:
Donald Trump deleted a years-old claim that China invented the concept of global warming from his Twitter account.

The 26 September 2016 presidential debate at New York's Hofstra University was raucous and bombastic (as expected).  At one point, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton accused her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, of thinking that climate change is a hoax:

Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.

Trump responded:

I did not say that. I did not say that.

Viewers immediately scoured Trump's social media presence and turned up a 2012 Tweet that said almost exactly that: trump tweet

On the heels of that discovery came a claim that Trump was scrubbing the tweet (and by extension, implying he or his team were frantically deleting other statements he had made) from his social media:

trump deletes tweets

That claim took off immediately, but it isn't true. The tweet is still live and visible on Trump's account:

It's possible that there was a temporary issue with Trump's Twitter account, or that there were problems with an internet connection somewhere, or that the entire thing was a hoax.  However, whatever the reason, the original claim that Trump was deleting relevant tweets from his social media presence has now, itself, been deleted.

Brooke Binkowski is a former editor for Snopes.