The US President’s bizarre post included boasts of great Americans harnessing electricity, inventing the telephone and the internet and winning two world wars. The tweet from the official White House account provoked widespread mockery for its hilarious historical inaccuracies.
The President said: “Americans harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the internet.
“We settled the Wild West, won two World Wars, landed American Astronauts on the Moon — and one day soon, we will plant our flag on Mars!”
Even those with a rudimentary knowledge of history would be able to name Scottish engineer Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone.
One social media user tweeted: “Umm Donnie…. Bell was born in Scotland and then became Canadian. He invented the telephone.”
British eyebrows were also raised over the President’s claims America won both wars.
And Mr Trump’s wild claim that America “split the atom” was also quickly dismissed in New Zealand – birthplace of Ernest Rutherford who was awarded the Nobel Prize for the scientific breakthrough.
The pioneering scientist carried out the feat at a British university but the achievement is so widely acknowledged as New Zealand’s his image appears on its $100 banknotes.
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Francis Glenday tweeted: “Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander, split the atom thank you very much.”
The falsehoods in the tweet provoked widespread disbelief, as he continues his daily campaign of accusing media outlets and rivals of spreading “fake news”.
Another Twitter user said: “The Internet is English, the phone is Scottish, electricity was harnessed by an Englishman, the atom was first split at the University of Manchester, you used Nazi scientists to put you on the Moon and you didn’t win two World Wars alone.”
The extraordinary tweet comes as the White House steps up its rhetoric ahead of this year’s presidential elections and tries to tackle criticism about its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Mr Trump’s response to the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement.
It follows on from a speech he gave at Mount Rushmore in which he told a crowd of supporters: “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.
“Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.
“They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.”