Donald J. Trump announced what would have been groundbreaking news on Wall Street, in a post on his social media website, Truth Social, on Friday afternoon. At 1:56 p.m., Mr. Trump published, alongside a siren emoji, a claim that he’d been endorsed by America’s most influential banker, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon.
There was just one problem: It wasn’t true.
A spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase confirmed to The New York Times that Mr. Dimon has made no endorsements in the presidential race. Nor has Mr. Dimon given money to either Mr. Trump or his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, the spokeswoman added.
A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the false claim.
The claim was evocative of an increasing pattern of false statements or implications from Mr. Trump in recent days and weeks, including a Truth Social post using manipulated images of people wearing T-shirts declaring they were Taylor Swift fans backing Mr. Trump. “I accept!” Mr. Trump wrote, falsely indicating he had won the endorsement of the pop star, who later endorsed Ms. Harris.
The origin of Mr. Trump’s post about Mr. Dimon, made while he was flying to Georgia for an event, appeared to come from posts on X. Two right-leaning accounts sympathetic to the former president posted on X shortly after 12:30 p.m. that Mr. Dimon had made an endorsement. Mr. Trump’s own post came shortly before 2 p.m. And the denials from Mr. Dimon’s aides came shortly after that.
The episode highlighted Mr. Trump’s penchant for consuming any and all news related to himself, with little interest in distinguishing between verifiable news sources and conspiracy theories generated on social media before he nonetheless makes them his own and spreads them.
Those tendencies are often enabled by a few people he likes having around him to provide positive news about himself, most notably Natalie Harp, an aide who is known in the campaign as the “human printer” because she carries a portable device she uses to get him printouts of news clips, emails and text messages.
After landing at the Augusta, Ga., airport, Mr. Trump was asked by a reporter if Mr. Dimon had told him he was going to endorse him.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Mr. Trump responded. When a reporter noted that the former president had a post on his social media feed saying Mr. Dimon had endorsed him, Mr. Trump said, “Somebody put it up — no, I don’t know.”
When a reporter pressed, asking if Mr. Trump had a comment, the former president replied, “I don’t know — was it him or no?” And when a reporter said a Dimon spokesman said it was false, Mr. Trump depicted himself as a mere bystander, saying, “Well, then, somebody is using his name.”
Despite being told it was false, Mr. Trump left the Truth Social post online, and it remained up through late afternoon.
Mr. Trump has long been fascinated by Mr. Dimon. Mr. Trump’s team had hoped for Mr. Dimon as a potential speaker at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, but he was among several people they hoped to have appear who never did, according to multiple people with knowledge of the planning.
As the head of one of the largest banks dating back to the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Dimon is one of Wall Street’s most closely watched figures, with a reputation for speaking his mind. Some of his biggest fans in finance have repeatedly floated him for elected office, including this summer, during President Biden’s struggles following his debate against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Dimon’s wife, Judy, has donated over $200,000 this cycle to support Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, according to federal records. Mr. Dimon’s only contributions to candidates have been $3,300 checks to a handful of elected officials from both parties, including Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, and Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican.
Mr. Dimon, a patrician voice in the business community who has sometimes criticized Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, had encouraged Democrats on Wall Street to “help” Nikki Haley’s presidential bid. “Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump,” he told a crowd last year at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit.
Mr. Trump’s comments echo a previous incident with Mr. Dimon from earlier this year. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Dimon gave an interview to CNBC in which he paid some compliments to the first Trump administration.
“Take a step back, be honest. He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration,” Mr. Dimon said in January. “He grew the economy quite well. Trade tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.”
Allies of Mr. Trump, online and elsewhere, shared Mr. Dimon’s comments. In July, Mr. Trump said he would consider appointing Mr. Dimon as his Treasury secretary, but Mr. Trump then retracted that comment in a social-media post, saying he “never discussed, or thought of, Jamie Dimon” for the position.
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