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Trump Wished Abraham Lincoln A Happy Birthday By Sharing A Fake Quote

On Sunday, President Trump decided to honor Abraham Lincoln's birthday in much the same way as many of us might commemorate important occasions: By sharing a picture on social media. The birthday post included a photo of the Lincoln Memorial with the following quote: "And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years." The only issue? Well, while that's a somewhat inspiring sentiment, it is not something President Lincoln ever said.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Abraham Lincoln!!!

A photo posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on

To be fair, people at Trump's social media team were not the only ones who screwed it up. The Republican National Commitee's official Twitter account shared the same picture. "His leadership brought us together; his legacy inspires us still. Happy Birthday, President Lincoln!" the post read. The tweet was eventually deleted, but not before multiple media outlets pointed out the RNC's error. James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, told The New York Times that there's no evidence President Lincoln ever said these words. So where did the quote came from? According to Garson O’Toole, the author of Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations and the person behind the website Quote Investigator, the words can be traced to a man named Edward J. Stieglitz. Back in 1947, an advertisement for Stieglitz’s book, The Second Forty Years, included the phrase: "The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years!" Maybe the Trump team should start hiring some fact-checkers alongside those copy editors to avoid more mistakes.

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