“You’re fired” is to Donald Trump-as-The Apprentice host as “fake news” is to Donald Trump-as-president. It’s his most obnoxious catchphrase, an easy soundbite to slap on shirts and hats, a term that Trump claims to have invented. This, ironically, is fake news — it’s been around since at least 2014, and Hillary Clinton, of all people, made a speech in which she mentioned “the epidemic of malicious fake news” before the big man picked it up. But despite his love of saying “fake news,” Trump can’t spot it when he sees it.
If you go to the Babylon Bee’s Twitter account, the bio reads, “Fake news you can trust.” And on the website itself: “The Babylon Bee is the world’s best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims. We write satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life… If you would like to complain about something on our site, take it up with God.” Those obvious “we are not a real news site” warnings didn’t stop Trump from sharing the article “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News” to his millions of followers, adding, “Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T” (he later clarified, “Big T was not a reference to me, but rather to Big Tech, which should have been properly pointed out in Twitter’s Fake Trending Section!”).
Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News https://t.co/JPmjOrKPcr via @TheBabylonBee Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2020
Here’s an excerpt from the article, which was published after Twitter went down due to “a system change initiated earlier then planned, affecting most of our servers.”
After seeing account after account tweet out one particularly bad story, CEO Jack Dorsey realized he had to take action. Dorsey smashed a glass box in his office reading “Break In Case Of Bad Publicity For Democrats.” Inside the case was a sledgehammer for smashing Twitter’s servers… Dorsey ran downstairs and started smashing as many computers as he could, but he did need to ask for some help, as the hammer was pretty heavy. None of the programmers could lift the hammer, either. Eventually, they managed to program a robot to pick up the sledgehammer and smash the servers.
Ha? Not the most cutting satire, but Twitter was still laughing: at Trump sharing the article.
Good morning everyone, the US president tweeted a satirical news article as if it’s real. Incredible times, yet certainly not a surprise. pic.twitter.com/KgRWVeqByz
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) October 16, 2020
Trump, who decries carefully fact-checked reporting as "fake news" has just retweeted an article by an actual fake news satire website that makes stuff up for laughs. It's the Christian version of The Onion. The world's best information is available to him and he falls for satire https://t.co/6Ob8vLlT1N
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) October 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1317064887332319233
Last 24 hours:
Intel agencies warned Trump that Giuliani was meeting with Russian agents. Trump ignored the warnings
Trump won't disavow a conspiracy about a satanic pedophile cult in the govt
Trump retweets satire as if it's real news
He still controls our nuclear weapons
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) October 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/slicked9778/status/1317053316006895616
As the nation sleeps, Trump claims that Twitter crashed itself to save Joe Biden from the New York Post. His source is a satirical article from the Babylon Bee, a right-wing Christian version of The Onion. https://t.co/Tg9UjokR1w
— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) October 16, 2020