Reports that President Donald Trump ordered a parade to celebrate his hypotethical act of heroism in a Florida school are not true. While it is accurate that Trump said he thought he would have run into a school where shooting was going on, even unarmed, as the video below proves, and there are news reports Trump made comments about the U.S. military doing a parade on Veterans Day, the two events are unconnected.
The story linking the two first appeared in The New Yorker on February 26th in an article titled "Trump Orders Parade to Celebrate His Hypothetical Act of Heroism in Florida School" (archived here) that opened:
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)--Shortly after he declared that he would have run into a Florida high school unarmed to thwart a mass shooting, Donald J. Trump announced that he was planning a parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his hypothetical act of heroism.
"Anyone can act with bravery in the moment," Trump told reporters in the White House. "But it takes a very special kind of hero to tell people about the incredibly brave thing he would have done weeks after the thing happened."
The story actually appeared in the satire column of The New Yorker ("The Borowitz Report" by Andy Borowitz) which was acquired in 2012. Although the section with the columns and all the articles in it are clearly marked as satire the stories frequently get confused for real news by people who only see the title and summary on social media and who assume it must be real because the link goes to the actual website of The New Yorker. To them it would look somewhat like this, with an easy to miss "Not the news" being the only indication it is not real:
Trump Orders Parade to Celebrate His Hypothetical Act of Heroism in Florida School
WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report)-Shortly after he declared that he would have run into a Florida high school unarmed to thwart a mass shooting, Donald J. Trump announced that he was planning a parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his hypothetical act of heroism.
In part to combat this the main page of The Borowitz Report comes with a clear heading that simply states:
Satire from the Borowitz Report
Not the news.
To be safe, whenever you see a link that goes to any article on the "newyorker.com" website, always check if the rest of the link says "/humor/borowitz-report/" somewhere. If it does, don't believe a thing you read...
