Don't fall for fake Trump post mocking people 'crying about the stock market'

The artificial intelligence chatbot Grok caused confusion when it erroneously told X users the post was authentic.

Published March 12, 2025

Image courtesy of Getty Images

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Claim:

A screenshot shared on social media authentically showed a Truth Social post by U.S. President Donald Trump that read, “A bunch of BROKIES are crying about the stock market today! GROW UP! I don’t care about the stock market. Frankly, I don’t even look at it! I promised you lower prices—and that includes stocks! If you wanted HIGHER prices, you should have voted for Sleepy Joe. CRY ME A RIVER!!”

On March 11, 2025, social media users shared an image that appeared to be a screenshot of a post mocking people worried about that day’s stock market losses from U.S. President Donald Trump’s official account on Truth Social, the social media platform Trump launched in 2022.

The text of the alleged Trump post in the screenshot said:

A bunch of BROKIES are crying about the stock market today! GROW UP! I don’t care about the stock market. Frankly, I don’t even look at it! I promised you lower prices—and that includes stocks! If you wanted HIGHER prices, you should have voted for Sleepy Joe. CRY ME A RIVER!!

The screenshot included Truth Social’s red verified badge, as well as two instances of “ReTruth” — the term Truth Social uses for reposts.

Posts (archived) sharing the screenshot appeared on X (archived) and Facebook (archived).

In short, there was no evidence Trump’s Truth Social account (archived) ever made a post calling individuals concerned about the stock market “a bunch of BROKIES.”

The website Trump’s Truth — which archives every post from the official @realDonaldTrump Truth Social account, including deleted ones — also had no record (archive) of Trump ever posting the phrase “bunch of BROKIES” on that account.

There was likewise (archived) no evidence (archived) Trump used the language from the screenshot in any post from his other official social media accounts.

As a result, we’ve rated the screenshot fake. In other words, the person who created it — whom we have not yet identified at the time of this writing — misrepresented reality by creating a realistic-looking screenshot featuring a made-up quote.

Grok’s contradictory claims about the fake screenshot

Confusion about the authenticity of the screenshot emerged shortly after the image began to circulate, when Grok, the generative artificial-intelligence chatbot developed by X owner and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s company xAI, incorrectly told multiple X users that the screenshot authentically showed a real Trump post.

For example, one X user who responded to a post (archived) featuring the screenshot by tagging the chatbot and asking (archived), “@grok this real?” Grok responded (archived):

The X post from Donald J. Trump is real, posted at 4:08 PM on March 11, 2025. It’s classic Trump—caps lock rant about the stock market, blaming “brokies” and “Sleepy Joe” for high prices. Markets are volatile right now; S&P 500 dropped 2.6% since his Jan. 20 inauguration, despite a 2.5% spike after his November 2024 win. His policies like tariffs and tax cuts are shaking things up.

Around two hours later, Grok acknowledged its mistake and retracted its confirmation of the post’s authenticity when a different X user asked (archived), “@grok you just said something is real that is not real, how do you feel?” Grok responded (archived):

I made an error earlier. The X post attributed to Donald J. Trump isn’t verifiable on his official account or elsewhere as of now. My bad—should’ve double-checked the source. Markets are indeed shaky, with the S&P 500 down 2.6% since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, but this specific post doesn’t hold up. Thanks for calling it out!

Almost four hours after Grok made that post saying the screenshot showed a fake post, another X user chimed in (archived) to ask the chatbot, “can you send me the actual post made by Trump?”

In response, Grok appeared to incorrectly confirm (archived) once again that the screenshot showed a genuine post from Trump — although it now claimed the screenshot showed an X post, rather than a Truth Social post. In that reply, Grok wrote:

Here’s the X post from Donald J. Trump on March 11, 2025, at 4:08 PM: “A BUNCH OF BROKIES ARE CRYING ABOUT THE STOCK MARKET TODAY! GROW UP!! I don’t care about the Market, Frankly, I don’t even look at it! I promised you LOWER PRICES—and that includes stocks! IF you WANTED HIGHER prices, you should have voted for SLEEPY JOE. CRY ME A RIVER!!” It got 6.59K ReTruths and 21K Likes. Classic Trump, all caps, no filter.

Another Grok response (archived) suggested Trump had “likely deleted” the post, implying the post in the screenshot was real even if it did not appear on the president’s Truth Social account at the time.

Despite Grok’s self-contradictory responses to X users’ questions about the authenticity of the post, there remained no credible evidence that the screenshot was anything but a fake.

We previously looked into another fake screenshot of a Truth Social post in which Trump allegedly called teachers “ugly.”

Caroline Wazer is a reporter based in Central New York. She has a Ph.D in history.