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Donald Trump Drop-Out Challenge Scores Tens of Thousands of Likes, Shares

A like-farming post on Facebook took on the appearance of an impromptu referendum against Donald J. Trump -- but of course, it wasn't.

Published Sept. 13, 2016

 (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia)
Image Via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia

A fabricated Twitter exchange involving GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump was the basis for a Facebook post that accumulated 85,000 likes, almost 30,000 shares, and 15,000 comments in eight days.  In response to a tweet supposedly asking Trump how many likes, shares, and comments it would take to get him to drop out of the race, Trump supposedly tweeted back:

Are you serious kid? Everyone in the US wants me as their president so I doubt you'll get a single like but I'll give you a shot. Get 80k likes, 10k comments and 5k shares. Good luck.

trump-tweet-challenge

Presumably, at least some of the respondents who liked and shared the post took the hint from the name of the like-farming Facebook page on which it was posted — "Funny Texts" — that the challenge was a prank. Perhaps they noticed that Trump's supposed tweet was not sent from his actual Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump). And hopefully most of them gave it enough thought to realize that the real Donald Trump would not have responded as he supposedly did.

In any case, the post handily accumulated the requisite number of reactions needed to compel Trump to drop out of the presidential race, but as of this writing he has not yet done so. We can't help but feel there must be a few people out there waiting with bated breath for this to actually occur.

David Emery is a West Coast-based writer and editor with 25 years of experience fact-checking rumors, hoaxes, and contemporary legends.