Claim:
Cardinal Timothy Dolan said: "Donald Trump has been abused, degraded, lied about, and undermined from the moment he took office. He stands for this country, he stands for every American, and has stood like a lion against a pack of jackals for four years. God bless Trump."
Rating:
Incorrect Attribution (About this rating?)
Context:
Snopes found no evidence Dolan ever made such a remark, which had previously been falsely attributed to other public figures.
In April 2026, social media users circulated a quote attributed to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York defending U.S. President Donald Trump.
One Facebook post (archived) with the alleged quote read, "Donald Trump has been abused, degraded, lied about, and undermined from the moment he took office. He stands for this country, he stands for every American, and has stood like a lion against a pack of jackals for four years. God bless Trump."
(Facebook user Maria Rosaria Morgan)
The alleged quote appeared in Facebook and Instagram posts, and readers also messaged Snopes asking whether Dolan really said it.
We found no evidence that Dolan ever made the remark.
Searches for the quote only yielded social media posts and meme graphics, but no credible news reports, official Archdiocese of New York materials, transcripts, videos or recordings showing Dolan saying it.
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New York also told Snopes that the claim is false, saying Cardinal Dolan "never said or wrote" the statement, and added that it appears to have originated from a Facebook page that has posted other fabricated stories about him.
Given the above, we rate the claim as incorrectly attributed.
No evidence Dolan made the remark
We found no credible evidence tying the statement to Dolan. The exact wording does not appear in the text of Dolan's well-documented 2020 prayer at the Republican National Convention, which focused on democracy, religious freedom, COVID-19, immigrants and refugees, and "the nominees of both parties," rather than a personal endorsement of Trump.
The quote also does not appear in coverage of Dolan's prayer at Trump's January 2025 inauguration. Accounts of that invocation show Dolan prayed for Trump, Vice President JD Vance, outgoing President Joe Biden, service members and the country, asking God for wisdom and fairness.
At no point in the publicly available text of those remarks did Dolan say Trump was "abused, degraded, lied about, and undermined," nor did he describe him as standing "like a lion against a pack of jackals." The quote appeared only in social media posts.
In May 2025, Reuters reported that Dolan criticized Trump's AI-generated image of himself as pope, saying it "wasn't good." While that does not by itself rule out the possibility that Dolan could praise Trump on other occasions, it further undercuts the claim that he publicly delivered the sweeping endorsement circulating on social media.
Given Dolan's prominence as the archbishop of New York and a cardinal of the Catholic Church, such a statement about a sitting president would likely have generated coverage beyond social media posts and memes. We found none.
Recycled quote with shifting attributions
Search results showed that identical or near-identical versions of the same quote also circulated online under actor James Woods' name as early as November 2025. In other words, the Dolan version was not unique. The wording appears to have been recycled across multiple social media posts.
(Facebook page The New Resistance)
We also found no verified evidence that Woods said it. As with the Dolan version, the quote appeared in social media posts and meme graphics, but not in any authenticated statements or interviews.
In fact, in March 2026, the fact-checking organization Lead Stories published an article examining the same quote attributed to different celebrities, including Carol Burnett and others. Lead Stories found no evidence that those public figures made the statement and said the posts fit a pattern it described as "Viet Spam" campaigns, which spread copy-and-paste fake celebrity content designed to drive traffic to low-quality websites.
Therefore, the Dolan posts appear to be part of that broader pattern, in which the same pro-Trump wording was recycled and attached to different famous names to make it appear authentic.
This was not the first claim about Cardinal Timothy Dolan that Snopes has fact-checked. In October 2025, we examined a rumor that Pope Leo XIV was replacing him after he compared Charlie Kirk to a saint.
Sources:
Deng, Rae. "Contextualizing Claim Pope Leo XIV Is Replacing Cardinal Dolan, Who Compared Charlie Kirk to Saint." Snopes, 1 Oct. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/pope-leo-charlie-kirk-cardinal-dolan/.
Dolan, Timothy Michael. "Read: Cardinal Timothy Dolan's Prayer at the Republican National Convention." America Magazine, 25 Aug. 2020, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/08/24/read-cardinal-timothy-dolans-prayer-republican-national-convention/.
Fact Check: FAKE Quote About Trump Being "Abused And Lied About Since Taking Office" Attributed To Various Celebrities -- Story Is Viet Spam | Lead Stories. 16 Mar. 2026, https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2026/03/fact-check-fake-quote-about-trump-being-abused-and-lied-about-since-taking-office-attributed-to-various-celebrities.html.
"Wisdom, Strength, Humility Focus of Inauguration Day Prayers for President Trump." Catholic Review, 21 Jan. 2025, https://catholicreview.org/wisdom-strength-humility-focus-of-inauguration-day-prayers-for-president-trump/.
