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Twitter Goes Wild As Donald Trump Claims You Need To Show Photo ID To Buy Groceries — Fact Check: You Don’t

By Jonathan Vankin
Published on: 14:22 PST, Jul 31, 2018

At a so-called “Make America Great Again” rally in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday evening, Donald Trump made a bizarre claim that left commentators and social media users scratching their heads, and wondering if Trump is “out of touch,” when he claimed that Americans who shop for groceries at supermarkets must show a photo identification in order to purchase those groceries, the Huffington Post reported.

The comment came as Trump was haranguing the crowd at Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall about what he said was the need to prevent voter fraud by requiring voters to present photo ID before being allowed to cast a ballot in United States elections. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has performed extensive research showing that claims of pervasive “voter fraud — in which voters show up at the ballot box claiming to be someone else, voting more than once, or voting while ineligible — is a “myth,” and that “most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless.”

A 2017 study by researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University showed that the requirement that voters show photo ID would disproportionately affect black voters, preventing them from voting at more than twice the rate that white voters would be barred by the laws.

Watch Trump make his claim in the video below.

Trump claimed that Americans must present voter ID for “everything” other than voting, the Associated Press reported.

“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID. You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”

Has Trump ever been in a grocery store to purchase his own groceries? The AP noted that “it’s unclear when the president last purchased groceries or anything else himself.”

On the social media platform Twitter, the immediate reaction to Trump’s comments ranged from bewilderment to ridicule — with many, including the CNN reporter who covered the rally, Jim Acosta, noting that photo ID is not required to purchase groceries in the United States.

Donald Trump for some reason believes that grocery shoppers must present a photo ID to make their purchases.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appeared to be unfamiliar with an electronic scanner at a grocery store checkout. Though according to the fact-checking site Snopes the incident was reported inaccurately, Bush’s reported “amazed” reaction at a supermarket technology that had been used since the mid-1970s made front-page news nationwide.

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