A claim that U.S. President Donald Trump launched a “tirade” against Black Friday, the annual post-Thanksgiving sales event, after mistaking it for an act of mass civil disobedience circulated online in November 2025.
For example, the Facebook page NewsThump posted (archived) an article on the topic on Nov. 24, three days before Black Friday.
That article also spread on Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived), as well. Snopes readers searched our site, wanting to know if the claim was true.
The claim about Trump’s alleged tirade against Black Friday originated with NewsThump (archived) — a news website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. Its Facebook bio states: “Satire (not news, obviously, but we have to put this here because of the idiots)”
NewsThump’s article based its reporting on X and Truth Social posts that Snopes found no trace of on the president’s accounts on those platforms using X search and Trump’s Truth, a website that archives the president’s Truth Social posts. Additionally, NewsThump has republished the same story since at least 2017.
The outlet has a history of making up stories for satirical purposes.
Richard Smith, the editor of NewsThump, previously told Snopes about the site’s work that:
We always want people laughing because they’re “in on the joke” with us, rather than being deceived into believing the joke is literally true. However, we currently live in a time when the behaviour of certain public figures is at times so entirely ridiculous that exaggerating their behaviour for comedic effect, even to what most would consider ludicrous lengths, can still have an air of plausibility about it. Which says far more about their behaviour than the intent of any comedy writer.
Snopes previously reported on another article from the NewsThump that claimed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said emails from the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that allegedly mentioned the president were about “a different Donald Trump.”
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.
