Fake News: Nicole Kidman Did NOT Say Trump Is The Best President In U.S. History

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Nicole Kidman Did NOT Say Trump Is The Best President In U.S. History

Did actress Nicole Kidman say Trump is the best president in U.S. history and that "we must respect him"? No, that's not true: a 2017 BBC interview with the actress was coupled with a made up quote and got turned into a clickbait article with a false headline. The story has been circulating for years in various forms but it is not true. Kidman expressed support for the legitimacy of Trump's election and the electoral process but stopped short of endorsing his views or policies and she certainly did not rank him among other presidents in U.S. history.

The fake quote recently reappared on a site named magatrump.club in this article (archived here) where it was published on April 27, 2019 under the title "Nicole Kidman Says: Trump Is The Best President In U.S History, We Must Respect Him. VIDEO ". It opened:

While a ton of Hollywood has spent its political capital in the weeks since the race pouncing upon President-elect Donald Trump and stooping over dynamic President Barack Obama, on-screen character Nicole Kidman has taken a substitute -- and totally unexpected -- tack.

In the midst of a gathering this week with BBC News, the "Lion" star, who saw that she attempts to abstain from advancing political articulations, said it's basically time to continue ahead and get on load up.

"I basically state he's as of now picked," Kidman, an Australian neighborhood with twofold citizenship in the U.S., told BBC. "We as a country need to help whosever the president, since that is what the country relies upon. Moreover, anyway that occurred, he's there and we ought to go."

The actual interview about the movie "Lion" can be viewed in full here (the Trump part starts at 13:18):

BBC Two - Victoria Derbyshire, 10/01/2017, Nicole Kidman: I wish I'd had more children

Nicole Kidman: I wish I'd had more children

When asked about her views on the (then recently elected) President Trump she actually says:

I'm always reticent to start commenting politically. I've never done it in terms of America or Australia. I'm issue based. I comment on the things that I'm... so ... I just say he's now elected and we as a country need to support whosever the president is, because that's what the country's based on and whatever, however that happened, he's there, and let's go.

There never is a mention of Trump being the best president in U.S. history and later in the interview Kidman makes it clear she is a strong supporter on women's issues and same-sex marriage. The interview was interpreted by many as direct support for Trump but Kidman later clarified her remarks, explaining she was merely saying she believes in "democracy and the American constitution":

Nicole Kidman was forced to clarify those controversial remarks about Donald Trump

Nicole Kidman rarely speaks politics. While other Hollywood actors were busy expressing their contempt for Donald Trump, she always kept quiet. However, Kidman decided to weigh in on the subject last week, suggesting America needed to come together and support the President-elect.

Despite this articles claiming Kidman said Trump is the best president in U.S. history have kept on circulating on the internet, often with strangely warbled versions of the same basic text. Compare:

While a ton of Hollywood has spent its political capital in the weeks since the race pouncing upon President-elect Donald Trump and stooping over dynamic President Barack Obama, on-screen character Nicole Kidman has taken a substitute -- and totally unexpected -- tack.

In the midst of a gathering this week with BBC News, the "Lion" star, who saw that she attempts to abstain from advancing political articulations, said it's basically time to continue ahead and get on load up.

"I basically state he's as of now picked," Kidman, an Australian neighborhood with twofold citizenship in the U.S., told BBC. "We as a country need to help whosever the president, since that is what the country relies upon. Moreover, anyway that occurred, he's there and we ought to go."

with

While abundant of Hollywood has spent its political basic in the weeks back the acclamation lambasting President-elect Donald Trump and abject over approachable Admiral Barack Obama, extra Nicole Kidman has taken a altered -- and absolutely abrupt -- tack.

During an account this anniversary with BBC News, the "Lion" star, who acclaimed that she tries to beacon bright of authoritative political statements, said it's just time to move on and get on board.

"I just say he's now elected," Kidman, an Australian built-in with bifold citizenship in the U.S., told BBC. "We as a country charge to abutment whosever the president, because that's what the country's based on. And about that happened, he's there and let's go."

(source, archived version)

Such copies are often created through a technique called "spinning" where many words in a text are automatically replaced with synonyms in order to create a new text that is substantially different enough from the original to fool automated plagiarism filters and duplicate detection algorithms in search engines and social media platforms.

Many operators of shady websites (often based in countries like Pakistan, Macedonia or Ghana) use this technique to steal and recycle articles proven to attract clicks from unsuspecting Americans (with little regard for the factual accuracy of what the articles say). Sometimes the spinning gets so bad the articles turn to complete gibberish but that doesn't matter to the website owners as long as the headlines keep on bringing in the clicks and ad dollars. Don't fall for it!


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion