Social media takes actress to the woodshed after she tweets debunked fake news about President Donald Trump

Social media trashed actress Bette Midler after she shared an anti-Trump meme that's been proven to be a fake depiction of his remarks.

What happened?

Midler, a rabid Trump protester, shared the meme Sunday on Twitter, featuring a very dated photo of President Donald Trump with the caption, "If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific."

Midler captioned the tweet, "He certainly knew his crowd."

The now-debunked meme made rounds on the internet in 2015, but Snopes fact-checked it and revealed that it was fake.

According to Snopes, the photo and quote, purported to be pulled from a 1998 edition of People magazine, could not be found anywhere in People's archives.

The outlet's Kim LaCapria wrote:

Despite People's comprehensive online content archive, we found no interview or profile on Donald Trump in 1998 (or any other time) that quoted his saying anything that even vaguely resembled the words in this meme. Trump appeared somewhat regularly in the magazine's pages before he came to star on The Apprentice, but the bulk of the magazine's celebrity-driven coverage of him back then centered on his marriages to, and divorces from, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples.

Midler, at the time of this writing, has yet to address the circulation of the fallacious meme.

Entertaining responses to Midler's tweet

• "Really ironic that someone peddling a widely-known fake quote would call other people stupid ..."
• "This is a blatant fake and a blatant lie. Even left wing fact checking site Snopes had debunked it."
• "As believable as it is, he never said this. I appreciate a lot of your tweets about the current political climate but I encourage you to verify facts before spreading misinformation."
• "You're stupid. #FactCheck FALSE. you Hollywood pigs have no clue how to beat Trump. LOL"
• "I can't believe someone this famous is so gullible! Weird- I thought Hollywood was noting [sic] but the intellectual elite. Just kidding - I'm smarter than all of you jibronis...as well as most of America"
• "Nice try loser, who are you again?"