Post from Truth Social

A midnight thank-you to an athlete who stood by him

The post runs sixteen words of original text followed by a pasted headline: "Thanks Johnny. You are a total winner! President DJT", then "MLB Legend Johnny Damon Refuses To Apologize For His Opinion on President Trump" and a Miami Herald link. Damon, the former Red Sox and Yankees outfielder, has backed Trump publicly since at least 2016, has appeared at Trump events, and has taken criticism for it before. The headline frames him as holding firm under pressure, and that stance is what the post rewards.

Timing and voice

The timestamp, 04:00 UTC on September 22, is 12:00 midnight Eastern on September 21. A post from that afternoon places him in New York City on his way to Gracie Mansion to meet Mayor Mamdani. Several things point to Trump writing this himself: the hour; the first-name address, "Thanks Johnny", which reads as a personal note; and the sign-off "President DJT". His usual closer, visible in four of the five posts before this one, is the full "President DONALD J. TRUMP" in capitals, and the full-caps form is closely tied to staff-drafted endorsement posts like the Mitchell and Baumgartner items earlier the same day. The shortened initials suggest someone typing quickly on his own phone. Against that, the wording is clean, and "a total winner" is a stock phrase an aide could copy easily. The overall lean is authentic, with moderate confidence.

What the post rewards

The post turns on loyalty. Damon is praised for his refusal to back down about Trump, and nothing he did on the field comes into it. "Total winner" belongs to Trump's long-running split between winners and losers. Here it goes to someone whose winning quality is standing by Trump, so the label says more about loyalty to Trump than about Damon. That fits a pattern in the narcissism literature: admiration from a public figure counts as supply, and whoever supplies it is idealized ("total winner"). The idealization is mild and conventional, and nobody is attacked. The critics Damon refused to apologize to go unnamed. The post has no devaluing half, so this is the idealizing side of splitting and no more.

The trigger looks like supply-seeking, or plain upkeep of an alliance. The day's other posts make that reading plausible. Earlier that day he attacked CNN, Politico and MSNOW over their press-access lawsuit and complained that a judge "appointed by 'TRUMP'" had drawn the case. After a day of grievance about disloyalty, including from his own appointee, he closes it by rewarding someone who stayed loyal. The two posts are close to mirror images, one punishing betrayal and one rewarding faithfulness, though that link is inferred from sequence and is not stated.

Rhetoric

The devices are few: the superlative "total winner", the celebrity endorsement carried by the headline, and an implied cue to followers that staying firm under criticism earns recognition from the top. The "refuses to apologize" frame treats apology as surrender, which fits Trump's own well-documented refusal to apologize. Damon's stance mirrors a value Trump claims for himself, so praising Damon's firmness also praises Trump's own. There is no violent imagery, no dehumanization, and no call to action beyond the praise.

Language

The text is too short to show much. The sentences are complete and well-formed and nothing drifts off topic. The one departure from habit is the "DJT" sign-off, which tells us about how and where he posted, not about his cognition.

Fact Verification

The headline goes further than the article. The body never says anyone asked Damon to apologize and never quotes him declining to. The word appears only in the headline and URL. The story's last two lines say he "has faced some backlash for his comments, too", without naming any, and that he "is standing by what he says, though."

The only new material is one clip, embedded from an @Acyn post dated September 20, 2026. It comes from Damon's interview on Fox News's "My View with Lara Trump" (Fox clip 6405317623112, "Johnny Damon: Some teams can't stay in the game", about 8 minutes, aired September 20). The interview mostly covered the Protect College Sports Act, MLB labor talks, Nike and his push for an Orlando team. Fox News's own YouTube upload of it ("Johnny Damon: Wokeness isn't WORKING", uploaded September 20, 2026) has captions that confirm the quote: "He's nonstop. He's relentless. Remember our last president? We didn't see them for months. This guy is the absolute best." The closest the interview comes to the headline's premise is Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, saying he had never shied away from his relationship with the president and asking, "Did you ever second-guess that?" Damon answered "No" and told the story of meeting Trump at a golf outing. Neither the manual nor the auto-generated captions contain "apologize", "sorry", "backlash", "criticism" or "grief".

The rest of the story's quotes are recycled, undated, from a Fox News Digital interview published December 15, 2024: "I'm glad that he's back in office", "I support my friends through the thick and thin, the good and the bad", and the Biden line, which itself says Trump is "not even in office right now", something only true before January 20, 2025. Heavy.com quoted the same lines in December 2024. In that interview Damon described backlash from people close to him over the friendship. In March 2025 he told OutKick's Ricky Cobb Show, "I may catch grief but I'm not too concerned about it because I know what's right." The Spun has used the same headline template before, for example "Mike Tyson Refuses To Apologize For Where He Stands Politically."

Why mostly true: the headline is quoted accurately, and the substance holds. Damon has publicly and consistently stood by his support for Trump since 2016 and has never apologized for it. But "refuses to apologize" is headline framing, not an event. Neither the article nor the source interview shows any apology demand or new controversy. The reading that he was holding firm under pressure overstates what was a friendly interview on a show hosted by Trump's daughter-in-law. |

Overall Veracity: 80%