Lara Trump Recited A Fake Abraham Lincoln Quote During Her RNC Speech

Addressing the RNC on Wednesday, President Trump’s daughter-in-law and senior campaign adviser Lara Trump delivered a fake Abraham Lincoln quote warning about divisions from within our own country.

“Abraham Lincoln once famously said, ‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves,” Trump said.

Lincoln never said this quotation just recited by Lara Trump: https://t.co/6qSt5yUPzz pic.twitter.com/HnawSKikdk

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 27, 2020

Multiple fact-checks noted that the fake quote originated from a viral June 24 Facebook post.

LARA TRUMP quoted LINCOLN saying "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter & lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’”

Uh, no.

Lincoln never said that.

The quote is from a viral Facebook image.

Here's what Lincoln actually said. pic.twitter.com/VBE06l5cpe

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) August 27, 2020

While there is no record of Lincoln actually uttering that statement, he did speak to the spirit of the quote well before he ran for president in 1860.

In a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln stated: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”